After three days and threats of the unpleasant kind of bondage from Sakura, who insisted he needed more rest in order to heal, Sasuke resumed his training.
This time however, sans weights and too-high expectations, he paced himself throughout the month, building muscle and endurance and forgoing time checks. On the second month, he strapped the weights back on for every run, but started out with only half the sets Lee had given him. By the fourth month, he began wearing them day in and day out.
Winter swept by in a haze of panting and sweating, until the missions his team was assigned almost became a blessed reprieve. Every waking moment in between that and team training, Sasuke spent running until his lungs screamed for air and his body for sustenance.
He would wake up at dawn, force-feed himself, run like the shinigami were on his tail, shove a bento down his throat, train with his team, run until his legs felt like they might fall off and then some more before finally dragging himself home for a warm meal, a shower and sleep.
Rinse and repeat.
Insomnia no longer plagued him in the late hours of the night. No, Sasuke would fall asleep the moment his head landed on the pillow – a fitful, albeit dreamless sleep in which his body probably kept running, judging by how sore every part of him felt in the morning. And if sometimes he woke in a half-haze to feather-light tingles tracing the length of his spine, Sasuke knew his ghost was still watching, though not visiting him like he used to.
He had an inkling that Pakkun's presence on his doorstep every morning had something to do with Yurei's marked absence. It seemed his slip up had not gone by unnoticed. Kakashi had been ANBU once, after all. Little slipped under his radar, despite his lackadaisical demeanor and the recent changes in Sasuke's behavior and schedule made no exception. Sasuke suspected Kakashi felt responsible for him beyond the teacher-student bond, though the reason for that was unclear to him.
"Are you having me watched?" Sasuke had asked after a few weeks of this daily occurrence when he showed up for their afternoon training session with Pakkun dutifully in tow, both of them ragged after a run. Well, one more so than the other, he'd thought, watching the ninken pad miserably to his master's side, tongue lolling.
"No," Kakashi had said simply. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
Sasuke had quirked a self-explanatory brow at Pakkun, a gesture Kakashi had waved off with impenetrable nonchalance. He was better at this game than Sasuke.
"Maa, Pakkun has been getting a little chubby lately. I figured some exercise would do him good, and since you've taken up running…"
So Sasuke ran with Pakkun doggedly at his heels every day. Sometimes a lone crow would join them, cawing mockingly along the way. Most days trickled by quietly.
It wasn't until one morning, mid-spring, when Sasuke finally decided to leave the now full set of weights at home. He had been timing himself religiously and was pleased with his progress. Now he wanted to see just how far his efforts had taken him, whether he might be within grasping range of his objective.
Kakashi's efforts, on the other hand, had turned out fruitless – he had recalled Pakkun weeks ago, so Sasuke climbed up to the summit of the Hokage monument alone, tingling with anticipation.
The moment he filled his lungs with air and launched into his mad dash across the rooftops in a race against himself, Konoha turned into a blur. The sharingan easily countered this tunnel-vision effect he was accustomed to from his previous Chidori training. His ancestral doujutsu whirled in his eyes without conscious effort on his part, sharpening the details of the world fleeting by him, deepening textures, saturating color, laying it all bare for Sasuke to see, even at his breakneck pace.
To the world, he would have been no more than a fleeting shadow, a sudden gust of wind. A ghost.
The thought filled him with mad elation. More so when he reached the finish line and checked his timer in between ragged gasps for air. It was more than half of his best time so far. Endorphins were coursing through his bloodstream, success glowing on his face, still glistening with sweat.
He was ready. He was finally ready.
Sasuke looked up at the sky and saw the crow watching him from a nearby powerline. He smirked. The crow cawed once, flapped its wings and set off toward the ruins of the Uchiha district. An invitation.
Which Sasuke fully intended to accept, come dusk.