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It's been ages. He doesn't know where all the years have gone, where all the hours they put in have disappeared to, doesn't understand why, why this simply per-fect relationship has shattered at their fingertips.
It isn't supposed to happen this way.
Between silvery white and black, of all the colours of the rainbow and the shades of grey in between, they have existed. Red stains on their hands, orange stains in books, yellow stains in eyes, green stains in the village's symbol, blue stains in skies, indigo stains in clothes and violet stains in memories. Silvery white and black in their hair.
The shades of grey give them space to move. Space to expand and contract and push the boundaries of their moralities because despite it being the norm, despite it happening everywhere, how is it morally upright to push a kunai into a child's hand and tell them - kill someone with this, and you have passed the test. To be a ninja, is to kill.
They have existed, they have survived, they have lived, with blood on their hands and death in their minds and their innocence having disappeared somewhere in between the stages of before and after.
He has loved the other for eons, for ages, for years, while the other blindly chases women. The other is straighter than any lamppost he has ever known, and it is exactly this reason why he refuses to let the other know of his infatuation. They have existed in friendship, in pictures of grey and black and silver, and he doesn't want to ruin it.
He doesn't know, doesn't want to know how the other found out that he is so, so infatuated with him.
When he sees the blanching, the shaky turnaround of emotions playing out on the other's face - he has always been emotional, from young till old, at every little thing he has always had a need to express everything - he freezes.
It's a simple thing, to keep walking, eyes empty and face carefully schooled into a blank mask, and pass by the other without so much of a by-your-leave.
He walks, walks out of his fantasy that maybe they could have someday been more than friends, walks out of his backup hope that they could still have remained friends, no matter what happened (because he can't deny it, with his pale skin and black hair and orange eyes he's strange, and people know it. They’ve avoided him, scooted away from him, given him a certain ring of empty space around him because no one wants to breach that and the idiot with silver white hair who writes books with orange covers has been one of the few to breach his space and he's one of the few to remain), walks out of his stupid, stupid dream that everything had happy endings, like in fairy tales and stories.
Then again, at night, when he had been a child, lying in bed with his mother at his side, moonlight shining in through the silver of a window high up, his mother hadn't told him fairy tales. She hadn't told him stories.
She had told him war tales.
She had told him about letting go.
He let go.
(he doesn’t see the way the man with white hair and red lines on his face blink a couple of times, and reach out, seemingly trying to grasp him, because he's already left.
the man's fingers close around empty air, missing his sleeve by a heartbeat. he's already shunshined away.
the man with white hair pauses, hands grasping at air, and frowns. his eyes ring of sadness.
he leaves the next day for a village with never ending rain.)