A/N Hello, this chapter is even chonkier than the last!
DISCLAIMER: This is my first time writing a blind character, and i really hope I did okay. I had to merge the realities of living without sight, with the fantasy world of Naruto. Things in this chapter like Sasuke's prosthetic eyes are completely fictional.
I REPEAT, YOU CANNOT JAM TWO GLASS SPHERES IN YOUR EYE SOCKETS AND CALL IT A DAY.
That being said, using chakra and summons to cope with blindness is also a fictional thing, so...yeah
P.s. Jiraiya is less pervy here because idk...it didn't really sit well with me how he was a borderline sexual predator? idk
ANYWAYS ENJOY!
Sasuke can't tell at first, if he's awake or not. There is a blackness, all around him. If he tries to move his head, he thinks the blackness shifts in quality. It doesn't make sense.
The surface beneath him feels somewhat soft, as if he were lying on a thin futon.
"Welcome back to the world of the living. You've been out for two days." He hears, coming from the right. He frowns, tilting his head towards the voice. Why does the skin around his eyes feel so sore?
Oh, right.
Kabuto took them.
"Who are you?" Sasuke asks. He tries to remember the details of the fight against the Sound ninja. If his memory was accurate, then this must be-
"I am the Toad Sage. Jiraiya of Mount Myoboku. One of the Legendary Sannin-"
"Kill me now." Sasuke interrupts. He was not in the mood for dramatic introductions. The loss of the sense of sight was a career-ending injury for any shinobi. He no longer had a purpose, and he had lost all means for revenge.
"Jeez, kid. Lighten up, will ya?" Jiraiya huffs. "Even if I wanted to kill you, the Hokage ordered me to stash you somewhere safe."
"Why would she do that?" Sasuke asks. There is no reason for him to be placed under protection. If anything, he should be labeled as a criminal. He had attacked a fellow shinobi. His own teammate.
Shame fills his entire being, amassing into a lead weight in his stomach.
"Beats me. Tsunade is being stingy with the details." Jiraiya says. He sounds like he is pouting. "But she did send these along."
A gentle hand places two objects in his palms. They feel like marbles, hard and smooth.
"What are these?"
"Your eye prosthesis. She advises you to wear 'em, to help keep your eye muscles in shape." There is a rustling noise that sounds like paper, and Sasuke guesses Jiraiya is reading from it. "Tsunade wasn't able to have them painted, so they're just plain white. They're infused with healing chakra, to help with phantom pains."
Was he joking? Sasuke wants to glare at the spheres in his hands. These things could never be his eyes.
Jiraiya seems to sense his agitation, or maybe he just wasn't hiding his emotions very well.
"I'll hold on to them, if you don't want 'em." he says, taking the offensive items away. Sasuke's anger doesn't ease, but he's had a lot of practice containing it.
"Where am I?" he asks, after a while.
"You're in one of my bunkers, in River Country. It's simple, but it has everything a shinobi needs to survive." Jiraiya replies. Sasuke is silent for a while, figuring out how to ask the burning question on the tip of his tongue.
"Is Naruto...is he…? I-" Sasuke presses his lips together in a tight line. Did he even deserve to know?"
"No need to look so constipated. Naruto's alive." Jiraiya says. Sasuke lets out the breath he didn't realise he was holding. He almost feels dizzy with relief. "But things aren't looking good for him, from what I heard."
Sasuke purses his lips, but he doesn't press for details. He touches the back of his neck, where the Curse Seal was supposed to be.
"Your sensei tried the Evil Sealing Method on that thing, didn't he?" Jiraiya asked. "That only works if you refuse to use the Curse Seal's power."
Sasuke doesn't answer. He had been tempted to use the seal. He remembers how strong he felt when he dislocated the Sound nin's arms in the Forest of Death.
He also felt strong for a fleeting moment, looking down at Naruto's terrified face at the rooftop. He sure as hell doesn't feel strong right now, blind and helpless.
He only has himself to blame for this situation.
...Ok, maybe he blames Kabuto a little bit as well.
"Aren't you going to punish me?" he asks instead, turning to the direction Jiraiya's voice had been coming from. The man is quiet for a while.
"I don't approve of what you did. You nearly killed Naruto." Jiraiya says. Sasuke feels something twist in his chest. "But I'm also not the type to kick a blind kid when he's already down."
"Hn." is Sasuke's only reply. In his head he pictures Itachi's face next to Naruto's. He lost his eyes trying to get to his brother, and lost the closest thing he ever had to a friend in the process. Now he was stuck somewhere in a foreign country with Jiraiya, with no idea what his next step would be.
If he was even going to take another step.
He had imagined thousands of scenarios in which he would fail at achieving his goal of revenge. Clearly, he wasn't imaginative enough.
Sasukes silently seethes for a while, until a whack to his head brings him back to the present.
"What are you, chopped liver?" Jiraiya sounds much closer than earlier. Something that feels like a broomstick is shoved into his hand. "The floor ain't gonna sweep itself."
Sasuke is at a loss for words. He wonders if Jiraiya is alright in the head.
"I. Am. Blind." Sasuke says slowly, as if explaining a difficult concept.
"You're. Blind. Not. Paralysed." Jiraiya shoots back, mocking his tone. "Get to it."
Sasuke grits his teeth as he stands slowly, leaning slightly on the broom. He needs more than a few moments to feel balanced. He takes a few tentative steps, with one arm out to feel for the space in front of him. He feels ridiculous, stumbling around like this.
"The dustpan for the broom is about five steps to the front." he hears Jiraiya say. He manages to reach what he assumes is the dustpan. Carefully, he attempts to sweep the floor.
He flounders a lot at first, using the broom more as a walking stick than to actually sweep. Irritation flares as he thinks about Jiraiya watching him bumble around, but the man remains silent. Sasuke hears him nearby, accompanied by the sound of flipping paper.
Sasuke figures out a pattern. He takes a few steps, and sweeps the area. He uses his bare feet to feel for any dusty areas on the floor he may have missed, before moving on again.
He thinks he's getting the hang of this floor-sweeping thing.
"Table." What?
Pain blooms as Sasuke catches his hip on what he assumes is the "table". He lets out a curse. Stupid Jiraiya and his stupid chore.
He was Uchiha Sasuke. Top graduate of his class. But now, he is so weak, just like Itachi said he was. Unable to complete simple tasks that he should be able to do with his eyes closed. He wants to scream at the irony of it all.
The tasks don't stop at having to sweep the floors.
He learns how to bathe in the river nearby, and how to dress himself with clothes Jiraiya acquired from gods know where. The man makes him pull his weight around the bunker as well, and aside from sweeping, he is made to wash the used dishes and do the laundry.
Doing the chores without being able to see took up a lot of concentration and time. Sasuke had knocked over a few cups when he was doing the dishes the other day, when he had gotten lost in thought. The cups were plastic so they hadn't been broken, and Jiraiya was not upset at all. It still irked him that he had made such a mistake.
When he isn't doing chores, he's walking around the bunker and memorising the layout. He had spent days walking around with his hands in front of him, and tripping over the scrolls Jiraiya leaves on the floor.
The place is small, and the walls feel like they are made out of metal. He runs a finger through the intricate patterns carved in the walls. Jiraiya had told him they were seals, all meant to ward against intruders.
There were no windows inside, so the cooking and laundry had to be done outside. The bunker was hidden in the side of a cliff, and apparently opened out into a forest. Jiraiya had set up other wards and traps out in the forest, which allowed them a few hundred meters of safety outdoors without having to worry about being found by anyone.
As the days passed, Sasuke grudgingly grew to respect the older man. Jiraiya had brains, hiding under the silly and eccentric personality.
He also never offered help until it was specifically asked for, which Sasuke appreciated.
And Jiraiya wrote a lot. The Sannin would leave the bunker for hours at a time, conducting some sort of "research". When he came back, he would spend a few more hours writing. Sasuke has fallen asleep to the soft sound of pencil on paper almost every night he's been at the bunker.
Sasuke contemplated escaping, once or twice, when Jiraiya was away. He could come out the door, pick a direction, and just walk.
Then he remembers that there is nowhere to go. He can't go after Itachi, nor can he return to Konoha. He's lost without his quest for revenge.
He tells himself it doesn't feel a little like freedom.
Though he is blind during his waking hours, his dreams remain crystal clear. It is both a blessing and a curse.
Some nights he dreams of Itachi. He dreams that he is drowning in the blood of his clan. He thinks he can hear wailing. He begs his brother to save him. Watches as his brother doesn't lift a finger.
Other nights, he dreams of Naruto, and the rest of Team Seven. Sometimes they're good dreams, wherein they act like a real team. But there are times the dreams turn into nightmares. He watches from outside his body, as he drives Chidori into Naruto, over and over again.
Sasuke hates the look he sees on his own face. He wonders if that's how he looked, that day on the rooftop. He hates that the memory of Naruto's face is so clear in his mind.
But such was the Sharingan's curse.
When he wakes up after those dreams, Sasuke can't help but think about what it means.
"The Mangekyō Sharingan are heavenly eyes that see the truth of all of creation without obstruction. It is awoken by experiencing extreme grief or trauma. All recorded cases of the Mangekyō being activated involve the user killing an individual that they had strong, emotional ties to."
Sasuke had spent many nights in the Uchiha library, trying to find ways to obtain more power. If thinking that he had killed Naruto caused him to wake his Mangekyō, what did the blond truly mean to him, then?
"You're thinking too hard again." Jiraiya says to him one night, as they are having dinner outside the bunker.
Sasuke startles and takes another spoonful of his stew, made with a rabbit that Jiraiya had caught earlier that afternoon. He hears the rustling of paper, and frustrated noises coming from the man.
"Hey, Uchiha. What are words you would use to describe a girl?"
Images of squealing fangirls come to Sasuke's mind.
"Loud." he replies. "And annoying."
"Sheesh. You're supposed to be a pubescent teenager. Aren't you what, thirteen?" Jiraiya asks.
"Hn." Sasuke doesn't know what pubescent means, not that he'll admit anything.
"Come on, you've never even liked a girl?" Jiraiya pokes his shoulder, which makes Sasuke grumble. "I bet girls are always all over you."
"They always tried to hold my hand." Sasuke shudders at the memory of being chased by a horde of fangirls.
"And?" Jiraiya prompts.
"I avoided them. I have no desire to...sire offspring." He had overheard his father talking to Itachi about babies after a girl attempted to hold his brother's hand. Sasuke put two and two together, and meticulously avoided all the girls in his school after that.
Suddenly Jiraiya is laughing loudly, sounding like he is struggling to breathe. Sasuke patiently waits for him to get it out of his system, not quite sure what the joke was. The man's hand slaps onto Sasuke's back, which almost pitches him forward into his bowl of stew.
"Sas-Sasuke," Jiraiya wheezes out. "You can't get a girl pregnant by holding their hand." He dissolves into a giggling mess after that, which leaves Sasuke utterly confused. "Don't they teach this stuff at the Academy?"
"Hn." Sasuke shrugs. He must've missed it or something during one of his sick days.
"Listen. When a man and woman like each other…"
The rest of that conversation has since been scrubbed from Sasuke's memory.
A week after that, Jiraiya comes in much later than usual. His footsteps sound unsteady as he stumbles around the place. Sasuke can smell the sake on him.
"You're on dinner duty tonight." Jiraiya slurs. "I've already filled the pot outside with water." There is a crash, followed by a groan. It sounds like Jiraiya might have tripped over something. "Picked up some vegetables. You know what to do."
Sasuke does not, in fact, know what to do when Jiraiya places the handle of something in his hand. He frowns as he recognizes the familiar texture.
"This is a kunai. You want me to cut vegetables with a weapon." Sasuke deadpans.
"Do you see cooking knives anywhere in this place?" Jiraiya asks.
"No, I don't see any cooking knives." Sasuke mutters, standing up.
"Oh. Right. Sorry." Jiraiya says.
"Hn." Sasuke tries to sound unconcerned. It's the first time he's been asked to cook, and he's a little nervous. "Where are the vegetables?"
"Should be outside. I left them by the pot." Jiraiya mumbles.
Sasuke finds the vegetables, after a bit of groping around the cooking area. He gets to work, crouched in front of the pot. He had been cooking for himself ever since the Uchiha died, it should be easy.
It was not easy. He's nicked himself thrice, and some of the vegetables have juices that makes his wounds sting. Sasuke sucks at the cut. He recognizes the taste of tomato, which makes him feel only slightly less frustrated.
He dumps the chopped up produce in the pot. Other than tomato, onion, and cabbage, he doesn't recognize the other ingredients by touch or smell. Did the flavours even go well together?
It doesn't matter. Sasuke doesn't really care about taste nowadays. And if Jiraiya doesn't like it, well, serves him right for letting the blind kid cook.
"Pot's ready!" Sasuke calls out to him from outside. He hears Jiraiya's meandering footsteps make his way towards him, before stopping by the pot.
There is the sound of a matchbox opening.
"Hmm." Jiraiya hums thoughtfully.
"What?" Sasuke asks impatiently. He was hungry, and his fingers stung from the kunai injuries.
"We're out of matches." Jiraiya says. Sasuke wants to flip the pot over. All that work for nothing. "You can still use chakra, right? Just light it up with one of your fire jutsu." the man continues, unbothered.
"I'm going to end up burning the whole forest down!" Sasuke argues. Just how drunk is Jiraiya right now?
"You worry too much. Go on, use the Great Fireball Jutsu." Sasuke feels a pair of hands turning his head towards where he guesses the flames should be. "Use very, very little chakra."
"It's not called "Great Fireball" for nothing," Sasuke mutters, but does as he's told anyway. He makes the hand signs for the jutsu, greatly relieved that he still remembers them clearly after not using ninjutsu in so long.
He gathers a tiny amount of chakra in his throat, and spits out a small flame. Jiraiya shrieks. Sasuke hears him hopping about and cursing.
"Fuck! That was my foot! " Jiraiya hisses. Sasuke doesn't apologise. It was not his idea. He feels his head being turned a couple degrees to the right. "Again. With even less chakra."
Sasuke gets it right this time. Within half an hour, he has a warm bowl of vegetable soup in his hands. He doesn't join Jiraiya at the table inside, instead choosing to sit by the fire for a little longer.
The fire that he made. With a jutsu, no less. With nobody around to see, Sasuke allows himself a small smile.
The morning after, he asks Jiraiya if he could maybe have his prosthetics now.
"Come outside when you're done putting them in." Jiraiya tells him. Sasuke takes a while to put the glass eyes in his socket. It's harder than he thought.
He can feel fine lines, slightly raised, on the skin around his eyes. Kabuto's nails must have dug into his skin when he yanked Sasuke's eyeballs out of their sockets. His eyes still ached on some days, painful enough to make Sasuke believe his eyes were still there.
The prosthetic eyes couldn't make him see again, but at least they could ease the pain.
Part of him feels like he's betraying the Uchiha somehow, by using prosthetic eyes. He knows the feeling is irrational. He has no more family to betray, Itachi made sure of that.
In the bunker, far from Konoha, he'd been thinking less and less about his brother. He spent some days listening to the birds in the forest, or hearing the water flow from a nearby river. It reminded him of his team. They used to train in the forests of Fire Country, just outside the village gates.
Sasuke wonders how he never saw what he had before it was all gone.
"You look like a Hyuuga, with those eyes." is the man's only comment when Sasuke steps outside. He doesn't know how to reply to that.
There is a sound like a scroll being unfurled. It sounded like a big scroll.
"I'm going to leave tomorrow, and I won't be back for a few days. I thought you'd enjoy some company." Jiraiya says. Sasuke wants to disagree. He's perfectly fine on his own. "You know what a summoning jutsu is?"
"Of course." Sasuke snaps, offended that he'd even been asked. He isn't stupid.
"Okay, Sunshine." Jiraiya sounds like he's rolling his eyes. "This is the Toad Contract. I'm going to have you sign it."
"Why?" Sasuke is confused. Summons were usually used in battle. He'd only learned how to get around the bunker and go about his daily tasks by himself. He wasn't going to be fighting anytime soon.
"You're going to need help." Jiraiya insists. "Like I said, I won't be around for a while. They'll help you with your training."
Training?
"The hand signs are Boar-Dog-Bird-Monkey-Sheep." Jiraiya instructs, and Sasuke follows. "Use your blood to write your name." Sasuke bites his thumb to draw blood, and allows the man to guide his hand towards where it needs to be.
"Didn't Naruto sign this too?" Sasuke asks, remembering the giant toad the blond had summoned during Sound's invasion of Konoha. He felt threatened that time, by Naruto's progress. It seemed so silly now.
"Yeah he did. Right there next to yours." Jiraiya sighs. "He won't be summoning anything anytime soon, though." This gets Sasuke's attention, and he turns his head towards Jiraiya's voice. The man doesn't say anymore on the topic. Sasuke doesn't feel like he has the right to ask.
"Alright, then. Summon a toad." Jiraiya says.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Sasuke presses his bloodied palm into the ground, channeling chakra into his hand. A moment later, something croaks.
"Well, you learned that way faster than Naruto did." Jiraiya comments. Sasuke smirks, imagining what Naruto's attempts must have been like. "I see you summoned Gamaden."
"Good morning." A voice says softly. Sasuke suddenly feels a light weight on his head.
"Are you on my head?" Sasuke shakes and tries to pull the toad away from him.
"Oi, oi! Stop moving will you?" Gamaden's grip on his hair tightens as the toad struggles to stay on Sasuke's head.
"Jiraiya! What's this about?" Sasuke demands. Jiraiya doesn't answer, but Sasuke hears him summon a few more toads around the area.
"I want you to focus your chakra, direct them to your ears and nose." Jiraiya finally says when he's done. Sasuke feels his sense of smell and hearing sharpen.
The river nearby gets louder, and he hears a bird take off from a branch further away. Turning his head towards the bunker, he can smell the faint scent of the vegetable soup from the night before.
"Good. Now go smell Gamaden, and take note of his scent." Sasuke gingerly picks the toad off his head. He's a tiny one, smaller than his hand. Sasuke sniffs at him. He recoils at the damp and bitter scent that fills his nose. He can hear Jiraiya try to stifle a laugh. "Most toads have a strong scent, so it should be easy for you to track them with your nose."
Sasuke is starting to see where Jiraiya is going with all this. Gamaden wriggles out of his hold and climbs back on top of his head.
"You're going to play a game of tag with the toads. Track them using your nose, and tag them when you find them." Jiraiya explains.
"That doesn't explain the toad on my head." Sasuke says.
"I'm so glad you mentioned that." Jiraiya claps his hands together, sounding too damn gleeful for Sasuke's taste. "While you're chasing the toads, they're going to be spitting water at you. You're going to have to listen for the projectiles and dodge them. Gamaden is there to help you out, until you get the hang of it."
"What?" Sasuke snaps. "Wait!"
"Goodluck!" Jiraiya cackles, and suddenly Sasuke can't feel his presence. Gamaden yanks on a tuft of Sasuke's hair.
"Duck, you idiot!" Gamaden hisses. Sasuke obeys without thinking, and hears something whizz by his head. He grits his teeth, pushing more chakra to his ears.
He dodges the next one successfully, but another two catches him in the face and chest. Sasuke splutters and starts moving. The jets of water are strong enough to bruise, and he doesn't want to be an easy target.
"Duck again. Bend back. Twist left!" Gamaden calls out orders, one after the other. To his credit, the toad was taking his role seriously.
Sasuke cocks his head to the right. He rolls forward, hearing the wet projectile fly over him as he does so. He flips over another low-flying one right after.
"Nice!" Gamaden cheers. Sasuke fights a grin, until he is hit in the back of the head by a strong jet of water. He feels the toad on his head fall off.
"Gamaden!" Sasuke calls out, but there is no reply. He gets three shots of water to his face, back, and front for his distraction. He grits his teeth, and forces himself to concentrate. He was on his own now.
He hears the other toads snickering before hopping away somewhere, which sends a jolt of ire through Sasuke.
Without dulling his sense of hearing, he sends chakra to his nose. He almost gags at his own scent. He smells like a wet toad...with a hint of fish. He sheds his shirt in an attempt to get rid of some of the smell. It works, and he can concentrate much better on tracking the toads.
It's not easy to follow a scent and dodge projectiles at the same time. He is soaking wet after a few hours, and no frogs have been tagged. As much as he loathed to admit it, he needed help. He ignores Itachi's voice in his head, insisting that he is pathetic for being so dependent on a tiny toad. Sasuke focuses on summoning said toad instead.
He presses his palm to the ground once more, focusing on the memory of Gamaden's voice. There is a puff of air and he feels a familiar weight clamber onto his palm.
"You called me back." There is something in the way Gamaden whispers it, almost like he can't believe it.
"I don't like asking for help, but I can't do this thing without you." Sasuke says, while narrowly avoiding a jet of water. "Get on and do your thing. Hold on tighter this time." Gamaden jumps on to his head, burying himself deeply in Sasuke's hair.
"Jump. Step left." Gamaden calls out more instructions, and Sasuke is relieved when he starts dodging more and getting hit less. Without having to put as much concentration in avoiding the projectiles, Sasuke is able to focus on tracking the toads.
He trips over roots and walks into the occasional tree, but then Gamaden takes it upon himself to warn Sasuke of those too. They manage to tag all the toads after a while, only getting hit once or twice in the process.
"You did it!" Gamaden exclaims, hopping up and down on his head.
"Hn." Sasuke feels bruised and battered, but there is a warm sense of accomplishment as well. There is just one more thing left for him to do. He extends his senses outwards. He hears a faint snoring, accompanied by the scent of paper and ink. He follows the scent up a tree, until he reaches a sleeping Sannin.
"You know what to do." He whispers to Gamaden, picking the toad off his head and pointing him towards the sleeping form. A smirk forms on his lips as he hears Gamaden spit out a jet of water, hopefully at Jiraiya's face.
"Holy shit, you actually did it." the man says, after a series of splutters and coughs. "I'll admit I'm impressed." Jiraiya grumbles. "Now go clean off in the river or something while I catch dinner, you smell like shit."
Jiraiya usually guided him to the river, but this time, Sasuke makes his way to the river with Gamaden croaking cheerfully from his perch on Sasuke's head.
"Feet up, there's another root...Tree to your right... Step carefully, the rock looks slippery." The toad directs.
"You seemed surprised when I summoned you again." Sasuke comments casually.
"Watch it, there's a low branch." Gamaden says, tapping Sasuke's forehead. "Yeah, I didn't think you would." He continues. Sasuke stays silent, wondering if the toad would say anymore.
"It's because I'm small." Gamaden says after a moment. "My dad was a Dwarf Toad, which is pretty rare. My mom was a regular toad. Oh, look, a bug!" Sasuke pauses to let the toad catch his prey. He was feeling generous; Gamaden did help him a lot earlier.
"All my other siblings got mom's size, but I took after dad." the toad continues. "I don't get summoned for combat a lot, which they like to make fun of. So it was nice of you to call on me again."
"Hn." Sasuke's face heats a little at that. He was a lot of things, but he was pretty sure "nice" wasn't one of them. They reach the river soon after that.
Sasuke is silent on the way back after bathing, which doesn't seem to faze the toad. Gamaden seems more than happy to chat his ear off about the most mundane things.
It reminds Sasuke of a certain blond, and he ignores the pang in his chest at the thought.
Gamaden bids goodbye when Sasuke reaches the bunker, disappearing back to their realm. Jiraiya is waiting for him by the cooking spot.
"You did pretty good today, Uchiha. I can see why you were at the top of your class." Jiraiya says. "Now come over here, it's time you learn how to skin a rabbit."
"We learnt that at the Academy." Sasuke replies mildly, but obliges anyway. Jiraiya guides him through the process slowly, so he doesn't keep accidentally cutting himself on the blade.
It frustrates Sasuke to no end, having to continuously learn how to live life without sight. At least tonight, he lights the fire perfectly on the first try.
Time passes in River Country. Jiraiya leaves for days now, and Sasuke spends every single day training with the toads.
They had gone from dodging water projectiles, to dodging kunai, and then senbon. Sasuke felt like a walking pincushion after the first day training with senbon. They were almost impossible to hear through the air.
Getting used to finding things with his sense of smell was slightly easier, mainly because it didn't always involve getting hurt in the process.
They had started by playing Hide and Seek with Gamaden in the bunker.
Gamaden was sneaky too. The toad would rub himself on the surface of an object, before hopping in the opposite direction to hide. That was how Sasuke learned how to use his sense of smell and hearing simultaneously; by following the scent of toad and the sound of a heartbeat.
Eventually they moved on to finding items with more subtle scents, like paper and even bugs. Though the bugs were Gamaden's idea, not Sasuke's.
"A bat stole my moth." Gamaden whines. He and Sasuke were resting by the river after a brutal training session with senbon. Sasuke winces as he pulls a needle out of his thigh. He guesses bats are abundant here, though Fire Country didn't have that many. He had learned about them in school, though.
Bats used sound to hunt prey in the dark. They produced soundwaves from their mouths and bounced it off their prey, listening to the echoes. It was a shame Sasuke wasn't a bat right now.
The idea makes Sasuke's body jerk so hard, Gamaden nearly falls off his head and into the water.
"Oi! What was that for?" the toad asks, tugging hard on Sasuke's hair in retaliation.
"Shhh." Sasuke says, slowly channeling chakra to his ears. He's learned to be careful with his chakra. He had to take a whole day off training once, after almost bursting his eardrums by sending too much chakra at once.
He clicks his tongue. His ears pick up a faint echo, but it isn't enough. He clicks his tongue a couple more times.
There. The echo gets stronger the louder and more frequent Sasuke clicks his tongue.
He doesn't stop clicking now. From the sound of the echoes, he can tell there's an object in front of him, about a foot away.
Sasuke clicks some more.
The object is about the size of his head.
Click. Click. Click.
Its surface is hard. He concentrates harder on the echoes, trying to discern what the object could be. Just a little more…
"What are you doing?" Gamaden's voice explodes in his ear.
Sasuke's whole head pitches to the side, away from the toad's voice right next to his right ear. He hisses in pain, but he can't find it in himself to be upset. He feels an emotion in his chest, and he thinks he might cry.
"Gamaden. In front of me," Sasuke points a shaky finger towards the object, breathing heavily. "there is a rock."
The river was usually a five minute walk from the bunker. That night it took them an hour to get back.
Sasuke stopped every few steps, clicking his tongue at his surroundings. He could sense where the trees were, and where there were big rocks. However, Gamaden still had to point out the smaller obstacles to him. Sasuke's newly discovered skill was still fresh and unexplored, but it was a way of seeing that Sasuke had never even considered before.
"What took you so long?" Jiraiya demands as they approach the bunker. Sasuke feels himself grinning like a maniac as he clicks toward Jiraiya's voice.
Sasuke palms the senbon he still had from earlier, and sends them flying towards the older man.
"Oh fuck!" Jiraiya shouts. Sasuke freezes as he feels the looming presence of the man suddenly right behind him, with a blade pointed at his neck.
"Who are you?" Jiraiya demands, pressing the blade deeper into Sasuke's skin.
"Eeek! " Gamaden cries, before puffing away.
"Icha Icha does not make one a pervert, for it is a literary work of art." Sasuke forces the words out of his mouth. It was Jiraiya's chosen pass phrase to verify each other's identity. Sasuke never thought the day would come where he would actually have to use it.
Jiraiya hesitates, before relaxing his weapon.
"How the hell did you manage to aim the senbon so close to me?" he asks. Sasuke raises his eyebrow. So close? "They were a little off-target, sorry."
Sasuke rolls his glass eyes.
"When I do this," Sasuke clicks his tongue to demonstrate. "I listen to the echoes."
"Like a bat. Smart kid." Jiraiya says.
"But the technique isn't perfect yet." Sasuke frowns, remembering how loud Gamaden's voice sounded earlier. "I need my hearing to be sensitive enough to hear the echoes, but then other sounds become too loud."
Jiraiya hums.
"Come inside. I think we can fix that." he says, after a beat.
Inside the bunker, Sasuke sits on his futon. He can hear Jiraiya opening and closing various scrolls, and flipping through his books. He mutters to himself the whole time.
"Aha!" he finally exclaims, just as Sasuke was beginning to doze off.
"What is it?" Sasuke asks, curious as to what Jiraiya had come up with.
"Stay put, and don't move." he replies, not really answering the question. Sasuke sighs, used to the peculiar behaviour. He resigns himself to whatever it is Jiraiya was about to do.
Sasuke almost jumps as he feels a cold, ticklish sensation on the side of his face. He realises after a moment that Jiraiya was using a thin brush to paint something on his face, near his ears.
He remains silent until the man is done. The brush moves slowly and precisely, starting from the temple and ending on the shell of his ear.
"I drew a seal that's supposed to limit the sound that enters your ear. If I did it right, it shouldn't affect your regular hearing, only the sounds that might be too loud." Jiraiya taps the seal with a brush irritably. "If only I had Tsunade's medical notes…"
"How do I make it work?" Sasuke asks.
"Prime it with chakra, just a little bit. The best thing about seals is that they don't take much to work." Jiraiya says excitedly. Sasuke can sense that the man is thrilled by this experiment.
Great. This makes him the guinea pig.
He sends chakra to the seal drying on his face, which makes it tingle for a second. He then focuses chakra on one ear, the one with the seal.
Sasuke clicks his tongue experimentally a few times. He hears the echoes bounce back into his ear.
"I'm going to clap beside your ear, okay?" Jiraiya warns. "Let me know if it's too loud." Sasuke nods, bracing himself for the sound.
The clap still sounds uncomfortably loud, but it's bearable. It was nothing near the pain from earlier, when Gamaden spoke near his ear.
"It worked." Sasuke says. He stands up and begins to click, listening for the things around him. He clicks toward where he thinks Jiraiya is.
The man was taller than he thought.
"Don't get too excited. I still want to experiment with the seal, tweak it here and there. And once I develop the final seal…" Jiraiya trails off suddenly.
"What, what is it?" Sasuke can't help the excitement in his stomach. He wants to begin training immediately, to see what he can do with his enhanced hearing.
"Well, how do you feel about face tattoos?" Jiraiya asks.
Sasuke spends the next weeks training his ears. He eventually gets tired of clicking his tongue, so he starts to whistle instead.
He finds that higher pitched whistles work much better for him, and often takes walks in the forest with Gamaden to hone his sense of hearing. Jiraiya accompanies him from time to time, testing out different variations of the seal on his face.
When Jiraiya takes him on an excursion to a nearby village, he finally gets the seals permanently tattooed on both sides of his face. The artist was a little reluctant to work on a child, but was suddenly more agreeable when the Sannin pulled the shinobi card.
Sasuke starts target practice after that. The tables are turned on the toads, who hop about the forest with wooden targets strapped to their backs. It's good that the toad summons know how to dodge, because Sasuke and Gamaden come after them with a little too much vindication.
Jiraiya tries to teach him to hunt, a little over two months after Sasuke wakes up at the bunker. It is a work in progress, however. Sasuke can more or less navigate the forest now, and track a rabbit with his nose. But more often than not, he ends stepping into his own traps.
Sasuke will never admit the number of times Jiraiya has had to cut him down from the rope traps hidden in the forest.
"Hey, Sasuke. I've been meaning to ask," Gamaden whispers, one afternoon at the river. "Is that a birthmark on your neck?"
Sasuke remembers the Curse Mark on the back of his neck. He had almost forgotten about it.
He hasn't thought about trying to get power in a long time. He still dreams about Itachi, but he finds that it is easier to shake off the nightmares in the morning.
"Hn." Sasuke says, in response to Gamaden's question. The toad doesn't ask any further, accustomed to the boy's terrible conversation skills.
Sasuke perks up when he hears a sound in the distance. One of Jiraiya's traps had just been triggered.
He stands and focuses on his hearing. He starts to move towards the trap, with Gamaden silently guiding him through the obstacles he still wasn't able to sense.
They had worked out a non-verbal form of communication while training together; Gamaden would tap Sasuke's head in a series of patterns, each corresponding to certain directives. It was effective, especially when they needed to be stealthy.
Sasuke wasn't as dependent on the toad as before. He was slowly learning how to sense smaller and smaller objects and items, and could navigate the forest with growing ease. But he would rather die than confess that he might enjoy the Gamaden's company.
They freeze when they near the trap, and realize that it hasn't caught an animal. Sasuke could hear voices. Were they intruders, or hostile nin?
Sasuke is thinking about going back to the bunker to warn Jiraiya. And then he hears the voices again.
"You guys, I think the world just flipped." One of the voices is loud.
And painfully familiar.
Sasuke's heart pounds.
"Idiot! You're hanging upside down!" Another voice hisses. "You're even more stupid when you're on drugs!" Sasuke had spent so much time avoiding the owner of that voice.
He doesn't want to hide this time.
He doesn't think, he just starts running towards the voices. He trips over roots and rocks and only narrowly avoids colliding headfirst into trees, thanks to Gamaden, but Sasuke doesn't care.
"Jump! Small boulder on the left. Flower bush up ahead!" Gamaden calls out rapidly, trying to keep up with Sasuke's pace.
He knows those voices. He dreams about them. He sees their faces in his mind, clear as day.
Suddenly a body tackles him to the ground. Sasuke suddenly regrets his impulse decision. What if it was a trick?
But it only lasts for a moment.
"Sasuke?" he hears Sakura say.
A/N WOO this is the longest chapter so far, and we're about one-third of the way into the story!
Thank you to those who have made it this far. I might follow this chapter up with a mini-chapter, before moving on to the 2nd leg of the plot.
Also if i wrote anything offensive or harmful about being blind, PLEASE let me know. The last thing I want to do is make light of disabilities and blindness.
SOURCE: Information about the Mangekyo Sharingan was taken from the Naruto Wiki.
That's all for now, leave a fav, follow, or review if you like the story!
