A/N: Yes, that was a Billy Joel reference.
Also today is my birthday again, so I figured I would write another chapter.
Sasuke wasn't sure how long he had been kneeling. It felt like a long time. The grass, which had been in cheerier hours warm and soft, had turned rough and sticky. His head hurt. His everything hurt. And he was still sleepy. But he couldn't fall asleep, he simply couldn't, because he knew what would happen.
What if that never stopped happening
coffee and sleeping pills?
It's what you deserve for being so weak, foolish little brother
no
no
no
and suddenly all he could see was red and black and swirls and
open your eyes, moron
So Sasuke did. It was bright. Bright like his life was never going to be again.
And then-
"Get up br-Sasuke-kun. This, um, really isn't necessary, okay?"
But it was. He tried to kill her, didn't he? Maybe she wanted to do something to him. Sasuke tried to push himself off the ground. He managed to sit back on his legs, but standing was an exercise in futility. Well, he was sort of up.
He looked up. There was Mitarashi Anko, looking...like herself? It would be kind of bad if she didn't, no?
"Sasuke-kun."
"Yes- what was the proper form of address here? Mitarashi-sensei?"
"Okay, I—how do I put this? You don't need to bow for a half-hour because you threw a shuriken at me because you thought I was...some evil figment of your imagination. You're eight, okay? And I've been dodging alllllll sorts of sharp pointy things since before you were born. And-uh-well I mean obviously that wasn't, um, good, but your reaction was kind of...excessive, I think. And if you, uh, keep doing that, when you actually do do something far worse, your apology won't mean quite as much." She rubbed the back of head with her hand. Her purple pineapple hair swished slightly.
"Sorry?" he offered weakly.
She sighed. "Okay. Maybe we should...do something else now." And she held out a hand. Why? Oh. Because he couldn't get up by himself, like a baby, because he was weak and and and
"I guess we could, like, go get food or something," said Anko, shrugging. "I like food. Mmm. Food. You know, I didn't even eat breakfast. Did I? Anyway it's probably lunch time. Maybe I should get a watch, except then I would probably break it. Hmmm."
Normally Sasuke hated this kind of chatter, but right now it was distracting, and in a good way. Perhaps he should learn to be like her. Ignore his problems with irreverency. Was that a word? Mindless idiocy. That would work.
Ita—that man's friend liked saying that. Uchiha Shisui was highly dismissive of nearly everything. Oh—don't mind those girls, Itachi dear, look at them with their bobbins and bits and odds, engaging in mindless idiocy the way they've been told to do by their mothers, just the same. The few times Sasuke had encountered him he was mildly baffling, but the casual way he talked to Itachi, like he was ordinary—less than ordinary, even—was somewhat pleasing. Except now Shisui was dead. Dead in the water. What kind of parent would name their son death water, anyway? His parents, obviously. Also dead. Deadeadeadeadeadeadeadead wait where was he what was going on and
Somehow he was out of the clearing. Anko appeared to still be talking about nothing. What. What. What. This was not good. He couldn't just space out randomly whenever. What if it got worse, and he started thinking every old house was his house, every woman in an apron his mother, and blood of any kind the blood of his family? Then he couldn't be a ninja—or even function in society. No. nononononononononononononono. He had to be a ninja. Or else, the souls of his slayed relations would come upon him in the night and...do whatever ghosts do to little boys while they're sleeping. Nothing good. And they would yell at him for being weak, too, wouldn't they, and not carrying on the family tradition of being a ninja that went back a zillion trillion years and—then probably they would yell at him for not liking tea ceremonies or the colour red or all those other stupid traditional things Uchiha were supposed to like for some reason, except tea ceremonies were for girls and red was such an angry colour and he really wasn't very good at getting angry, and shouldn't Anko be making him come back to reality by means of some vaguely witty statement right about now or something?
He looked over at her. She was still going on about something, about how she could never find the good kind of shortbread cooky at the store anymore and it was so annoying and she really ought to send a Strongly Worded Letter to the company and blahblahblahblah
Where even were they? Sasuke looked around. On a dirt path that was reasonably well lit, it seemed. On either side were fields of some sort. There was no sign that he could see that they were still in Konoha. But they had to be, didn't they? He would have noticed a wall and border guards, who would probably be pretty edgy, considering that they let A COMPLETELY IRREDEMABLY EVIL PERSON LEAVE THE CONFINES OF THE VILLAGE except you wouldn't have noticed, sasu-chan, you're about as observant as a two-layered gingerbread cake and –-well, even though that statement was totally, totally false, his mind conjuring up false statements of Shisui was less irritating than when it did that with...other people.
But it was a possibility that he had missed the wall, because all he could see was fields., going not quite to the horizon (there was something out there) but almost, almost but not quite reaching there.
"Hey, uh—Anko-Sensei?"
Half lidded eyes turned to look at him. "Yeeahhh?"
"I—I think we're lost."