Without thinking, he jumped in.

Sasuke felt the smack of the water's surface in his bones. It was like jumping into jelly with a thin layer of concrete over the top. The air was cold that day, winter and close to snowing in Konoha, and thin, wispy ice crusts had formed on the lake's edges. Sasuke hadn't really jumped in the lake for a reason. It was wholly unintentional. He'd planned on going for a walk to clear his head after visiting the Uchiha compound – it was sickening to think he was a visitor in what had not four days earlier been his own home – since there wasn't much else to do now that…

It was inky black under the surface. The water bit into his skin with shards of arctic teeth, swallowing his senses and growing numb. All initial panic was shed like a skin the deeper he went. His body moved through the thick water, bubbles in his ears and the muffled rush of running liquid somewhere faint behind him. His body fell, deeper and deeper. Sasuke wasn't sure how deep the lake was. Soon, it was difficult to tell which direction was up, and in all his emptiness, he felt the pulse of lungs deprived of oxygen.

His arms thrashed helplessly, and the panic returned with a pang like he'd ran straight into a brick wall. Sasuke had just jumped into the lake, and now he was too lost in darkness to find his way out. He struggled to open his eyes, clamped shut against the cold. The tension in his chest grew stronger with every passing second, trembling fingers clasping at the fabric too tight on his neck. He tried to move the water out of the way, tried to make a pathway for some air from the surface. Lakes didn't work that way. The pressure in his ears, chest and brain all concaved at once; Sasuke gasped with a rush of burning water into his throat, filling his lungs.

He hadn't meant to do this. Not really, not deep down. When Sasuke felt himself dying, it was just a faint glimmer of realisation in the back of his mind. There was no more panic, no fanfare of flashbacks and no great epiphany. Only a quelled sense of peace that barely and fleetingly filled his emptiness.

He barely registered the hand fastening on his wrist and rushing him with inhuman force in the direction Sasuke thought was left, but was actually up. Up to the surface, where they broke into the piercing air. Eyes still closed, Sasuke was sure he should have passed out by now, his body heavier than the morning after a whole day of intense training. His clothes snagged on bitumen and twigs as he was dragged onto the water's edge, head rested on its side. Sasuke faintly heard someone land with a soft breeze on the other side of him when hands pressed firmly on his ribcage three times.

It didn't hurt. Not at first. At first, Sasuke was still recovering from the pounding in his head, the winter air warm on his slippery, frostbitten skin. His hair quickly adapted to the glacial temperature of the grass below him, igniting a spark of returning senses that all at once made him want to scream. Sasuke's head was so cold, then the rest of him was colder, especially his fingers and toes. They were so cold it was as if they were burning. How was that possible? He had no idea. There was no other way to describe it; he was both numb and overwhelmingly feeling.

There was a snap of plastic before warm lips lowered onto his, breathing in scorching puffs of air. The act seemed useless to him, because the air simply pressed halfway down his esophagus before rushing back out. Nothing made it to his lungs. Sasuke wanted to tell the person to leave him alone. He was going to die. That was fine.

No sooner had Sasuke thought this than he found himself vomiting onto the grass, attacked with an onslaught of whooping coughs that scratched the back of his throat and made his head thrum. Sasuke felt a hand patting him awkwardly on the back. When the coughs subsided enough for him to crack an eye at his saviour, Sasuke could only catch a glimpse of skin before the face was covered with a bleak ANBU mask. On the other side of him, Sasuke could see a pair of blue shinobi sandals, and he assumed there was a pair of them.

"And here I was thinking this kid didn't need our watch," the sandals shinobi said tiredly, placing a hand between Sasuke's shoulder blades to assist him into a sitting position.

The other hummed in response, staring at Sasuke from two black, empty eyeholes that made him shudder. Sasuke wasn't ashamed at being caught trying to kill himself. He hadn't planned it at all, so he didn't feel resentful that they'd saved him, either. He felt nothing but the grief that had haunted him ceaselessly, almost driven him out of his mind and carried with it lumps in the throat and stinging eyes. He sobbed, coughed and lowered his head, tears surfacing that he knew he couldn't apprehend. Sasuke brought a hand up to clutch his burning chest, coughing hard enough to turn his face red, and the ANBU cursed.

"We have to take him to the hospital," he told his partner, shrugging a pack off his shoulders. "Take this so I can carry him. We're gonna have to write a report."

Sasuke didn't resist when the ANBU lifted him easily off the ground, adjusting him on his shoulders and slipping strong arms under Sasuke's legs. The other slung his partner's backpack over one shoulder and the two nodded. Sasuke tensed when he felt his stomach drop, wind rushing in his ears as the two ANBU bounded over the rooftops towards the infirmary.

Sasuke shivered feebly against the cold, deaf with the wind filling his ears. It was like a dream, he thought, the weightlessness of vaulting through the air surrounded by nothing but blurry images of places he'd seen in waking hours. But it wasn't a dream. He knew because of the heaviness in his heart and the bitter taste in his mouth. A dream was where Sasuke could see his family again, smiling, welcoming, warm. There was nothing warm about this place, thin layers of ice caked over his slick, purple, trembling skin. This was reality.

Sasuke held tightly onto the ANBU shinobi's sides, eyes clamped shut, unable to do anything but cry.

-x-

The ceiling was white enough to blind you with your eyes shut. Everything was disgustingly sterile, unnaturally white. Sasuke had never had to stay the night at hospital before, and it was not something he thought worth repeating. However, he knew they wouldn't let him go, even if he told them he wasn't going to kill himself anymore. Sasuke was on suicide watch.

He wondered what his parents would have thought, knowing their son was on suicide watch. He wondered even though he didn't want to. The Uchiha family laced every thought in Sasuke's mind, wormed their way into every feeling, being and circumstance. They were everywhere, stained into his skin, etched on his fingerprints so they littered all Sasuke touched. Their blood ran through his veins. Sasuke and the dead Uchiha were one. He felt all their pain. It was the most cruel, agonising form of punishment he could imagine.

Sasuke was glaring at the sheets tucked around him when a deep, commanding voice interrupted his thoughts.

"It's disappointing to find you locked up in here."

Sasuke jumped, eyes darting towards the newcomer who had seated himself in the visitor's chair beside the bed. It was a bland, mustard-yellow piece of ugly furniture, and made the man look every bit like he was too important to sit there.

His robes were elegant, made from rich black silk that shimmered in the artificial light. Embroidered on the hems and sleeves were thin, wiry tree roots that chained together like a brooch to hold it in place on the shoulder. His hands were calloused, wrinkled and dry, each finger thicker than the last, so large Sasuke thought they could break him with just a firm handshake. Worst of all was his face; clean white bandages swallowed his right eye and entire head, the only visible features being chapped lips and a droopy, bagged left eye, squinted shut. A large cross-mark scar on his chin made Sasuke wonder whether the man had been clumsy enough in his past to fall face-first into a pair of kunai. The man was also a complete stranger.

Simply laying eyes on this man had Sasuke fumbling for the call button. The man appeared to sense his unease, chuckling lowly with a lopsided smile.

"No need to be frightened, boy," he said, tugging on the call remote's cord to wrench it from Sasuke's weak hold.

Sasuke swallowed, ready to call out for help, when he saw there was a nurse already standing by the door. Her eyes darted suspiciously between the man and Sasuke, but she made no move to stop this encounter. She was just ushering the man in and making sure all was well. There were people watching him at all times, so nothing could happen to him now, he assured himself. Sasuke relaxed into his pillow and stared at the man in question. His visible eye had creased to the point of being lost amidst his numerous wrinkles.

"My name is Danzo," the man said, his smile falling slightly as he leant back in the chair. The nurse appeared to be called away, and the two were left alone.

"Hello," Sasuke replied, surprised at how croaky his voice sounded. He cleared it absently, watching as Danzo pulled over his lunch tray with a jug of water, deftly pouring him a glass without breaking their gaze. His movements were dignified and sophisticated, much like his mother and her refined poise, graceful demeanour, tinkering laughter that was hopelessly contagious…

Sasuke swallowed, willing his eyes to stop prickling. Danzo handed him the glass and Sasuke thanked him quietly, sitting up straighter in the bed. The water soothed his sore throat and dry mouth. Sasuke eagerly gulped it down. He stared at the man, waiting to see what he had to say, a welcome distraction from his thoughts. Danzo waited for Sasuke to finish the glass, jug in hand, before pouring him another.

"Your name is Sasuke, correct?" He nodded. "Tell me, Sasuke. Do you like it here at the hospital?"

Sasuke paused. He looked at the abundance of white, clothes that belonged to anyone and had been worn by the diseased and bloodied by surgery, cardboard pillow, and window with a view of the adjacent apartment buildings. He was being watched constantly, woken by screams and nurses during the night, stared at with an irksome sympathy in everyone's eyes like they had any clue what he was feeling. Everybody who cared for him didn't really care; they were just doing their job. No company was real company. Nothing was real here. Not the food, not the bedding, not the well wishes, not the adults who didn't know what to do with him. There was no one left to visit Sasuke. He was left to wallow in his grief, to cry himself to sleep. He was on suicide watch, and the moment they thought he wouldn't try to kill himself unsupervised, they would send him back to what he had been doing before – wondering what to do next.

"No," Sasuke said, his voice sounding older than he anticipated. Danzo seemed pleased, his eye crinkling again in that way that made Sasuke feel perturbed.

"No?" said Danzo, as if this was unexpected. "Then you would like to be out of here as soon as possible?"

The more Danzo spoke, the more Sasuke felt his stomach churn with weariness that was so ungrounded he chose to ignore it. "…Yes," he replied.

Danzo's visible eye peeked open as he looked down at Sasuke, his bandaged face unreadable. "Well, good news. There is a way you can be out of here by the end of the day."

Sasuke swallowed. It had only been three days, but living in the hospital with the smell of detergent and people unsure what to say to console Sasuke was enough to drive him crazy. "Tell me. I'll do it."

At the sight of Danzo's shadowy smile, Sasuke regretted his words. "Excellent. It's nothing to be worried about. All you have to do to be discharged from the hospital is come along quietly to Konoha's orphanage."

The words struck him hard. It had been over a week, and Sasuke hadn't thought the word orphan even once. It was true, wasn't it? Sasuke was an orphan. By definition, he was a child with dead parents and nobody left to care for him. He had been orphaned by his older brother, two hundred family members brutally murdered in their own homes and only one left to survive; the youngest, least capable of them all. Sasuke was an orphan. He was orphaned by Itachi, and orphans belonged in an orphanage. It was common sense. Still, a large part of him insisted he didn't belong there.

"…But…" Sasuke stammered, a lump forming in his throat. "I can… why can't I go back to…"

But the Uchiha district was stained with blood. He'd been back once and hallucinated, cried, punched himself, broken things, then attempted suicide.

"I'll live by myself," he insisted half-heartedly. Sasuke knew there was no other option for him. He was an eight-year-old boy, unable to look after himself, grieving and potentially unstable. Other than suicide watch in the hospital, what option did he have?

The look Danzo gave him said the same thing. Sasuke lowered his head in his hands, trying to stop the flow of tears.

"Do we have a deal?" Danzo asked.