REPOSTED
11 didn't need a repost because I didn't edit it, I just thought that I did. Sorry for the confusion, lmfao.
12.
He felt like, if the gaps in his memory weren't so large, he wouldn't have been so anxious.
He'd been told by the doctor about a few of the things that he'd done – defecting from the village, killing Orochimaru after staying in Otogakure for three years, visiting Konohagakure for the express purpose of hunting down Kaisuki after he'd accidentally killed Itachi – but he didn't remember most of it and he couldn't recall why he'd done those things. There were some things he remembered with extreme vividness (i.e., punishments), but a lot of it was a blur of darkness and a faint feeling of misery and loneliness.
He remembered waking up after his surgery post-Sumi encounter, going home, and looking in the bathroom mirror after splashing cold water on his face. He didn't remember what he'd seen that had so thoroughly angered or frightened him, but he remembered putting his fist through that mirror, he remembered the sharp pain in his knuckles and the wretched feelings that he hadn't been able to identify.
He vaguely remembered a conversation he'd had with Kakashi-sensei a few days later, but he couldn't remember exactly what was said. He just remembered feeling angry and lost and frightened of himself. After that conversation, he'd gone home to his mess of an apartment (he had thoroughly trashed it, destroying everything he owned and probably getting a noise complaint from the neighbors), and blacked out for a long, long time.
"You're useless. You're pathetic, weak, and useless. Obviously I can't ask you to do anything since you're so keen on fucking up literally everything. You never listen. You can't follow directions to save your own miserable life. If you weren't necessary, I'd kill you myself."
Every time he remembered that voice that had spoken to him for so many years, keeping away the loneliness but constantly berating him for everything he did and didn't do correctly, he felt caught between a painful loneliness caused by the silence in his mind and a dark, burning anger that he wasn't entirely comfortable with. He had spent many years trying to please that voice without even realizing that it was bizarre for him to be trying to please a voice in his head. It was just his subconscious, he'd told himself. It made sense for him to speak to himself like that, considering how useless and worthless he was.
He was such an idiot.
Every time he thought something like that, he expected someone to whisper in his ear – no kidding – but he hadn't heard it since the thing that had apparently been in him had been removed or killed or whatever had happened.
That wasn't information he'd come by thanks to Dr. Kuseno. He'd been given a letter that had been addressed to him by Kaisuki and Khrai (who he did not quite remember clearly) once he'd regained his senses and memories. According to the details letter they'd sent, he'd been possessed for more than ten years and, with the extraction of the demon, his memories had been wiped, leaving him with only instincts to kill and a lot of residual anger that hadn't been his.
Recovering his mind and memories (or at least, the ones pre-defection) had taken two of the six months he'd been at the psych ward. He didn't have a clear memory of those first two months. Apparently, the type of therapy he'd been going through had been as intensive as irou-ninjutsu combined with psychotherapy could get. Dr. Kuseno had told him that he'd never had a patient take as long to come back to themselves after a psychotic break as Sasuke had. After reading the letter that had been given to him, he completely understood why.
He didn't remember clearly, but he remembered the day he'd been possessed. He knew what had happened, at least. Sitting at the edge of the docks, waiting for the Spring Festival fireworks. Itachi had come looking for him, and just as he'd turned around and waved to his brother, something had grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him underwater.
He remembered that Itachi had dove into the water after them, and that his brother had given him the air he'd had in his lungs and pushed him to the surface while simultaneously letting himself sink further and further into the inky black water. He remembered that, when he'd broken the surface, mom and dad had been there. Mom had gotten him out of the water, and he remembered the first thing he'd said.
"I-Itachi's still in the water, he's... something's got him!"
Dad had promptly gone into a frenzy to get his son out of that water. Sasuke remembered that, after almost three minutes of being underwater, Itachi was reunited with dry land and he had drowned. Drowned. He remembered that it had taken his mom, an irou-nin in her lifetime, almost five minutes to get Itachi to breathe on his own.
He remembered the very first thing that had been said to him by that lake monster.
"You're not Itachi."
It had sounded furious. It had woken him out of a dead sleep at three in the morning and it had frightened him to the point that he'd gotten out of bed and gone to sleep in Itachi's room. Even though his brother had been in the hospital, remaining unconscious for almost twenty-four hours before he'd come to. Even though he had been explicitly told by literally every member of his immediate family that he was not allowed in Itachi's room without his brother being in that room.
He'd been in a lot of trouble the following morning and he'd still lied about it.
"I just had a nightmare, I'm sorry, it won't happen again."
His father, head of the clan and the police force, hadn't believed him. He was trained to see lies, but he had put word after word in Sasuke's mouth for him - "Let me guess, you were freaking out because of what happened last night, since he's not home yet? You don't have to lie, Sasuke." - to the point that Sasuke himself hadn't had to do much more than look pathetic and nod.
They'd visited Itachi before he'd woken up, and then Sasuke hadn't been allowed to see him again until he'd come home. He'd looked like a dead person and it had only made the younger brother feel worse. If he hadn't been on that dock, he wouldn't have been dragged into the lake, and if he hadn't been dragged in, his brother wouldn't have had to jump in after him, and if his brother hadn't been in that lake, he wouldn't have drowned.
If he hadn't been on that dock that night, he would never have been possessed in the first place. If he had ever in his life been able to just follow directions, he wouldn't have wound up killing his beloved older brother, whom he would never have hated a day in his life if he'd been given the option to feel and think for himself.
"You can't follow directions to save your own miserable life."
"Actually, Sasuke... your brother is dead. I had heard that you killed him."
Why couldn't he have taken me with him?
I just want to know why he abandoned me.
I miss him.
What did I do wrong?
He hadn't been allowed to think those thoughts since the moment he'd had them, when he'd first woken up in the hospital with Kaisuki by his side after... that day.
I miss her, too.
He hadn't seen Kaisuki in four years. He hadn't been on friendly speaking terms with her since a couple of weeks after the... after that night. She had voiced her opinion to him only once, and that had been all it had taken for him to get into a screaming match with her before cutting her out of his life as though she'd been nothing to him.
"I mean... I dunno, Sasuke. I told you before, didn't I? It doesn't... what he says doesn't make sense. There's no way Itachi's been acting like the perfect child when he wasn't from the ripe old age of five. There might be more to it than we can see right now."
At some point during the three years of jumbled memories he couldn't make much sense of, he'd been told by someone he couldn't remember at all about Itachi's mission to wipe out the clan. About the suffering he'd been doing since then. About the fact that he had been sick and dying when they'd had their final battle. About his undying devotion to his village and his little brother.
Kaisuki had been right all along.
If Itachi had been trying, and if he hadn't been sick, he could almost definitely have taken Sasuke out. He could've killed Sasuke easily. He had never been on his brother's level, and he doubted he ever would be. After hearing that story, Sasuke, naturally, had been hysterical.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up! I didn't tell you that so you could do this, you stupid bitch. I will rip you apart a hundred times over if you don't shut up."
"You can't follow directions to save your own miserable life."
Sasuke clenched his jaw until it ached, looking over at the clock on the wall. He'd been sitting in the lobby waiting for Team 7 since six in the morning. They weren't supposed to be there until sometime between one and two in the afternoon, and it was only ten. He had some hours left before they'd get there. He ought to be elsewhere in the building but he'd made a special request to wait by the door from the wee hours of the morning. Juritsu had been assigned to accompany him, and that had been that.
He rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired. Six months of intense rehabilitative therapy was exhausting. He wanted to go home and go to sleep for the rest of eternity. He had still been having difficulty sleeping, but the nightmares had been mostly at bay. He still had them, but not every night. He didn't know if that was because he didn't remember enough to make nightmares out of or if he was just done with nightmares for the most part. When he did have them, they were awful. He didn't dream of the night of the... of that night anymore. Not often, anyway. He had other things to have nightmares about.
The scars on his wrists, he'd noticed weeks ago, had continued to worsen since he'd first left the village. The sight of them had reminded him of how much worse it had gotten. He was sure that if it wasn't for the fact that they had been keen to keep him alive, he would've died while he was there by way of scratching holes through his arteries.
None of them had been able to do or say anything to get that problem under wraps, so another someone he couldn't remember had been charged with regularly tending to Sasuke's arms. They had tried... many things. Everything from various forms of sleeping medications to whatever methods Teara thought of.
He remembered that Teara had quite the imagination.
"I c-... I can't... breathe... T-Teara, I can't..."
"Who said you could speak?"
He could only whisper in a small, wheezing voice to reply, "I-I'm sorry..."
His stomach twisted at the series of images that flickered in and out of the forefront of his mind. For whatever reason, his memories suggested that he hadn't had much interaction with Teara. On the other hand, the things he did remember suggested that he'd spent all his time with Teara.
"Do not do this again, you stupid fucking bitch."
His heart rate was starting to rise and he clenched and unclenched his fists over and over. He had been told by Dr. Kuseno multiple times that, despite all the work they had done on the memory loss, there were still some things he had yet to recall. There were awful traumas he had thoroughly blocked off from himself, and since they had stirred up so many memories, he ought to expect that there were going to be many more that would come to light. Especially over the next few years.
Sasuke was terrified of the things he was going to remember. The things he had already recalled and the flickers of things that had continued to pop up, sometimes randomly and sometimes not, were horrible enough as it was. He remembered too many instances of Teara... of...
He shuddered, taking in a shaky breath and trying to clear his head of the series of images and brief scenes that were coming to mind. He could feel eyes on him. The nurse that had to sit with him while he waited for Team 7 to show up to take him home was probably staring at him, indexing his condition. He didn't acknowledge that he'd noticed, just started spinning the black bracelet on his wrist. He couldn't take it off until Kakashi-sensei signed the discharge papers.
White bracelets were for people who weren't dangerous at all. Red bracelets (which was what he'd started out with) were for people who were a danger to others. Black bracelets were for people who were a danger to themselves. All of the bracelets cut off patients' access to their chakra.
Sasuke couldn't wait to take his off. After spending so much quality time with the likes of Teara, he was really, really, really not comfortable with his state of helplessness. If someone came after him, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. He had been fretting about the possibility of Teara seeking him out for whatever reason, though he wasn't sure why. He felt like he was probably in trouble with that terrifying person, but he didn't remember what he'd done wrong.
"If you don't hold still, I'm going to do a lot worse than what I promised."
Teara's voice was another one he couldn't seem to forget about.
He swallowed, beginning to feel ill again. He was trying to keep his mind off it, he really was. But the anxiety he felt about seeing Team 7 again seemed to be triggering all kinds of things he'd been holding at bay. He was scared to see them again. He didn't know if they would want him back on the team. He didn't know if he'd be allowed back on the team. He didn't even know if he'd be allowed to carry on as a shinobi. Would they take that away from him, too? Everyone had taken everything else from him, why not take the only thing he had to do with himself now that his brother was dead and he didn't have someone else deciding what he ought to do for him?
"Actually, Sasuke... your brother is dead. I had heard that you killed him."
His eyes stung. He didn't want Itachi to be dead.
You couldn't have just taken me with you when you left the village, could you?
He heard the bell chime when the door to the lobby opened. He glanced up habitually and froze, eyes widening. He recognized her right away. Same vivid red eyes, same violet scarf wrapped around her waist, same ghastly pale skin that reminded him that she was a chronic insomniac. Even the clothes she wore were similar. She looked tired and somewhat sad, but she was attentively listening to the front desk receptionist as she explained whatever it was she was explaining.
Then, he noticed that the rest of Team 7 wasn't with her. Immediately, he was confused. He had been told that the entire team would be there to take him home, no earlier than one in the afternoon. Kaisuki shouldn't have been there as early as she was, and she definitely shouldn't have been there by herself. Kakashi-sensei was the only person authorized to sign his discharge papers. He couldn't leave until those were signed.
Why did you come alone?
He had a bad feeling, but he ignored it. His heart swelled and, without thinking, he stood up. He was afraid to walk over to her, but he-...
"Sasuke," his assigned nurse, Juritsu, said his name and he flinched, having momentarily forgotten that she was there. "What is it?" She asked when he looked over at her.
"I... that's... that's Kaisuki," he replied uncertainly, indicating the red-eyed girl that was still conversing with the front desk woman. "I don't know why she came alone, but, um... can I go talk to her?"
Juritsu closed her book with a snap and stood up, "Of course you can, don't be silly." She teased gently, and he smiled weakly at her before turning away and walking over at a brisk pace. He was very aware of her following him over at a slower pace.
Kaisuki noticed his approached when he was about ten feet away from her and she turned to look at him, eyes widening, completely forgetting about the woman she'd been talking to. She took a step forward, glancing down at the ground and spotting the red line she was toeing, before looking back up at him. He could tell she was resisting the urge to just walk across it, but he knew that she would be in a lot of trouble if she did, so he held up a hand to indicate that she shouldn't and picked up his own pace.
By the time he got to her, he felt like he was shaking so hard he'd fall to pieces. Knowing well that he wasn't supposed to, he essentially threw himself at her, hugging her tightly. She froze for only a second before he felt her relax and return the gesture.
"I'm so, so sorry," he whispered, completely unable to control the tremor in his voice and his shoulders.
Kaisuki chuckled sadly, "You're not the one who should be apologizing."
After a moment, they pulled away, and Sasuke asked the burning question. "You're... really early," he said slowly. "And... where are the others?"
The Yurei immediately diverted her gaze to the ground, reaching up a hand and pressing it to the back of her neck. "They're, um... I didn't come with them. I... haven't seen them in a while." She said softly. "I haven't been home in six months."
Sasuke blanched. That was a long time to not be home. He hadn't even realized she'd left home in the first place. How long had this been going on? "Six... why? What... did something happen?" He asked, his heart leaping into his throat. Kaisuki looked down at the floor, her expression falling.
"I... don't want to be talking trash about Naruto," she said softly. "And I don't want you to ask him because I know he'd talk trash about me at this point." Sasuke blinked, caught between confused and horrified. Naruto and Kaisuki had been close friends last he'd known. What had happened to change that so drastically? "So, if you want the full story, you should go to Kakashi-sensei, because he's spoken to all of us. All I'll say is that Naruto hates me now because I refused to help him drag you home, and he blames me for you being so far gone. Sakura resents me as well, for the same reason, but I guess she's willing to be civil."
Sasuke froze. They had … "broken up" because of him, too? All three of them? He was sure Naruto and Sakura had become closer than ever, but for them to have completely chased Kaisuki out of the village...
"I... I'm sorry," he replied quietly, staring at the floor.
Kaisuki shook her head, smiling sadly. "It's not your fault, Sasuke. I could've just gone ahead and helped them, but I didn't want to force you to come back when I knew... well, when I thought you didn't want to be there," she told him. He didn't really feel better about it. "And anyway, I didn't... come here for that."
Sasuke looked up at her as she reached into her pocket, digging around for something. After a moment, she produce a simple bracelet. It had a single dark blue stone at one end, two black stones on the other end, and the stones in between were all pure white. He stared at it for a moment before looking up at Kaisuki in confusion.
"What's this?" He asked, staring at it.
"It's a ward," a voice he didn't really recognize as Kaisuki's spoke and he looked up, startled. Bright blue eyes. That was Khrai, he vaguely remembered. "Against possession. Since you've been possessed, and since you were possessed for so long, you'll be weak to it in the future. This bracelet will protect you." She explained, unclasping it and holding it out for him. He hesitantly held out his wrist for her to put it on him. "The blue stone has a bit of your chakra in it, which identifies who the ward will protect. This thing will only work on you, so don't even bother giving it to someone else. The black stones have demonic energy in them, which identifies what you'll be protected from. There are two of them so that you'll be guarded against stronger threats. The white stones have my chi in them, which is what will be protecting you. My chi is corrosive enough to eat through iron, and trust me when I say I've vaporized plenty of those fuckers to know that I can."
Sasuke stared at it once she's clasped it around his wrist. It didn't feel like there was anything to it. He would've guessed that they were just marbles or something if he hadn't had been told otherwise. He couldn't imagine how something so inconspicuous could be effective in protecting him against possession.
He swallowed hard. Was she worried about him getting possessed again? Why? They'd only wanted him so they could get their hands on Itachi, and Itachi was dead. No one had any reason to come after him, right?
He was afraid to ask so he didn't. "Are... is Kaisuki ever going to come back to the village?"
Khrai didn't answer him right away, so he glanced up at her. She was staring at him, looking extremely tired all of a sudden. "Only if you call her back," the woman replied, her voice somewhat subdued. "Only if you need her to, really."
"What?" He exclaimed rather loudly in disbelief. "No, she can't... she can't just never come back unless there's an emergency, I haven't seen her in years! And..." he paused, looking down at his feet. He wasn't sure why felt ashamed. "I... I wanted to start talking to Izumi again."
He didn't look up, even after the silence had stretched for a good thirty seconds. He didn't want to say the rest of what he was thinking. He didn't want to tell them that, if they never came back, he was definitely not going to be able to keep himself from feeling abandoned. Kaisuki was the only family he had left, even if they weren't related by blood. Itachi had left him and it had been the most miserable, lonely feeling for as long as he'd been allowed to feel it.
His eyes were stinging relentlessly. He felt like a child. Kaisuki wasn't leaving because she hated him or because she never wanted to see him again or because he'd almost killed her. She had to have her own reasons for deciding that she wouldn't go back to the village, and surely it was bigger than just the fighting between the members of Team 7.
The knowledge didn't make him feel any better at all, though.
"Sasuke," Kaisuki's voice was back and he looked up at her, suddenly very conscious of the amount of watering his eyes were doing. She looked slightly confused, and it was at that moment that he suddenly remembered that Kaisuki had never been told that Sasuke was Izumi's mystery patient. But, it didn't seem like she was intending to ask him why he wanted to speak to Izumi. She was smart enough that she had probably put that together the instant he'd said he wanted to start speaking to Izumi "again."
"If... if you really need me to be around, I'll come back and see you specifically, as often as I can and whenever you need me to. I don't know how often that's going to be, though. I could be gone for weeks at a time, even months. I've... been traveling a lot." She swallowed, looking distressed. "But we'll come by, I... I promise."
Then, in an instant, her eyes were green. Izumi looked a lot closer to tears than the rest of them. Sasuke hadn't realized how much he'd missed her until he found himself standing in front of her. He wished he still had the wherewithal to make and hold eye contact with people.
"And when we come by," she told him, smiling sadly. She looked very upset about the whole situation, and he immediately felt bad for reacting the way he had. "We'll stay for a couple of days, okay? You and I will have a chance to talk, I promise. I'd also like you to start keeping a journal. Write in it whenever you want to, at least once a day. Even if all you write is a sentence or a paragraph."
It sounded like she'd been thinking about it a lot, so he nodded silently. He still felt like he was being abandoned, even though he knew that it was completely unreasonable. He swallowed hard, pushing down the urge to cry.
He didn't even know what else to say. If Naruto and Sakura were being as resentful towards Kaisuki as she was saying they were, Sasuke wasn't sure if Team 7 was going to make it. He wasn't about to sit around listening to Naruto and Sakura talking trash about his adopted sister, and he wasn't going to agree with anything they said. No one had known, so there was no reason to point fingers at anyone.
Except me, He thought blackly.
He didn't want to alienate himself from his team, but he didn't want to be a part of something so resentful and dysfunctional. He'd had quite enough of the resentment and dysfunction, to be perfectly honest. If they couldn't bring themselves to either forgive Kaisuki or just never speak of her around Sasuke, he didn't know if he wanted to be part of the team.
For a moment, he entertained the thought of traveling with Kaisuki. Of not going back to Konohagakure, or maybe going back for a while and then leaving to travel with her. He'd be safer if he was around Kaisuki anyway, since she was the most educated about the whole possession business. If anything happened, she'd be able to deal with it quickly.
That was a really good point, though.
"I don't know..." he began, his voice barely above a whisper, "if I would want to go back to a team that spends their days talking trash about my sister."
He glanced up at her. She had frozen, eyes wide in shock, her eyebrows coming together slowly. "I... what are you saying, Sasuke?" She wanted to know, sounding extremely hesitant about asking.
"Maybe not right away, since I'm sure they're going to keep me under lock and key for a while," he said bitterly. "But... once they're over it, could I... join you?"
Kaisuki didn't respond for a long time. He didn't want to look up at her again. "Sasuke..." She started and stopped, sounding uncertain, but he could hear that she was considering it, so he waited. "If you leave the village again, they might come looking for you."
"Well, I'm not going to just disappear into the night without telling anyone," he replied flatly. "I'd want you to... come get me... since I'm not sure I would feel safe traveling distance alone..."
Kaisuki sighed, but it didn't sound annoyed. If anything, she sounded sad. "You're right about them keeping a close eye on you for at least some months," she said. "But... I mean, I honestly... don't know how this would work out, I'd have to... do some things, but if you..." She stopped again, running her fingers over the hitai-ate she wore on her arm. There was another long pause, as she seemed to be seriously considering the options, the implications, the possibilities and the risks.
"If you still want to join me when they lay off you a bit," she continued in a quiet voice. "I... I'd be more than glad to come get you. I wouldn't want you to be stuck somewhere you don't want to be."
Sasuke stared at her, wide-eyed. He hadn't actually expected to get a "yes" out of her, all things considered. He blinked back the tears that immediately welled in his eyes. "I know I will," he replied in a subdued voice. "I'd miss you a lot more than I'd miss that whole village, to be honest."
Kaisuki chuckled, but it sounded tired. "You think so?"
"Yes." He insisted, looking up again. She nodded, a sad smile on her face.
"Then I'll be waiting to hear from you about that," she said. Then, after a second, she continued, "I have to go now, but I'll be in touch. I can promise you that. And, if you ever need me, you just send me a letter and I'll be on the horizon, okay?"
Sasuke nodded silently, already feeling like he was losing someone precious to him. "Thank you, Kaisuki," he whispered. She reached over the red line and hugged him again, a gesture he immediately returned.
He wished he could just leave with her right then.
…
The only reason they knew it had been seven and a half months was because Madara occasionally went out to look at a calendar. For whatever reason, Itachi wanted to keep track of the days. The ghost could go and be back in ten minutes flat, so Itachi didn't get too anxious from his absence.
As the months went by, it seemed like the living Uchiha was growing more and more dependent on Madara's company. He got terrible separation anxiety when Madara was gone for more than an hour. The dead Uchiha been gone for a week when Sasuke had first come back from the psych ward, because Itachi had asked him to see how his younger sibling was faring, how his mental health was, if he was still having nightmares, how he was being reintroduced to the village and his team and life as a shinobi, if they were even going to let Sasuke continue to be a shinobi, and a bunch of other things.
When he'd returned, Itachi had been a nervous wreck. It had looked like he was thinking that his ghostly companion would never come back, like he'd lost track of the days and thought that a lot more than a week had gone by. He wouldn't tell Madara why he had become so upset from the prolonged solitude (it wasn't like Itachi had never been left completely alone for a while), wouldn't tell him what had been going through his head, nothing. He had just asked Madara in a very quiet voice: "Please don't leave for that long again."
Even though Itachi had been the one to tell him to go for at least a week.
Madara sighed softly, his hands on Itachi's right shoulder and elbow. He was icing them in rotation with basically every other part of the kid's body. It was the only way he could help, and it numbed the worst of the pain.
He looked down at his living companion, counting the bruises and burns and cuts and fractures and dislocations and things he couldn't fix. Itachi's left hip and femoral head were either fractured or shattered (it was hard to tell), several of his ribs were broken again, and his knee had had a kunai all the way through it at one point recently. They had driven a series of screws and nails all over both of his forearms and thighs, his cheekbone looked to be cracked, and he had a killer black eye. The bruising around his throat had not improved and his breathing had begun to take on a raspy, wet sound over the past several days, and within the last twenty-four hours it had started to sound like actual pneumonia. Or Inflammatory Lung Syndrome.
Don't even think that, Madara, he snarled at himself internally.
It'd been seven and a half months – the longest period Itachi had ever been detained for – and the kid hadn't uttered a word to anyone but Madara, and only when the two of them were alone. The interrogation team had tried everything and then some. It had gotten to the point that the ghost couldn't bring himself to follow Itachi to the basement anymore. That had stopped a couple of months ago. He instead waited, heart in his throat and palms sweaty, until they brought Itachi back.
He'd seen the betrayal in the kid's eyes for the first time or two or five that Madara didn't go with him, but it seemed that current circumstances had turned Itachi into a very forgiving person. Besides, Madara was reasonably certain that, without the company, his living companion would certainly have broken by now. Itachi wouldn't talk because he had someone to remind him constantly why he wasn't talking, why he was still alive and acting.
"You're doing this for Sasuke, remember?"
Often enough, Itachi would have a breakdown in response to that reminder, miserably and loudly asking for someone to take pity on him and just kill him. It seemed like he was regretting his decision to save his little brother every day, or his decision to not have committed suicide sooner, his decision to let his ghostly companion keep him alive. Madara, naturally, did not have patience for that, and they had a tendency to dissolve into rather one-sided fighting that would eventually result in some kind of extremely vindictive reaction from the dead Uchiha.
"Stop! Stop it, please, it hurts, Madara, please...!"
He stared at a pocket of spiderwebs in the corner of the room. He didn't feel bad, even though he was pretty sure he ought to by the standards of normal, living people. Even though physically attacking his companion was a far cry from a productive way to handle an argument. He didn't expect anyone to understand why he reacted so violently when Itachi started talking about wanting to die, or about how much he was looking forward to his own mortality, or anything along those lines.
Madara didn't know anyone else in the world who'd been trapped alone for over a hundred years, with no means of escaping that raw loneliness, so he didn't expect anyone to be able to comprehend just how important Itachi's life was to him.
He refused to just let the kid give up his life for anyone. If Itachi wanted to fake his death and pretend to be dead for the rest of eternity, so be it. He just wasn't allowed to actually die. Madara had possessed the kid in the instant of his death, after he'd collapsed in front of Sasuke, specifically to force his heart to keep beating, to make his blood-filled lungs function, to treat all his wounds and to walk him across an ocean to Tsukigakure to get a cure for his illness. As Izumi had suspected, Tsuki no Kuni had advanced incredibly far in medicine.
Madara had every intention of keeping Itachi alive - whether he wanted to be or not - for as long as possible. Itachi didn't seem to understand that, as he kept trying to get himself killed. So, naturally, Madara had to keep trying to explain it to him.
He looked down at his companion again when he inhaled sharply and then slowly opened his eyes. "How are you this fine morning?" Madara asked, pulling his hands away from Itachi's shoulder and elbow. The living Uchiha turned his tired gaze towards his ghostly roommate for a few seconds before he looked back towards the ceiling.
His black eyes were duller than Madara had ever seen them. The kid really was fading, wasting away slowly. He had already been having difficulty making himself eat (which Madara didn't blame him for, given the "fine dining" they offered at the prison), but that problem had recently started to get worse. Now Itachi was regularly refusing meals, and it didn't seem to matter what Madara said or did to him.
Well, I guess I wouldn't be hungry if I was in this much pain either.
"I'm tired," Itachi whispered hoarsely in reply. Madara brushed his companion's hair behind his ear for him. The living Uchiha closed his eyes again, eyebrows coming together in a pained expression. "Everything hurts."
"I would think so," Madara said. "Considering how much of you is..."
There was a loud, distinct screech of metal that made Madara flinch, and voices floated down to the hall.
"... and his left femur and hip both were both broken and I want that fixed. It's inconvenient if he can't stand on his own." That was the Wolf.
"How broken?" That was Sakura, the irou-nin in charge of taking care of Itachi. Sasuke's teammate. She was the only person who had been willing to be Itachi's prison doctor, and Madara was reasonably certain that the only reason she had volunteered was because she got some kind of vindictive pleasure out of seeing what ANBU's interrogation team had wrought upon the man who had thoroughly wrecked her biggest crush's mental health.
He hated her, even though she was keeping Itachi alive.
"Probably shattered." The Wolf replied as they stepped up to the door. Itachi didn't even pretend that he was going to get up for them. He couldn't. "And I want you to listen to his lungs. It sounds like he's developing pneumonia."
Sakura was scowling as the Wolf opened the cell door. The two of them walked in together, with the interrogator standing back to let Sakura do her job. She looked over at Itachi, gaze hardening further, and crossed the room silently. Madara pointlessly moved to the end of the bed, where he could crouch by Itachi's head.
The young irou-nin knelt down beside the bed, her hand beginning to glow with irou-ninjutsu as she examined the state of his hip. Itachi was watching her with an expression schooled to blankness. After a moment, she sighed.
"What?" The Wolf immediately demanded, sounding vaguely impatient. Sakura pointedly didn't answer him. They didn't like each other. That had been made very clear within minutes of the day he'd brought Sakura to treat Itachi for the first time.
"If you don't mind, I'll do the assessment of his injuries myself. You're clearly not an irou-nin, so just stay out of my way."
Madara was sure Sakura's blatant dislike and disrespect towards ANBU had something to do with the fact that they had been fully prepared to kill Sasuke after Itachi had stopped his rampage. Madara was sort of hoping they'd kill each other so he wouldn't have to.
"Haruno," Wolf ground out.
"Be quiet," she snapped, turning around to face him and blatantly dropping her hand on Itachi's partially-healed hip, "You said 'listen to his lungs,' which is easier when no one is talking."
The Wolf was very clearly glaring at her, even if Madara couldn't see his face. "You should really learn your place, brat."
Sakura threw him the nastiest glare Madara had ever seen on a girl her age and returned to her task of repairing Itachi's injuries. The ghost turned his gaze on his companion, who's face was ashen and his expression pained. Even if the young irou-nin was healing the damage, the amount of inflammation had made even the lightest sensation excruciating until the injury was completely repaired.
And the fact of the matter was that Sakura had just dropped her hand on Itachi's hip without a second thought.
"You're a bitch," he stated darkly. "And I don't blame Wolf for not liking you."
Itachi himself hadn't uttered a sound, but he never did. Sakura finished up on his hip a few minutes later, adjusting the way she was kneeling. "I need you to sit up," she stated frostily. There was a pause that lasted about four seconds before Itachi used his left arm to force himself upright, his teeth grinding together in much the same way his ribs probably were.
"Did it occur to you that maybe there's fluid in his lungs because you keep breaking half his ribcage?" Sakura deadpanned, turning to look over her shoulder at the Wolf, who didn't answer her. She made a show of rolling her eyes before she turned back to face Itachi. She placed her hands on either side of his ribs and they began to glow again. It took her a solid ten minutes to heal all of the breaks and cracks, and once she was done she pulled her stethoscope off her neck.
"Deep breath," she commanded a moment later. As Itachi was taking the deepest breath he could, Madara immediately noticed that the kid's lung capacity had been noticeably reduced. "Again... again..." there was a pause and Madara watched Sakura's eyebrows come together. "One more time," at that point she sounded less irritable and more concentrated.
"Oh please, no," the ghost said, sucking in a nervous breath.
She put the stethoscope away and planted her hands on his chest again. "What is it?" The Wolf asked, obviously beginning to lose patience with his hired help.
"There's an awful lot of scar tissue in his lungs," Sakura stated offhandedly. "Don't usually see this much outside of Blood Lung patients... but he clearly doesn't have that, or he would've started spitting blood a lot sooner than now."
Madara let out a relieved breath (okay, it's just the scar tissue, no problem) and looked over at Itachi, who was observing the interactions carefully, but keeping his head somewhat lowered and pointedly not making eye contact with anyone. He was very clearly analyzing Wolf's reactions, his vocal tone, his sparing movement, everything. Even in his seriously injured and somewhat sickened state, Itachi knew better than to pass up the opportunity to learn as much about his surroundings and its inhabitants as possible.
Every bit the well-trained Black Ops turned Akatsuki member he was taught to be.
"Is that why his breathing is rattling?" Wolf asked after a pause.
"No," the irou-nin sighed loudly. "The rattling is from the pneumonia he's developing. It's going to be at least three days, probably four, before you can resume." She stood up, brushing off her knees and turning to face him. "I have to go and get a few things if I'm going to prevent this from killing him."
Wolf was very still for a moment. Madara had a feeling he was fuming, as though the fact that Itachi had been neglected so carelessly that he was getting sick was somehow somebody else's fault. He glowered at the interrogator, even though he knew that no one could see him.
"Fuck you, Wolf," he muttered under his breath, irritated. "I completely understand why Sakura doesn't like you."
"Fine," Wolf finally replied. "You'll come back tonight, then, at-..."
Sakura snapped in an instant, her fists clenching as she cut him off extremely rudely. "I don't take orders from you or ANBU, for the record. I'll come back when I come back, and if you have a problem with my timing, you can have fun finding a new irou-nin to take care of him." She spat in a fury, gesturing at her patient. "I have no obligation to you, especially after you threatened my teammate's life, in case you forgot about that. If you don't want to lose your valuable asset to disease or injury, I suggest you try to remember just how little I owe you."
Without another word to him or anyone else, Sakura stalked out of the cell. Around halfway down the hall, she started cursing loudly, angrily, very clearly at Wolf. The ANBU interrogator watched her go from his spot next to the door that had been left open. Madara raised his eyebrows.
"Wow," he remarked in moderate disbelief. "Never saw that coming."
The Wolf turned his attention back to Itachi, who returned his gaze for a few seconds before looking down at his knees. The interrogator stared at him for a moment before he left the cell, pulling the door shut harshly behind him. It slammed incredibly loudly, and as soon as he was gone Itachi slowly laid himself back down. He was clearly still in a lot of pain – Sakura hadn't done anything about his ruined arm or his knee or much of anything else. The Wolf had probably explicitly told her not to.
And you're wondering why Itachi's gotten sick, you stupid...
Once he was laying down, Itachi became very still, his eyebrows knit together and his eyes closed. Sitting up, laying down... really, moving in general was painful for the kid. Every time he shifted, the pain in his everything flared up horribly, so Madara did his best to arrange matters so that Itachi had to get up as little as possible.
"Are you okay?" Madara asked, knowing it was a stupid question. He stood up and walked back to the side of the bed, sitting down on the edge of it.
Itachi didn't respond right away, but after a moment he opened his watering eyes to stare up at the ceiling. "It hurts," he whispered, taking in a shuddering, rattling breath. Madara frowned at him.
"You maybe shouldn't be laying down, though," the ghost said softly as he reached over and gingerly placed his hand on Itachi's shoulder and elbow living Uchiha made a thin sound of either relief or discomfort, but didn't tell his companion to stop. "Since, you know... pneumonia and all."
Itachi closed his eyes again, his lower lip beginning to tremble. "Or I could just drown in my sleep," he muttered blackly.
The dead Uchiha stared at him, an immediate flare of anger rising up. "Or you could not drown in your sleep." He retorted darkly.
You're not allowed to die.
He got a soft, miserable sigh in response, but that was it. He glared at his companion heatedly for a moment before he turned his attention to the swelling he was trying to somewhat remedy. He wished that Itachi could understand why he was so hellbent on keeping him alive. He wished he could explain in words how agonizing it was to be so alone. He wished he could persuade the kid to think about someone other than himself when it came to his mortality.
Itachi just wanted to die. He'd been wanting to die since he was thirteen, since he'd massacred his family. He'd been wanting to die for almost a decade, and apparently it had never crossed his mind how horrible that would be for Madara. Apparently, the fact that Madara had no one else to go to had never been a factor.
Konohagakure's prized prisoner cleared his throat wetly and coughed harshly, which only seemed to aggravate his arm more. "You can't..." he said in a strained voice. "You can't possibly still be trying to tell me... that living like this would be better than-..."
"I never said that dying wouldn't be better," Madara interrupted angrily. "I just said you weren't allowed to."
Itachi asked, his voice still quiet. "Why is it that I have to suffer so you don't have to be lonely?"
You don't get it. You just don't get it.
He was beginning to wonder if Itachi was trying to get Madara to kill him in a fit of rage. How many times were they going to discuss the kid's mortality? How many times were they going to get into a fight over it? How many times was Madara going to have to twist broken fingers before Itachi got it through his head that nothing he said was going to change the ghost's mind about forcing him to live?
"Because I said so," was his frosty reply as he abruptly gripped Itachi's injured shoulder with rather significant pressure. Itachi's other hand immediately came up as he let out a gasp, trying to pry Madara's hand off his bruised and swollen shoulder. "How many times are we going to have this argument before you get it through your thick skull that I'm not going to let you die on me?"
"Madara, that hurts," Itachi forced out, his black eyes beginning to water. Without thinking, Madara dug his thumb in, eliciting a sharp cry that was quickly followed by a slew of curses. The ghost let go, pulling away from Itachi completely. The living Uchiha lay there, gasping and shaking and still swearing.
"Eventually, you're going to learn not to be so suicidal," Madara snarled at him, standing up off the bed. "Anyway, I'm going to go check the calendar and see how Sasuke's doing. I'll be back soon."
The look Itachi gave him at that moment was nothing short of despaired and horrified, but Madara pointedly ignored him and turned away, walking through the closed cell door. He wouldn't be gone too long, probably just an hour or two or three. Itachi had mentioned wanting to know how Sasuke was doing a few hours ago, and Madara had agreed to go check on him later. So, he was doing what he said he would do.
Itachi could deal with it. The longer he spent trapped in loneliness, the more possible it would be for Madara to make him understand why he wasn't allowed to die.