Bring You to My Hell

Dad looks younger, Naruto thinks. It's a shocky thought, that they seem suddenly not to belong to different generations anymore. The time to finally act has wiped years off Dad's face, while Naruto feels so tired, so worn down. Sasuke's lifted him up so many times, has dragged him out of his abysses, but Sasuke's sinking now and Naruto has to find a way to pull him up before they both drown.

Konohamaru too has changed, visibly aged. Some of that blithe confidence has been eroded away, and the remains of it have hardened like a scab. He's warier around Sasuke, noise scrunching up at the scent of brimstone and angelfire.

They're reaching breaking point.

"I'm going to finish your sword," Sasuke tells him, slipping away from the crush of shifters. Naruto nods, counting it as a win that Sasuke bothers telling him where he's going. He returns Dad's shoulder clasp before sinking to his knees and opening his arms for Konohamaru.

So they stuff their faces, they sleep, they get caught up. Naruto seeks a moment to speak with Dad properly – about Mum, about Stonehall, about Sasuke – but it never arrives. And Sasuke still is so strange, so distant. All he'll say is: it's time.

In the end it's Kakashi who comes, in the morning the next day.

He too presents himself differently, seems a stranger: very much an exorcist, with nothing left of the runt Dad took under his wing. There are no placid smiles or sarcastic looks, only the inhuman countenance of an emissary of the Lord, of Gabriel's chosen.

He walks past Dad and the others, and Naruto follows, until he can close the door behind himself and Kakashi and Sasuke.

Kakashi shrugs off the solemnity, throwing himself into a chair. He chucks a scroll at Sasuke. "The Council's summoning you. They want to see you today."

Sasuke negligently eyes the scroll. "They're kindly asking for my presence?"

Kakashi shrugs. "You know what they're like."

Sasuke acknowledges this with a grunt, throwing the scroll into the fire place.

"It's obviously a trap!" Naruto protests, when he understands that Sasuke intends to go.

"It doesn't matter," Sasuke says. "That doesn't change anything."

"They're probably going to attack you," Naruto points out.

"I doubt it," Kakashi interjects.

"If Itachi wanted me dead or locked up or whatever, he'd come get me," Sasuke says. "There's nobody in the world could stop him."

"Orochimaru – " Naruto starts.

Sasuke smirks faintly, this strange expression at odds with how he feels, as though his face doesn't know how to express his emotional state. "I did promise Kimimarou I'd take care of him."

"This is bullshit," Naruto says. "I'm coming too."

"Lower orders of people are forbidden entrance to the Council," Kakashi drawls. "Luckily for you, these rules were written hundreds of years ago, when shifters didn't count as people at all." He takes something from his coat pocket and throws it at Naruto, who catches it on reflex and realises he's holding an elaborately carved metal collar attached to a chain. "A crusader may bring a collared pet."

"You're shitting me," Naruto says. "You want me to put this on?"

"Not particularly," Kakashi says. "I'd prefer you stay out of this entirely. But without that you physically won't be able to enter."

"I exorcised better than Ino!"

"Quite, but you've got more filth than purity in you, as the sensors will see it. Don't interrupt me, if you had more of Uriel in you than Kyuubi, you'd die. So you're not getting in without the choker. Silver lining, Ino tells me it's retro chic."

"Fuck it. Fine." He closes the collar around his neck, hears it click shut with this final sound, and feels his insides torn by hostile heavenly light. Kyuubi bares his teeth, wanting to rip and tear and fight free. Naruto holds him back: there will be time enough for fighting.

"You ready?" Kakashi drawls, and Naruto bites his lip and nods, shooting off a quick text to Dad.

They leave through the window, alighting on the ground and getting into Kakashi's car. All the way Kakashi makes meaningless conversation, in that numb drawling voice. Sasuke stares out the window, fingers tapping against the glass. Naruto takes his hand and Sasuke lets him, acting like he doesn't notice. Maybe he doesn't.

The building they slow down in front of is a highrise like any other, glass and concrete and mundanity. The Council used to reside in churches, maybe to an extent they still do, but this is far more practical. Kakashi parks in the underground garage and they take the lift up. There are no codes or locks, hardy any guards: the doors open under an exorcist's touch, and will stay locked for any other. It's all very minimalist and industrial, worlds away from the lavish ostentation of old school cathedrals.

Just before they step off the lift, Sasuke grabs the end out of the chain out of Naruto's hand and closes Kakashi's fingers around it. "Look after him."

"Sasuke," Naruto protests, but Sasuke ignores him, staring down Kakashi.

"You said you owe me. This is how you repay me. If you don't, I'll kill you first chance I get."

"All right," Kakashi says simply, and as Sasuke walks on ahead Naruto feels the chain tighten to strangling, keeping him back. He pulls at the collar, tries to protest, but it allows him no speech.

Out in the corridor, out of Naruto's reach, Ino meets Sasuke with a nervous smile and starts leading him away.

"Let's stay very calm," Kakashi says. "I'm responsible for you now, that means no stupid risks."

"Arsehole," Naruto gasps out, able to talk now he's stopped trying to walk.

"You can't look after yourself here," Kakashi says, "and Sasuke will be busy protecting himself. So you're stuck with me. That means being very, very careful."

"Fuck you."

"Not really in the mood, but thanks for offering. Now either you do what I say or I'll drag you back home, and I'd really rather not leave him without backup. Do we understand each other?"

Naruto nods, mute and mutinous.

Kakashi keeps him on a short leash, allowing neither speech nor excess movement and forcing him to sit in one of the pews towards the back of the assembly room. The space is huge and bright, the entire southern wall made of reinforced glass and the floor as mosaic of saints spelling out ad maiorem Dei gloriem. The blessed pillars lining the walls pound through Naruto's head, suppressing magic. Presumably they're a peace-keeping tool, a sort of collective seal on the power of those present.

The air is light, like in a painting, as if Heaven's closer to this room than to the rest of earth.

Sasuke's scruffy trainers stop on God's name, smearing it with pavement filth.

There aren't too many people, barely any of the elders – presumably Mikoto intended it to be more of a family gathering than a Council session. She's standing with Fugaku, a few metres away from Sasuke: the closest she's been to him in years.

She's irrelevant, because approaching Sasuke from the opposite side is Orochimaru.

It's been years since Naruto saw Orochimaru in the flesh. He has that lightheaded burnt feeling like right after he heard about Kakashi killing Mum, like his brain is boiling.

Sasuke's calmer: all the parts of him that Orochimaru can burn have burnt already.

"Easy," Kakashi mutters.

Naruto stares at him.

Kakashi sighs. "These things are always anticlimactic. There's no resolution to be had."

"But then –"

"I understand that," Kakashi says. "I'm not sure Sasuke does."

Naruto turns from him, drawn back to Sasuke, so focused he almost forgets the collar burning against his throat.

"Shinigami-chan." Orochimaru comes to a halt quite close to Sasuke, his robes within reaching distance. His colouring is disturbingly similar to Sasuke's, and they share so many gestures, so many little ticks: look so obviously related. There can be no denying that this man, this monster, is Sasuke's family.

"What do you want?"

"You." Orochimaru smiles. "I've come to reclaim what's mine."

"There's nothing of yours here." The seal, hidden under Sasuke's collar, is dead and gone, but Naruto feels the echo of its phantom throb. It sears through his shoulder, goes deeper than bone, all the way into his soul.

"You've always been mine." Orochimaru says this indulgently and patiently, as though reminding Sasuke that the sky is blue. He looks then over Sasuke's shoulder. "Mikoto-san, it really is time. I hate to be a cliché, but if you don't tell him, I will."

"No," Naruto moans, straining against the collar, trying to claw it off and just shredding his own neck.

It's the first time he's ever seen Mikoto look anywhere near discomfited.

Fugaku draws his sword.

Orochimaru's one of the strongest crusaders in the world, chosen by the archangel Samael, but he's arrogant and his defences will have been brought down by the pillars, and he can't heal much better than a human.

Fugaku would've killed him, except Sasuke steps in between them, shielding Orochimaru from the blow.

Fugaku stares at him in what seems more fury than shock as the sword slips between Sasuke's ribs and slides deep into his chest, skewering his lung and continuing into his heart.

Blood beads on his lips, but he reaches up and pulls the sword out, healed within a matter of seconds. Kyuubi strains, almost drained, but Sasuke's safe.

"Traitor child!" Fugaku spits.

Sasuke doesn't dignify him with a reply. He looks at Fugaku the same way he looks at shifters, as someone utterly beneath him, as someone who doesn't register as a person.

Orochimaru smiles. "Shinigami-chan…" His proprietary fingers are only just touching Sasuke's arm when Sasuke snaps around, bringing the sword down.

Orochimaru's defences are up now, in so far as the pillars will let them, but in Sasuke's hand the sword comes alive as it didn't for Fugaku, neutralising them. It's a good blade, and cuts cleanly through flesh and bone.

Orochimaru's hand falls to the floor. Blood spurts from the stump, spraying Sasuke's shirt and face. "Don't you fucking touch me."

This is when Itachi enters the room.

The tension rackets up so abruptly, Naruto forgets how to breathe, feeling himself strangled by the collar, by his inability to act. He hears himself whine, Kyuubi's whine, a tone too high to be perceived by human ears.

It's Hanabi Hyuuga who steps in. "You maybe want medical attention." Orochimaru hisses as she undoes her belt and ties it in a tourniquet around his stump.

If Orochimaru was greedy for shifter healing before, he'll be mad with desire for it now, because that's his dominant hand and it will never grow back. All the same the way he looks at Sasuke is covetous, desirous – and proud. "In a moment," he says.

"No, really," Hanabi insists. "With all respect for this touching reverse Skywalker moment, let's go now."

"Indeed," Itachi says.

Orochimaru smiles thinly. "By all means. I suppose it is rather a private conversation, Mikoto-san." He bends forward a little, stump pressed to his chest, and whispers something in Sasuke's ear.

"I'll come find you," Sasuke says.

"I look forward to it."

Sasuke smiles his shark smile, lips red with Orochimaru's blood and his eyes red too, the red of Uriel's hellfire fury. "Likewise."

"By all means, Hanabi-san," Orochimaru says. "Lead the way."

"Go," Itachi repeats, Itachi about whom Hanabi once said, I'd rather have Orochimaru. Itachi's insane. Naruto had been angry then, but he gets her now, as Kakashi drags him forcibly from the room. He yells in protest, claws catching in the floor, leaving scratches in the stone, but Kakashi pulls him inexorably away.

He's on his knees, the collar so close to cracking open, to letting him run back to Sasuke, when the world shifts: Sasuke's thrown the bond wide open, and Naruto collapses.

One to ten, Tsunade asks her patients, how much does it hurt?

Sasuke's good days are a seven, maybe once in a while a six. Naruto treasures the glimpses of him below a five, like right when the seal broke, and Sasuke barely knew how to even interpret feeling happy. He lives at a nine, and has built his walls to account for that – burnt so much of himself away and salted the earth to prevent anyone else taking it from him or using it against him – but the first cracks are appearing now, and Sasuke has to function to survive this … but Naruto doesn't. Naruto's outside and has Kakashi to look after him, and so Sasuke pushes everything into the bond: all the darkness, all the suffering, all the twisted suffocating hatred.

Naruto lies on the floor with a collar around his neck, crying soundlessly and clawing at the flagstones, the bond so open he might as well have been looking through Sasuke's eyes. Way back before Rock, Sasuke told him, You can't help me, Naruto. You can't even help yourself.

In the present, inside the room Naruto's been locked out of, Sasuke lets his sword-hand fall, a show of defiance rather than submission. Fugaku turns away, actually walks away from Sasuke and towards the exit.

Sasuke lifts the sword without turning, holding it against Fugaku's throat. "A lowly exorcist raising hand against a crusader."

"That's true," Itachi says. "That's against the Law of God."

Sasuke herds Fugaku with the sword, backing him against one of the pillars. When his back hits it and begins to sink into it, Fugaku starts struggling. There are curses and prayers, impotent threats and untenable promises, but his words aren't worth anything to Sasuke. "Please – I'll love you, I'll forgive you – I see now I was wrong…"

Uriel opens the pillar, and closes it around Fugaku.

Fugaku will be devoured by it, his magic drawn out to power it. He'll spend years going nova in agonising increments.

"You didn't mind," Sasuke says to Mikoto.

"He's a grown man. He knows the Law." Mikoto sighs. "He's always been weak."

"Yet you chose him," Sasuke points out.

"He was deemed to have good genes. We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good."

It's not really a secret that Mikoto has spent her life with and spread her legs for a man she despises, for the greater good of siring Itachi.

"What a disappointment I must've been," Sasuke snaps.

Only that's not true anymore, it can't be. Itachi and Kakashi peaked early – Kakashi indeed was a stronger exorcist in childhood, since Gabriel's power is now constantly being drained to keep his demon wound in check – but with the seal gone Sasuke too is the kind of monstrously strong crusader who appears only a handful times in a thousand years.

"No," Mikoto says. "You were simply the cross I must bear."

"Mother," Itachi cuts in. "It really is time he was told. I'd thought he would realise on his own, but he's never been able to understand."

"Cut to the fucking chase," Sasuke snaps. Killing his father pacified him momentarily, but the red rage is rising again.

"Well," Mikoto says, visibly choosing not to admonish him for swearing. "Orochimaru was correct in a sense. You arguably always have been his."

Sasuke blinks, as if hoping the world will make better sense when he opens his eyes again.

Mikoto continues, "We were never sure. Fugaku and I were trying at the time… But Orochimaru at least was always certain that you were his."

Naruto's already lying on the floor, but he feels his knees buckle all the same.

Sasuke swallows. "A paternity test only takes a second."

Mikoto smiles this tired cynical smile. "If Orochimaru was right, Fugaku would've strangled you like a rat. I wouldn't have his soul condemned and our name dragged through the mud over you."

"That's why you didn't abort me," Sasuke says. "You've hated me since the moment I was conceived, but you wouldn't sully your soul over me."

"Of course."

"You wouldn't risk scraping out a lump of cells, but selling a live child to Orochimaru, that's all part of God's plan?"

"Oh, Sasuke. You bear so much original sin. At least in this way you could do penance and serve your purpose according to God's will."

"My purpose," Sasuke repeats, in this terrible inhuman voice. "You suffered through nine months carrying this sin inside your body, raised me for eight years, so I could fulfil my godly purpose being fucked by some paedophile!"

"Peace always comes at a cost."

"Right," Sasuke says, calm again because decided, frozen over. "That's true."

Mikoto smiles, that closed-lipped meaningless smile that's always been her default expression. "You're not going to ask?"

"If I'm a rape baby or you actually wanted Orochimaru? I don't care."

"Good," Mikoto starts, but Sasuke stops her, closing his hand around her throat.

He hasn't touched his mother in more than seven years. He fists her neck now, fingers tensed to rip out her throat. "I know you've saved your soul all these years, but it will all be for nothing. You always told me, didn't you, how it's a mortal sin to die without going nova? And this is how it will end for you. No glory, no salvation. I condemn you."

And all the scars are open now, the world a raw and skinless place, one long fall into the dark. All Sasuke's worst nightmares, all the worst things ever said to him, are true.

"Enough," Itachi says. "We shan't waste her."

And Mikoto, gagging for air on the floor, is once more irrelevant.

Itachi has caught Sasuke's wrists, holds them up above Sasuke's head in a gesture of surrender. His hands might as well have been the hands of God, and Sasuke's struggle is a token effort.

"She told you," Sasuke says. "That was the evening you decided to give me away."

Itachi had left the room loving him, keeping him safe, and had come back cut off from him, and nothing was safe anymore.

"It wasn't why I did it," Itachi says. "But I'd been contemplating, and it made the necessary choice clear." He transfers Sasuke's wrists into one hand, lifting Sasuke's chin with the other. Sasuke struggles for real now, struggles with everything he has, but Lucifael holds him still.

Naruto howls, soundless and desperate. Gabriel holds him in a strangling grasp, he bites through the chain but can't get up, helpless and useless as everything ends.

"It made it clear," Itachi explains, "that you were poison. Temptation, the road to sin. That the love I bore you wasn't godly love for mankind as a whole, the love for my neighbour, but of a rebellious and personal bent. It would lead me from God. You were placed in my life as a trial, as an unclean thing to be turned away from, to be cut off and cast away."

Naruto can't move at all now. The light of an exorcist's end glows in Sasuke, and eats through Naruto eagerly, greedily.

"Repent, and serve your penance, and you too shall earn God's forgiveness, and be cleansed and made pure." Itachi makes the sign of the cross on Sasuke's face, touching a burning fingertip to Sasuke's forehead, mouth, cheekbone, cheekbone. He holds Sasuke's head still, Lucifael's fingers a purgatory claw through Sasuke's mind, as he repeats the touches with his mouth.

Uriel burns brighter than the sun. Naruto's soul catches fire: Sasuke's going nova.

It rises and rises through Naruto's mind, Uriel's obliterating angelfire clashing with Lucifael's, and this wasn't how it was supposed to end.

xxxxx

When Naruto can see again, the fire has died out, leaving this blackness, this emptiness. It takes him a long time to understand that he's seeing the small of Kakashi's back, that Kakashi's slung Naruto over his shoulder. Naruto screams and struggles, wild and incoherent.

Kakashi curses and quickly throws him inside the car, finally twisting around to deliver a paralysing blow that leaves Naruto sprawled out across the backseat floor. "We have to go," Kakashi tells him.

"We have to go back!" Naruto roars.

Sasuke's gone from him.

He's not dead, Itachi stopped him going nova – and the sickening thing, that Naruto must be grateful to Itachi, for saving Sasuke's life when Naruto couldn't – but he's completely gone from Naruto.

Sasuke's shut the bond down before, but then at least there's been an awareness of something blocked off: now there's only emptiness, his mind locked into itself.

"Itachi won't kill him," Kakashi says, driving very fast. "He won't even seal his magic, it's too close to heresy. He will kill you."

"I can look after myself," Naruto snaps, trying to lift his arm – to open the car door, so he can roll out – and failing miserably. Kyuubi's too traumatised by the near nova experience to heal him. "He needs me. I have to help him."

"You can't help him," Kakashi says without turning around. "But he needs you alive. That's the only thing he wanted from me, and I'll be damned if I can't give him that."

Naruto roars, a wordless, near-bawling sound.

"The worst they'll do is put him through some penitence. He's had much worse from Orochimaru, don't worry. Itachi won't let him die."

"Why not?" Naruto grounds out, in a much smaller voice now. "The things he said to him…!"

"Che. If Itachi could stand the thought of Sasuke dying, he'd have killed him years ago. He only gave him to Orochimaru because he couldn't face killing him."

A colder fear starts in Naruto, spreading from the base of his spine and icing his brain. The hot despair has burnt itself out, and he's wallowing in the ashes now. "Will he – the way he talks, about how he loves Sasuke in this unclean way, that Sasuke leads him into temptation – fucking bullshit, fucking arsehole – will he –"

"I fucking hoping not." Kakashi breaks sharply in front of the Sabaku building. "Silver lining, if he does he might kill himself afterwards. Save us all some trouble."

Sasuke might well consider that a good trade.

Kakashi gets out of the car, and reaches in to pick Naruto up, slinging him over his shoulder again.

"Fucking arse," Naruto grumbles, hanging limply. "I have to go to Sasuke, don't you understand, something's happened, something bad, I can't feel him – let me down – please, please – Kakashi, I'll never forgive you – please…"

He finds himself abruptly deposited in Dad's arms.

"He'll try to run back," Kakashi says. "Do not under any circumstances let him. Any of them will wipe him on sight, and Sasuke can't protect him now." He sighs. "I believe Itachi's sealed the bond."

Naruto keeps talking, begging Kakashi, offering him anything – forgiveness for Mum, whatever he wants – threatening him too, Kyuubi will rip him to shreds, he needs this too badly for anything else to matter, there's nothing he wouldn't do, nothing he wouldn't give…

"I'm heading back," Kakashi says. "I'll get him."

xxxxx

Mikoto's wrapping a cashmere scarf around her neck, covering finger bruises so deep, Sasuke's nails have cut through her skin in red half-moons. Itachi's sitting at a table, fingers caught in a rosary.

"What have you done?" Kakashi asks him.

Itachi smiles tolerantly. "He's fine. In fact, better than he's been in a long time. We might say he's been cleansed of some of his darkness."

"I want to see him."

"Be my guest. The doctor's on his way, but do look in on him."

As Kakashi walks down the familiar hallway, it seems as though gravity has shifted, as though he's walking on the moon, the movement alien and strange.

Then he's pushing open the door, and Sasuke's sitting on a hospital cot, pyjama trousers pulled up as he examines his prosthesis. The room's empty, Sasuke's things gone. There's only a water carafe and a mirror, lying discarded on the bed next to Sasuke, who looks at him now without recognition. "Hello?"

Kakashi quickly closes the door behind him. "Sasuke?"

"Mmh, apparently." He shifts on the bed, abandoning the study of his left foot. "You're not the doctor."

"No. I've never been very fond of sick people." He sinks into the visitor's chair closest to the bed. "I'm Kakashi."

"She didn't mention you," Sasuke says.

"Hmm?"

"My mother."

"You remember your mother?"

"No," Sasuke tells him impatiently. "But since she's a woman of the right age visiting me and we look extremely alike, I'm presuming she wasn't lying about being my mum."

"Do you remember anything at all?"

Sasuke makes a cut-off gesture, still moving in these abrupt soldier's stops and starts. "It's only my episodic memory that's fucked." He smirks. "Which, I do remember that's how traumatic amnesia works."

"All right," Kakashi says. "You know about the world, that's convenient. You don't know about you, well – that might not be entirely inconvenient either."

"I know me," Sasuke snaps. "I just don't – remember about my life. I'm not some bloody tabula rasa."

"Good," Kakashi says.

"Good?" Sasuke repeats suspiciously.

Kakashi smiles back at him. "I know you too. I rather like you. So that's good."

Sasuke surprises him by smiling back. It's a smirky kind of smile, but far more open and far more easily coaxed than Kakashi's learnt to expect. Sasuke's mouth is swollen, and a cut opens and bleeds when he smiles. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, exposing bruises on his wrists. There are more of them on his throat, bigger and darker.

Itachi's never been physical with him before.

Sasuke slips off the bed and stretches, seemingly trying out his body and pleased with the results, thought part of that might be painkillers. Uriel's light shimmers under his skin, in the way of a powerful crusader at ease with his magic. He turns his back on Kakashi to look out the window, and after a little while Kakashi gets to his feet and joins him.

It's new, that Sasuke would let a stranger stand behind him. Of course, if Sasuke had grown up unsealed, he wouldn't have had to learn that that's dangerous.

"Where are we?" Sasuke asks.

"Didn't your mother tell you?"

"And now I'm asking you."

"We're in one of the Council's buildings. King's Street 27."

That appears to be what Mikoto told him as well, because Sasuke accepts it without comment. "How did this happen?"

"I couldn't tell you. Last I saw you, you remembered everything. That was a few hours ago."

"Demon?"

"No. There have been – internal exorcist tensions."

"Oh." Sasuke looks at him with new interest. He also quickly scans the room, clearly searching for weapons.

Kakashi holds out his arms. "Take what you like."

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow, but he obviously remembers where weapons are secured on the exorcist uniform, deftly pilfering Kakashi's arsenal.

"You don't trust your mother to arm you?"

"She doesn't like me." Sasuke shrugs, the same one-shouldered shrug that his body remembers, even if Sasuke's forgotten the reason for it. He smiles up at Kakashi, a sudden blinding, arrogant grin. "You do." He sobers, pulling down the neckline of his hospital shirt to expose the seal. "Also there's this."

"Can I?"

Sasuke nods, and Gabriel brushes his fingers over the marked skin. The original seal that Orochimaru placed to dampen Sasuke's magic is gone, has turned into white scar tissue. But above it there's a different seal, fresh and sharp in the crisp calligraphy lines of Itachi's penmanship.

Kakashi's more concerned with the dark handprint burnt into the skin right over Sasuke's heart.

"I was right," Kakashi says. "He's sealed off the bond."

"The bond?" Sasuke demands. "Who's he – Itachi?"

"You met him?"

"Just briefly. He turned around in the doorway, we never spoke. What's this about a bond?"

"You're mate bonded to a shifter."

"What? No. There's no way. Why would I possibly…"

Kakashi shrugs. "There were reasons at the time. But of course Itachi considers it toeing the line of heresy, so he's sealed it off."

"That doesn't make sense. It'd be far cleaner to just kill the shifter."

"He's politically important. Also your friend."

Sasuke's openly sceptical, but focuses on more pressing matters. "Inter-exorcist strife. Tell me." Finally, his hand goes to Itachi's handprint, but it doesn't seem to hurt him.

Kakashi explains about the factions, about the tension over the shifters, the denouement of the civil war. He omits any mention of Orochimaru, of Sasuke's role in any of it.

Sasuke takes this in, one hand going once more to his prosthesis.

"You've had that since you were nine," Kakashi says, testing the waters by poking Sasuke's arm. Sasuke swats at him, but lightly, in what could be considered encouragement as easily as admonition. Kakashi ups his play and pokes Sasuke's nose. Sasuke scowls at him, showing his teeth. Kakashi takes his hand away, letting his fingers brush lightly against Sasuke's cheek as he does.

It's a shock like sunrise in the middle of the night to realise that Sasuke's drawn to him.

"What?"

Kakashi tilts his head sideways, turning the eye patch towards Sasuke. It'll be ready to come off soon, but for now it's an excellent shield. "I imagine Naruto would've suggested you get rid of it and grow yourself a new foot."

Sasuke librates one of the knives he nicked and cuts across his own palm. Blood wells, and the cut doesn't close. "I don't have shifter healing." He snorts. "If that wasn't already obvious."

"Not anymore. But you did before Itachi sealed you."

"Hn." He wipes his hand on the sheets, secreting the knife away again. "How will it affect him, the seal?"

"I don't know," Kakashi admits. "He was alive and kicking after Itachi did it, I imagine he can deal with it for a little while."

"Hn," Sasuke says again, more thoughtful now. He falls back, resting on his elbows. "Why wouldn't I have got a flesh foot?"

Kakashi shrugs. "You've always been stubborn." He smirks. "Also let's be realistic, you're so reckless with it, you'd probably need a new one just about every week."

"Tch." Sasuke kicks at him lightly with the metal foot. "We just met. Don't act like you know me." The underlying tension is real enough, but the words are mostly teasing.

"I've known you since you were ye tall," Kakashi points out, holding his hand out at waist height.

"And have you also been hitting on me since I was ye tall?"

"Not quite that long."

Sasuke smirks back at him, and it comes to him with the strangeness of a revelation that if he leant forward, if he caught Sasuke's jaw in his hand and tilted Sasuke's mouth up, there's a chance Sasuke might let him. If he said, Trust me, Sasuke might. Kakashi's never believed in second chances or do-overs, but Sasuke's living one, this impossible Sasuke made new and shiny, with all his possibilities and all his betrayals ahead of him. Kakashi thinks again, as he's done so many times, that Itachi's an idiot. That Kakashi would have never, never given this away. WW4 would've been a fair price to pay, to keep this Sasuke.

Sasuke sits up straight as someone knocks on and then opens the door.

"Sasuke," Mikoto says, "I've brought Doctor Nakamura. Kakashi, perhaps you'd like to come with me. I believe Itachi wishes to speak with you."

He shares a look with Sasuke – this strange, unspoilt Sasuke, every broken promise honoured – and stands. "Sure."