La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 14:
"Let Me be Your Hero"
"I love you too," Sasuke says.
He isn't sure why.
Because it's true? Is that why I'm saying it?
Oh, hardly.
Because you have to give something to gain something? Because he's grateful, and strangely giddy with relief, and it isn't exactly pity? Because he likes to play with people, these days, and he can still break their hearts even if he's not allowed to break their bodies? Because it just slipped out, like some half-forgotten instinct? Because he's a stupid manipulative sap?
He isn't sure about any of it, mainly because he's rather skeptical about the entire concept of love, has never had an organic comprehension of it. His family was so difficult, and Naruto is hardly any easier, though for diametrically opposite reasons – but yes, Naruto would be the obvious candidate, the obvious hypothesis for any inquiry about love.
Except Naruto is something exceptionally basic to him, something that resides underneath the layers of words, and talking has always been simpler with Kakashi. The man thinks like him; Naruto feels like him.
"This'd be where I say I don't want your lies or your pity," Kakashi says. "If I were the hero of a story, and had pride and assurances." His crooked smile is back, black blotches of old pain twisting up his neck and brushing the edge of it.
"I'd never offer anyone pity," Sasuke says, and about this he is certain. "There's not a one who deserves it."
"I disagree," Kakashi says mildly, hand on the door. "I think there are far too many who do."
"You done?" comes Naruto's distinctly over-excited voice trough the opening door, words tumbling gracelessly over each other. "Did it work? Is he–"
"Why don't you come in and see for yourself?"
Of course, Naruto is right in front of the bed Sasuke's still sprawling indecently across when the sentence is only yet begun. His hand is caught in its movement, left hanging in the air between them, as though he dares not take the chance he might be reaching for the wrong person.
"Sasuke?" He breathes it arduously, anguished, like one attempting to draw air into his lungs under water.
"Ah," Sasuke says. "Yeah, it's me." He clarifies: "The same me I was this morning."
"Thank god," Naruto utters, in a choked rushed voice, and immediately proceeds to cause Sasuke to doubt the idiot understands ribs are not actually made of titanium and thus liable to break when hugged this hard.
It is strikingly different from Kakashi's touch, with none of the calculation, none of the instinctive technique, the utter certainty of how to gain whatever reaction he wants. Those who kill well fuck well, or so Sasuke's experience claims. Both arts demand a delicate touch, a body able to act while the mind is washed under by emotion and doubt.
He cannot deny it was quite pleasurable to have Kakashi's hands and mouth on him.
Kakashi who would never tug too hard, never go too fast, never stop at the inopportune moments.
(of course, neither would orochimaru)
He rests his chin against the top of Naruto's head (banishing thought).
"Remember to stop by the hospital tomorrow," Kakashi says, and Sasuke opens his eyes to look at the collected face with the sharp contrast between normal-pale and sickly-translucent-pallid skin. "Sakura thinks you've promised."
"It's unnecessary," Sasuke claims. What can they do for him there? More importantly, what would he let them do?
"On the contrary," Kakashi says, and Sasuke needs not ask him to elaborate, shouldn't have to need that elaboration at all: "She's still yours, and it goes both ways, more often than not."
(bonds never tie down just one of the connected individuals)
"I'll go," he says, sullen, and Kakashi offers a condescending, entertained smirk before he leaves.
There seems always to be a girl, Sasuke muses. A healer who can't heal any of the real wounds and gets hurt trying. Tsunade, Rin, Sakura. The broken third wheel that makes it so much harder for the two working ones to roll the wagon forward.
Kakashi's right, however. She's his. He might not like her, he certainly does not love her, but she's his.
xxxxx
It's a beautiful morning, Sakura tells herself. A splendid beginning of a wonderful day.
It's just a tad bit hard to appreciate it when the sun, instead of illuminating everything in a hopeful light, is evidently trying to burn her sleep-deprivation-dry eyes to cinders.
She finally worked up the nerve, close to midnight yesterday, to look up Kakashi-sensei's address and make her way to his apartment. The neighborhood, unexpectedly unpleasant, made her uncomfortable, but you do what you must.
The building was locked, but not worse than to let her push the entrance open with brute force, and she was fortunate enough to run into Kakashi-sensei outside his door.
"Sakura." Strange how his voice suddenly sounded so much more intimate, so much more human and flawed, without the mask between speaker and listener. Like realizing, somewhen during the early stages of puberty, that your parents are people too, were people long before they became parents, before they became yours.
"K-kakashi-sensei." Now she was here, she found she could not bear to inquire about the matter concerning which she had come, could not invite the possibly of a response contrary to what she hoped to hear.
"Sasuke'll stop by the hospital tomorrow," Kakashi-sensei said, clearly taking pity on her and fumbling with his lock (if i didn't know better i'd say he's a man in love). "Just be careful with him, alright? We don't want anyone hurt, and control's obviously a thin line."
"Alright," she said, the wild crest of joy dulled only mildly. To have Sasuke back changed has to be better, after all, than not having him. "Thank you, Kakashi-sensei. Goodnight."
She hardly slept, all the same. The relief was too great, and, when it abided, the resumed anxiety that conquered her in its wake. You have to be careful with Sasuke these days, indeed, careful around him – except if you are Naruto, because then it is apparently fine to scream at him, punch him and sleep with him by turns.
It makes absolutely no sense to her.
Then again, has Sasuke ever made sense to me? Really?
Perhaps not, but she was a silly little girl three years ago and likes to think that that has changed. This might be mere wistfulness however, for she comprehends nothing and tries not to care: any healer knows that more often than not, when it's serious, minimizing the pain is all you can do.
Work certainly keeps her busy, at least: the hospital is always full after the exams.
She begins by checking up on Konohamaru. He isn't seriously hurt, not as these things go, but combined with the broken collar bone and broken ribs the concussion warrants a monitored bed-rest (apparently hanabi caused a sensation by showing off her invention, a version of taijutsu that combines the classic hyuuga technique of hurting from within with the average model of causing damage from the outside). His friends are already crowding the corridor, waiting to be let in.
Sakura almost smiles, indulgently offering greeting and unlocking the door. It'd have been nice, if this had been a possibility when she was their age. When things were falling apart.
Clinically speaking there is about nothing Konohamaru needs her to do for him, so she tells him to get better and don't try to sneak out again today, and wonders what has happened, because she actually thinks he'll obey the instruction, stay in bed like a good mediocre boy, and no one her age ever would have. Wouldn't have dreamed of it.
Chouji's room is in another wing of the building: he didn't look badly hurt to begin with (and thank god sasuke didn't actually put a mature chidori through him, and what the hell is wrong with life that she should be grateful one of her friends didn't kill another?) but it turned out Sasuke's strikes were amplified by masked chakra. It will be a week, at least, before Chouji's internal organs have recovered from the blows.
He's not assigned to her care, though, and she passes the room by, spotting Shikamaru through the window. Her destination lies elsewhere, although it too is situated in the wing harboring victims of fairly serious injury.
Ino is awake when Sakura slips into the room, timid and careful not to make noise when she closes the door behind her. Bandages cover much of Ino's upper body, exposed by how the coverlet has fallen down to her waist, and one eye is closed under the weight of a heavy bruise. She fought back more than Konohamaru, Sakura supposes, or else Hanabi just considered her a worse threat because of her greater experience.
"Hiya," Ino says. "You're late, Forehead Girl."
"I'm worried about Sasuke," Sakura replies. That's one of the best qualities with Ino, one of the dangerous ones: that she understands so much from so little.
"Sasuke and how he looks like a psycho skeleton, huh? Which part is it you're worrying about?"
"Both," Sakura replies, hiding her expression by bending to fix the sheets. "Kakashi-sensei told me he'll stop by today to let me give him a check-up, but that I have to be careful."
She sounds like the evil stepmother, vicious and betrayed and jealous. Loving, in a stunted, confused way. Much like Sasuke, then.
"Didn't you always, though?" Ino asks. "I mean, he was never yours."
"Not yours either!" Sakura snaps automatically, blushes, furious.
"You admit it, then," Ino concludes in a tone of great satisfaction. "But look, he's a disaster waiting to happen, and if I were you I'd keep my distance."
"Don't be absurd," Sakura says after a long silence. "You wouldn't abandon Shikamaru or Chouji no matter what."
"I think the key difference is," Ino says in a dryer voice than Sakura has ever heard from her; makes her suspect Ino is simply too tired from her wounds to get upset, "that they would never give me reason to. Besides, he abandoned you first."
She looks thoughtful, a little like she's preparing to either deal or receive a scathing blow.
"You don't still love him, do you?"
"I don't know," Sakura whispers, her suddenly-watery knees sitting her down on Ino's bedside. "I hardly know anything about love."
"You're the type not to see the good things right in front of you, aren't you, Forehead Girl?" Ino says, affectionate, sad.
Sakura looks up, musters a smile as she pushes pink hair out of her face. "Right now," because Ino's half-sitting and the bed is narrow, "all I see is you."
"That's right," Ino affirms, and kisses her.
Sakura pretends she is startled, and maybe she is, a little, because though she has conjectured it's a wide step between belief and certainty. She pretends she is startled and lets it happen, lets Ino kiss her, Ino's hand cupping the back of her head and the tip of Ino's nose brushing hers as their mouths angle together.
It's soft, sweet (a sunlit world away from sasuke and naruto and difficult shades of darkish gray).
Sakura thinks it might be time she took the easy way out, because the hard ones have never gotten her anywhere. She lifts her hands to Ino's shoulders and lets her lips part.
The light from the window has moved a few inches when she leans back, has moved on from painting golden specks in Ino's hair to play over her face.
What do you say, when you've just kissed your childhood best friend and teenage dearest rival/secret confidant?
"We're good?" Ino says; Sakura isn't sure whether the sentence ends with a question mark or not.
"We're good," she nevertheless repeats, finds a smile irrepressible. I can reach out and drag a fingertip over the curve of Ino's cheek, like I always did when we were small. "I need to finish my round. I could come back, afterwards."
"Off you go then, you lazy bum," Ino orders cheerfully. "Mind you bring some candy with you when you return. It's only fair I get all the benefits I can from being hospitalized."
"Though it means you can't exercise," Sakura remarks. "You'll get fat."
She laughs, the most inappropriate sound she's ever heard within the hospital walls, and closes the door on the launched pillow.
She's in the general office sorting through files when Sasuke turns up. She was only half expecting him to come, tenses immediately at the sight of him. He looks rather evil, standing nonchalantly in the doorway, and like he's gone without sleep for a long time.
He probably has too, between the morning sickness and Naruto.
"Kakashi implored me to stop by. Said I should have you have a look."
Shaky, because she realizes she is sure, she does love him, but she's afraid too, of him and for him both – shakily she tells him to sit down and describe the problem.
"I'm not convinced there is one," Sasuke replies. "But everyone keeps insisting I'm too thin to keep the baby. I don't sleep well and throw up most everything I eat."
"You have to stop training," Sakura says immediately. "Eat nutritious food, several times a day. I'll show you a trick to handle the vomiting – a chakra control thing, you hinder the muscles from pushing upwards. As for the sleep, there are pills, of course, but I think it'd be better to keep those as a last resort. Just try to relax, and. Um. Maybe you and Naruto could take it easy until you've rested up."
"If I can't train and can't sleep with Naruto, I won't get any sleep at all. It only works when I'm exhausted." His voice is crisp, impersonal (she wonders if this was how he talked to kabuto, but imagines he was more his old self then, snorted and insulted). Could it be he comes off as sterile because he is trying to be gentle, and every personal nuance he has is a degree of viciousness?
"Let's see if you get better from just eating healthily and not training, then. Should that turn out to be insufficient we'll look into the sleeping pills."
(he won't tell her about the nightmares keeping him up, of course. that's just like him: i can only tell you if you've already figured it out, and she won't allow herself to)
"Here. I'll perform a simple jutsu on you, and it'll be done. No more retching."
"Don't."
Her hand stops in midair, but though his reasoning is clear (i won't have anyone doing things to me out of my control) her argument holds true: "Only yestereve you allowed Kakashi-sensei to execute a mind-fucker technique on you."
"I trust him, to some extent."
"You don't trust me to do what's best for you?"
Pause, loaded.
"Alright, then." I trust you to try.
She wonders if he also trusts that she'll fail.
His throat is clammy and chilly under her fingertips. A third through the jutsu his hand clamps around her wrist, gently but very firmly removing her touch. Funny that such a painfully slender arm should posess the strength her own lack.
"Tsunade was right to think I wouldn't harm you for trying," he says, quite calmly, "but if she imagined for a second I'd let you put a restraining jutsu on me she's more naive than even Orochimaru thought her."
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry you trusted me."
Because when she no longer trusts his judgment it's a given she had to betray. She isn't sorry she attempted it.
"What I trusted was that I could stop you." His eyes go red: "Just show me instead."
She does, simultaneously swallowing silly tears and saying: "That's the difference, isn't it? You can have Kakashi-sensei going through your mind and Naruto doing what he wants to you, because you can trust absolutely that they'll always be on your side when it really matters."
When he blinks his eyes are back to normal, cold, inscrutable (but not directly unkind). "Naruto has all these stupid romantic ideas," he confesses. "You understand, though, don't you? That I'm not the me you knew."
"Yes," she says, hoarsely. "But so does Kakashi-sensei."
"His priorities are different."
"He's… that's not really appropriate for a teacher, is it?"
Sasuke snorts. "I've no real problem with inappropriateness. It's a concept for small minds." He smiles, faintly, before giving an outrageous leer that is so horribly out of character she can think naught but that it has to have been a trademark expression of a teenaged Orochimaru long ago. "Besides, he's not my teacher anymore."
"Naruto–" Sakura interjects, shocked, and more disturbed than she cares to admit.
"…is the one I am actually living with, which gives him less reason than anyone else to complain about the situation."
"Wouldn't that rather," Sakura insinuates, "give him more reason that most to complain? You're not exactly a model housemate."
"Pardon? I cook food I've paid for and let him eat it, I demand no rent for his living in my house, and I also sleep with him on all occasions. I'm hard pressed to think of reasons this should warrant complaints."
"You also toasted his old kitchen, try to murder him at least twice a day and complain incessantly, not to mention you wake him up by being sick every morning."
"I never asked him to get up with me."
"Of course not. Why would you need to? This is Naruto." Which thought makes her sober. "Sasuke, please, don't hurt him."
"The idiot's good at healing up." His face twists into something that fails to be at all reminiscent of a smile. "Thank you for your advice."
"Not at all. I'm glad we talked."
He nods, stops in the doorway. "I won't hurt you, no matter what happens. I do not have the same reservations about, say, that Yamanaka girl."
"I see," she says tonelessly, and she does.
Don't get too involved in the me-Tsunade conflict.
Keep your loved ones away from me, because really, you were always the smart one, and distrusting me is hardly stupid.
She'll never be able to stop loving him, no, but is seems quite possible she'll grow to hate him a bit as well.
(fortunate and galling that i am so used to being helpless)
xxxxx
Kakashi decides he likes the Hokage office better since it became Tsunade's (the piles of unread documents growing like baby mountains on the desk, the old cups of sake-with-a-sprinkle-of-tea and glasses of pure alcohol). All things considered he might as well have been in his very own apartment, which impression is reinforced by the fact he found he didn't have any clean Jounin uniforms left, and besides he's lost too much weight for them to fit him anymore. Seeing as he's in no hurry to repeat the incident when his pants almost fell off, it was sort of a relief to have a reason to use what few normal clothes his closet still holds. Since he stopped bothering with civilian outfits in his teens, they're small enough to be the right size on his thinning frame.
"My, my, Kakashi," Tsunade drawls, looking up at last from whatever paper he doesn't believe she's actually reading. She's been letting him wait on her attention for something approaching fifteen minutes, but he doesn't mind. It's kind of nice, in fact, to relax against the wall with a smoke, forgetting where he is. "Don't tell me you're dressing up for me."
He snorts, which is not the easiest of moves to execute while smoking. "Forgot to do laundry, is all."
"You might not have the opportunity to wash during the upcoming weeks either." She leans back in her chair, sighing. "Sasuke conveyed a lot of alarming information, and everything we can confirm suggests he's telling the truth. We'll need to increase missions, and you know we're short on qualified ninja."
He dips his head a fraction of an inch in agreement.
"Jiraiya's still out, but we're pooling our resources to get him back on his feet. When he is, he is to train Naruto. I want as many as possible to pass the Jounin Exam. Since Sasuke is one of the few candidates who certainly don't need any extra study, it'd be foolishness not to use him for work. However, there is the matter of finding suitable teammates. You and Gai are the only ones I won't have to explicitly force, and I doubt Sasuke would agree to work with Gai."
"I see."
"Don't try anything funny with him, Kakashi."
"He'd kill me if I did."
"Yes," Tsunade says dryly. "Exactly. Here's your mission."
He catches the file she throws at him, nods, exits. It's an A-rank, of course.
"But I'm not even supposed to train," Sasuke protests, looking sour at the interruption in what appears to be dinner preparations. To think the brat cooks...!
"Sakura-chan said so," Naruto chimes in and adds, with a smugly victorious look at Sasuke: "Which means it's not just me being overprotective."
"It's Tsunade's orders, not mine," Kakashi saves himself by reminding them, sitting down opposite Naruto at the new kitchen table (get away from the stove, idiot, you'll ruin the food and burn us alive. get back and stay back!). "Anyway, I don't think it'll demand much physical strain; it's mostly about gathering information, so chakra cloaking and some ninjutsu should see us through just fine."
Sasuke snorts, in that way that implies that if he were anyone else the sound would have been a sigh, fastening a bit of hair behind one ear. "It's only I don't see how I'm expected to gain about thirty pounds stuck on a shitty mission in Water Country."
"We can talk to Tsunade," Kakashi says. "She's pushy about wanting you to work missions, but you could take some easy ones. The only reason she assigned this to us was because she couldn't think of anyone else who could work with you."
"She couldn't think of anyone else I could work with," Sasuke asks, not turning from his carrots, "or she couldn't think of anyone else who could work with me?"
"Both. Apparently the only one who's declared himself willing to take a mission with you is Gai."
"Right," says Sasuke, pouring carrots into a pot. "It's fine as happened."
"It's not," Naruto interjects, and Kakashi is prepared to give him right for once. "I understand it would be a waste sending Kakashi-sensei on a C- or D-rank, but surely you could go by yourself, or I or Sakura-chan could come with you."
"Sakura's afraid to be alone with me," Sasuke says. "You're supposed to train, and Tsunade doesn't want me anywhere unaccompanied by people she trusts."
"Did you do something to Sakura-chan?" Brow furrowed in apprehension.
"I didn't have to, did I? Unlike you she's not stupid or naïve."
"She loves you," Naruto argues, obviously at a loss, wondering why he should have to repeat this unavoidable fact.
"Yes, certainly," Sasuke says, fast and distant. "Itachi and I loved each other too, once upon a time. In the long run it doesn't mean much."
Kakashi sees his own reflex to wrap his arms around Sasuke and murmur comforting unwanted nothings into his ear mirrored in Naruto's face – clearly they are both keen on a snappy insult and a kick in the shins. Clearly they also both feel unable to act in the other's presence.
Well. I should leave then, obviously. Naruto is the one Sasuke has given the right.
Sasuke's kisses from yestereve burning with renewed fervor on his lips, he gets to his feet, raising an eyebrow at Naruto before glancing meaningfully at Sasuke. Naruto nods, smiles, grateful, and Kakashi gathers what little decency he might have left, discovers it is not enough and finally bribes himself with the promise of having Sasuke to himself for at least a week and can leave.
"It does matter," he hears behind him, followed by a snort and an insult and the sound of none-too-careful touches.
He needs to occupy himself with something, and some nutrition probably would be good for him. He ends up in a down-end but comfortable food house he frequented when he was young, after his mother died and before he learned to cook for himself. It is the kind of place where the owners did not care he was the son of a self-murdered traitor and a crazy woman who soon followed her husband to the land of the dead.
Once he treated Rin to a meal here, after she'd let him eat at her place; he really did not want to impose the horror of his home-cooking on her, nice girl that she was, and the restaurant was familiar and cheap.
She was kind, tactful, smart in the little ways that make interaction and everyday lies easy.
She wasn't the stuff that legends are made of.
(she was better than he deserved)
It might have been good, if he could have wanted that, if it were an innocent smile and a good heart and understanding touches he desired.
He just never fully managed to regard her as a person – she was a victim, a comrade, a face in the crowd to protect and impress. Someone who was his because Obito couldn't claim her anymore.
(obito at least was an annoyance, he and gai both were, and the fourth was an impossible role-model to resent and adore)
Rin never feared being left on her own with him, not because he would never have hurt her but because he didn't care enough to hurt anything that wasn't in his way.
Thinking back, over a plate of food he discovers he might be able to force down after all, it's pretty strange he didn't turn to drink earlier.
Quitting now, though, because there's no point anymore, it doesn't help, now meaning is back in his life and sharp.
xxxxxxxxxx