A Shinobi is a high school student like another: Sidelines

Second Cut

Because one can't say everything. Because one alone doesn't see everything. Because one alone doesn't know everything.

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023.Lovers (Kakashi,Iruka,Izumo,Kotetsu, Emily - slight crossover with 'Sentou Yousei Yukikaze', sometime before chapter 21)

"Come on dude, it's so obvious!"

"I don't agree with you - beside, you're biased, 'Ruka."

"Biased? How so?"

"You're gay! Hey, help me there guys, want you?"

Emily and Izumo were happily oblivious, up there on the comfy couch, to Iruka and Kotetsu sitting on the floor in front of the TV set and arguing loudly.

"I agree with whatever said 'Ruka..."

"Humm? What did you say?"

"Thanks loads Emy, Izumo, you're really helping."

A knock at the door didn't stop Kotetsu's grumbling.

"That's Kakashi! Come in, it's open!"

As soon as he stepped in though, he was attacked by Kotetsu.

"Man! Please, answer me truthfully! Are they gay or not?"

Kakashi freeze. The buzzing sound of the TV set could be heard.

"... what?"

"Jake and Rei! In 'Yukikaze'! I say they're so not gay, but Iruka thinks the contrary..."

"Man, look at the truth! They're so banging each other."

" 'Ruka, I'd like to rectify that," Interrupted Emily, half sprawled on the couch, "they're not lovers : Jake so badly want to screw Rei, but pilot-boy is too obsessed with playing with his joystick to notice it."

Izumo got his head out of his book to look at his girlfriend.

"I can't believe you've just said that, hun. That was sick."

"You know you love me."

Kakashi, still halfway through the door, rose a hand as if to ask a question.

"...the hell 'Yukikaze' is anyway?"

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030.Death (Iruka, no timeline)

Death is hearing your mother cries suddenly and your father curses.

Death is not understanding what's going on from the back-seat and seeing lights.

Death is feeling things that shouldn't be, rolling and tumbling and crushing-crashing.

Death is a horrid, horrid noise of grated metal and crunched bones and shattered glass and gurgling liquids.

Death is having a piece of metal -or was it glass- stuck in your face.

Death is red and thick and metal-smelling and sticky.

Death is not remembering and wondering where Mum and Dad are.

Death is being got out of a metallic carcass with lots of lights and yelling people around.

Death is hearing people saying that you're lucky to be alive.

Death is waking up in a white white place with your Aunt Alice/your Uncle Syd/your Uncle Franck next to you.

Death is twenty or more stitches itching on your face, plaster cast and more stitches everywhere else, even inside.

Death is asking where Mum and Dad are and not understanding why the people keep avoiding answering and looking at you.

Death is going to live with your Aunt Alice and Uncle Syd and your Cousin Emily who likes to dance and to dress up and your baby Cousin Shikamaru who does bored baby things.

Death is going back home only once, to tell and show Aunt Alice what you want to keep.

Death is remembering what happened finally - even if they say you shouldn't, even if you don't understand, and crying at night when no-one else's here, when no-one else can hear.

Death is a cold grey square stone under a tree.

Death is going to see a doctor twice a week for two years, then once for another year, then not anymore.

Death is remembering the noises every time you see your forever-scarred face in a mirror.

Death is remembering your parent's faces thanks to a picture on your night-stand, thanks to pictures frames stuck on the walls in your Aunt Alice and your Uncle Syd's apartment, just over the apartment that was home.

Death is seeing your Uncle Syd's sad smile each time he talks about his baby sister Margaret, about his brother-in-law and best friend.

Death is a void.

Death is wondering what they would have thought of you.

Death is wondering if they would have loved you less if they had knew you as you were now.

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035.Sixth sense (Iruka, sometimes between the middle of chapter 21 and the end of the 22nd)

It felt like he had always had this... extra-sense, tough he could remember that at a time, 'it' wasn't there. And it was a time that wasn't all that long ago. But the difference between before he could taste/feel/use 'it' and when he could was blurry. It was a bit like when you stopped having hiccups - you remember when you had it, and you suddenly realize that you don't have it anymore and you just don't remember it stopping. But you adjusted, and it's normal.

'It' was like being able to see without eyes, to feel without skin. 'It' was like another sense constitued of a mix of the five others all together. It was like having an extra limb which was purely mental, like the representation of telepathy in the comic books he used to buy with the guys back in middle school and which he still keep on a shelve.

He didn't know if he has to be afraid of it or not.

He didn't know who he could talk to about this.

Then, as he was filling his uncle Franck's shift at the bar during the holidays, two days after his last unanswered message had been left to Kakashi's phone, and he was getting really worried, because Kakashi had been a bit weird when he had left him the last time he saw him, he 'saw' them.

He 'sensed-saw' the same men again in the week. And again. And again.

And it was time he went back to school, and he knew who -if this who was here, if this who was all right, if this who still wanted something to do with him- he had to talk to about them... and his 'sixth-sense'.

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040.Sight (Itachi, sometimes between chapter 21 and the end of the 22nd)

Itachi doesn't understand what's happening to him. Something happened to his sight, to his eyes. It's weird, it gives him headaches, it makes him dizzy. He saw himself in the mirror in the bathroom once - the bathroom in the bedroom which had been given to him, in this old dusty house full of ghosts and memories that don't belong to his family anymore. The house is the clan's one, with wooden and tatamis floors and delicate paintings on rice paper panels. Itachi feels unworthy of this place - no, it's all that's left of his family, himself included, which is unworthy of this place. He cried a lot, silently, in this new empty room, away from his parent's one, the tears blurring his sight.

His sight turned too sharp sometimes, too observant, too calculative. He could understand the meaning behind one of his father's eyebrow move, behind his stony face, behind his mother's lowered eyes. He sometimes wished he had clawed his eyes out this night, in front of his burning house - on his little brother's eternally still body.

He wished Anko was there. She had stayed with him all night the 24th, stayed next to him on the bench on the other side of the glass wall of the room where his little brother was agonizing, stayed next to him when the line on the monitor had turned flat, stayed next to him when he had brokenly wept and sobbed and silently wished hell on his absent parents. They had first got out together for fun and scandal. Now he knew she was a friend, a real one. It scared him, it had been so long since he cut all ties...

His father had refused for her to come here, and had transmitted this order to the security. Itachi was alone with his sight and his thoughts.

He remembered his sight acting up when the building was burning. He remembered being able to see the patterns behind the flames, the movements inside the building. He remembered being able to see his brother's body where he and the... what?... black-dressed man had fallen. He remembered sitting in the bench in the corridor, and being able to see his brother's body slowly shutting down - being able to see the energy driving the heart slowing down, and down, and down, to see the lungs take a shallower breathe each time, to see the blood flow slow down and down and down and then stop.

The face which had looked him back in the mirror in the bathroom had had red eyes - and not just from crying.

End second cut