He wets the brush. The brush is clagged with drying, cloying ink from an hour and three minutes ago, when he last caught up with the target, but he doesn't have time to wash it. The lines won't be as accurate and fine as would be ideal. He can live with that. He can't live with not drawing this squirrel.
He ran out of paper four hours and thirty-eight minutes ago. Since then the ink-creatures have been on rocks, leaves, bark ... it's not as neat as paper would be, both in terms of the drawings themselves and in what's left behind – but the drawings are better than nothing, and he isn't worrying too much about being tracked.
After all, he's the hunter here.
Hand-seals and murmured words, and the squirrel springs from the bark of the tree and skitters up the trunk, gone through the branches.
He waits.
It's not long before the creature returns, and spreads itself out against the treetrunk, ceasing to be a squirrel and becoming ... a diagram. Arrows, trees, a cross ...
He memorises it – another disadvantage to running out of paper. Ideally he'd be able to carry it with him – and leaves it there. No-one who sees it will know what it means.
He considers, as he slips through the trees, that this is the first thorough solo mission he's been on in a while. He's gone on little ones here and there, taking out people who won't have the time or foresight to run or fight back because they think they're safe; missions it takes longer to be briefed on and get to than to actually carry out. The really serious ones have been with a team.
Not 'his team'. He won't let him think of it like that. Friends, yes, but to claim they're his team feels somehow ... intrusive? Treacherous? He can't decide which. Possibly it's both.
Up ahead leaves litter the forest floor, and they'll crackle if his feet touch them.
He takes to the branches.
He felt a long time ago that to try to think of himself as part of what's very definitely their team would be a bad move. He can't fill the hole, and, socially incompetent thought he might be, he's realised that to try would be insulting.
And, he thinks more and more these days, to betray his brother's memory, just as for them to accept him with arms as open as he'd like would betray Sasuke's.
Maybe he's letting his attitude towards it mirror theirs.
He can hear the target is running, not too far ahead – that the leaves reveal her footsteps plainly hasn't occured to her. Either that or she's so desperate to escape that she doesn't care, she just wants to run.
She runs fast, but with that limp she won't keep ahead much longer.
He's started to refer to her in his head as Deer Girl. It's something about the way she runs – confirmed, as he starts to catch up and she draws into sight – and the hunted look in her eyes when she looked back at him the last time he caught up – confirmed, again, as she realises how close she is and looks back. A bad move. She trips.
It suddenly occurs to him, as he leaps down from the trees and pins her to the ground before she hits it from her own fall, that there have been no solo missions he's been on where there's been any nicknames. Or any 'last time he caught up'.
Deer Girl looks up at him wide-eyed and pleading. His grip on the kunai at her throat falters, for a moment, and he wonders if the team missions take longer because of the team.
His facial expression doesn't change at the thought, but he closes his eyes as he presses the blade through her jugular.
He brushes the dirt and broken bits of dead leaves off his sleeve, shaken but not showing it, and leaves her there. Obliterating the remains wasn't on his brief; nor was bringing them back. Why is none of his concern, just like why she was wanted dead.
He's not sure how to react with himself for wondering.
Pushing thoughts to the back of his head, he finds a clearing and paints a clumsy bird. He needs the sky.