Wave Arc: II

I was on edge for the rest of the day. We all were; now that Tazuna had admitted what was actually going on everyone knew to be cautious - it's just, I was the only one who knew how cautious we had to be. I was also the only one who knew we'd survive it, but that was beside the point. Anticipation was making me jumpy, and it wasn't until evening when we reached a small outpost by the river that I allowed myself to relax slightly.

Zabuza had attacked during the day. We were safe, for now. And, as an unexpected but entirely welcome bonus, we got actual fish for dinner with actual rice and actual vegetables instead of trail rations and fresh-caught game.

"We'll spend the night here," Tazuna said, frowning out at the river while the lady whose house we were in passed round the bowls. "The water's too dangerous in the dark, but we can't risk being seen… It's foggy around dawn, that's the best time."

"Here," the lady said, adding an extra fish to mine. "You look hungry, shinobi-kun."

It might have been patronising and I could take offense because I wasn't that twiggy - or that obvious - but on the other hand, food. "It's delicious," I told her. "Thank you for your hospitality."

She smiled, and turned to Tazuna. "Will you need futons, Tazuna-san? I have a spare, and I'm sure more can be found for your retinue."

Retinue, Naruto mouthed at Sakura, looking pleased.

"No need," Kakashi assured her. "My team and I will keep watch."

She hesitated. "If Gato sees I have guards on the house…"

"We're ninja, Obasan. We won't be seen."

She looked back at the three of us dubiously - Naruto, currently pulling a face at Sakura while she pretended to ignore him, me half way through my third bowl of dinner - but Tazuna caught her eye and nodded. He'd seen us in action, and though I still think he thought of us as kids, he'd also seen us fight.

We set out our rolls far enough from the house to be invisible but close enough to still guard it. Kakashi disappeared into the shadows after telling us to set up a watch rotation, probably to set up his own patrol just in case we missed anything. It would leave him tired the next morning, but ninja were expected to operate under worse conditions than a bit of missing sleep. Of the rest of us, I drew the short straw and ended up with the middle watch, Sakura took the first, and Naruto would take the watch just before dawn. Sakura took to the trees to settle herself and Naruto and I crawled in our sleeping rolls and bedded down.

Say what you like about ninja life, but the ability to drop almost immediately into a fully restful sleep? Genius. A plus, ten out of ten would recommend. Having to crawl out of the lovely warmth and into the freezing chill of the mists that hung around the river in the middle of the night? Pants.

I shamelessly stole Naruto's orange jacket. The immolation jutsu could go hang.

No, I wasn't still sore about not being a fire user, nor was I quietly panicking about what effect the change would have on canon. How dare you.

"Hey," I greeted, landing silently on the branch next to Sakura. "All quiet?"

"All quiet," she agreed in the same low tone. She raised an eyebrow at my jacket, but didn't comment. I'd give it back to Naruto when he switched on for the dawn watch. Probably. It was surprisingly soft.

She didn't make a move to leave though, and I cocked my head curiously. "Bed roll'll be getting cold," I prompted.

She nodded, then shook her head and turned to face me fully. "Sasuke-kun," she said cautiously, "Why weren't you eating?"

I frowned. "I had three bowls at dinner."

"Before that though. And don't say you weren't hungry, because you wouldn't have had so much tonight if that was true."

I burrowed further into the jacket, disguising my hunched shoulders as a reaction to the cold. I didn't want to straight up lie, and deflecting would be obvious, so I admitted, "I don't eat meat."

"Oh. I didn't know you were religious, Sasuke-kun?"

"I'm not. I just…" I didn't know how to explain. Being vegetarian - or pescatarian - by choice wasn't really a thing, particularly not in a ninja village. At the same time, I thought I'd done remarkably well to suppress the - weakness was the wrong word, softness, maybe? The softness of my old life as much as I had. I could throw shuriken with the best of them, had successfully desensitised myself to the concept of death and dead bodies, but I just… didn't want to eat them. Dead things.

Fish didn't count because I needed protein, fish meat didn't look the same, and also fuck fish.

Sakura was still waiting for an explanation. "People are made of meat," I said, and shrugged. If she wanted to try and talk me out of it, or explain why it was impractical and going hungry could put the mission at risk, she could try. I already knew the arguments though. Remember that year I spent giving myself malnutrition? I remembered it.

But all she said was, "Ah. Thank you for telling me, Sasuke-kun," and turned to go.

"Wait," I said, taken aback. "That's it? Why did you want to know?"

She hesitated, one foot already sticking to the bark in preparation for her climb down. "Well, I'm the team leader, aren't I? And if I'm the team leader, that means I'm responsible for you and Naruto while we're on missions. So, it's good to know that you need fish, and I can make sure you aren't hungry." She flashed me a smile. "Kakashi-sensei's right, Sasuke-kun. You get grumpy when you're hungry."

And then she gave me a small wave, and dropped down to the camp. I was left staring at the darkness, completely thrown by the fact that my twelve year old teammate had just assumed responsibility for me - me, the adult masquerading as a child - and that she'd been so weirdly understanding about it.

"I honestly don't know what to feel about this," I told the tree I was leaning against. It was probably best to ignore it and concentrate on being on watch.

Oh, except, I wasn't grumpy when I was hungry. That was slander and libel and Kakashi was an ass for spreading his filthy filthy lies. I was grumpy all the time, it was a personality trait.

.

The boat ride over the river the next morning was eerie. It was just after dawn, and the light was filtering weak and grey through the mist. It was cold - of course - and so still and silent that I was reminded sharply of the quiet not-dark between my old world and Itachi's Tsukuyomi. We didn't even make any sound as we moved, the boat driver (driver? Helmsman?) opting to use a long pole to push us along rather than risking oars. The occasional birdcall or splash of a fish breaking the surface seemed to echo terrifyingly loud off the unseen river bank.

It made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

We pulled up a short way from the village itself, not daring to risk getting any closer by boat. Tazuna said something to the man that had brought us over, something changed hands, and with a final nod, we left. He poled back out over the water without looking back and it took barely a minute before the mist closed behind him and he was gone.

"We're a few hours from the village," Tazuna told us. "My house is on the outskirts, we'll be safe there."

It was a shortsighted belief, but we didn't disabuse him of the notion. If a ninja wanted him dead, his front door wouldn't present much of a barrier - though, I suppose, his house would be easier for us to defend than the public roads we'd been taking so far.

The promise of a shorter day and an end to the journey made us move that bit faster though. I kept looking at the trees, then reminding myself that Zabuza was a mist nin, he'd most likely be coming from the river we were following - except, Haku had been in the trees - but then the river was more dangerous -

By the time Naruto flung his kunai at the bushes I was on a hair trigger, and it was only worry that my kawarimi sense would be detectable that had kept me from saturating the entire path in my chakra.

Rabbit, I thought, trying to calm my racing nerves as Sakura scolded Naruto. It was just a rabbit. A white rabbit. Wasn't there something - "It's a decoy," I hissed, grabbing Tazuna and dragging him to the ground with me. "Get down!"

The sword whistled as it passed overhead. My heart pounded, because holy shit, this was it - also holy shit, that was close.

"I see the other two failed," a deep voice said. I looked up; the sword - bloody fuck, that's a big a sword - was embedded horizontally in a tree, and Zabuza stood on top of it in a faux-disinterested slouch. "Tch, now it's my turn."

"Momochi Zabuza," Kakashi said, mimicking his casual attitude. "The demon of the hidden mist." His book was nowhere to be seen though, and I recognised the tenseness in his shoulders.

Which was ridiculous, because this was Kakashi. Yes, he'd give himself chakra exhaustion in this fight, but also, he was Kakashi. He was probably worried we were going to do something stupid and get in the way. Escort quests were the worst for multiple reasons, and the lack of any self preservation on the part of the people you had to keep alive ranked pretty high on that list.

"Stay back," I said to the others as we pushed ourselves to our feet. "We need to protect Tazuna."

Sakura shot me an annoyed look, even as she and Naruto fell into an automatic defensive formation. "Naruto, clones," she said. "Sasuke, get up high and use your shuriken -"

"No," Kakashi cut in. "He's too dangerous. Keep out of it - I'll handle him." His hand went to his headband, and I couldn't see from where I was but it didn't take a genius to guess what he'd just revealed.

Particularly because Zabuza raised an eyebrow and narrated it. "Sharingan no Kakashi. I'm honored that I get to see it already. But what good will your eye be against an enemy that you can't see, I wonder?" He held up one hand in a seal and faded back into the mist that was rising off the river. No - not rising off it, being pulled off it.

Incidentally, one handed wordless jutsus? Beyond cool. If I hadn't spontaneously decided to forsake ninjutsu in favour of never using a water technique in my life, I'd be all over that.

"Close ranks," Sakura hissed, backing up a step. She blocked Tazuna to the front, Naruto and I took his left and right respectively, and I heard the quiet sound of Naruto's clones appearing to cover the back. The mist was by this stage so thick that Kakashi was little more than a silhouette, and I stretched out with my kawarimi-sense to get a better look. I couldn't pick up any chakra, but physical objects showed up, kind of like if you walked around with your eyes closed and your hands out in front of you. Not the easiest thing to interpret without being able to see what you feeling, but it would give me a warning if -

There.

I spun, lifting my arm to deflect Zabuza's sword away with a palm strike. He twisted the blade and angled it back at me, and I aimed a kick at his wrist to disrupt the blow - it was way too powerful to even think about blocking, I had shuriken and a few kunai and the sword was taller than I was and probably weighed more as well. His next blow was aimed straight for my chest but he dissolved into a splash of water before I could react, Kakashi appearing behind him with his kunai thrust out exactly where the clone's head would've been.

"With my eye I can see everything you do, Zabuza," he growled. "There's nowhere you can hide."

"Oh?" came the response, echoing from all around us - then Kakashi was sliced in half, and this time I did flinch because shit - then the clone dispersed into water, and another Kakashi held his kunai against Zabuza's neck.

"I can copy your techniques as soon as you use them," the new Kakashi said. "Anything you use will be used against you in turn until your own weapons defeat you."

It was melodramatic to the extreme, but it was also playing out as canon said it would and provided a decent distraction for the three of us to try and hustle Tazuna away from the river and out of the thickest of the mist. I kept my kawarimi sense in close to watch for any more attacks - though with the number of Narutos now circling us protectively, I wasn't sure I'd be able to pick up anything useful - so I had to rely on hearing for Kakashi and Zabuza's fight.

"Which way is the village," Sakura hissed to Tazuna. "We can get out while Kakashi distracts him. Naruto, can your clones make a -"

The mist cleared and she cut off with shocked gasp. I zeroed in on what she'd seen instantly: Zabaza, standing on the river a metre back from the bank with one hand out, holding Kakashi in place with a sphere of water.

"It seems your eye has let you down, Kakashi," he said, in the tone of voice you might say it seems your geraniums are in need of weeding, Kakashi. "My water prison is inescapable whether you see it coming or not."

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said frantically. "What do we do, how do we get him out?"

"No!" Kakashi yelled from inside the bubble. "Take Tazuna and escape, you can't face him!"

"Can't face me, can't escape me," Zabuza agreed with a chilling laugh, and raised one hand in a single-handed seal again. The water clone rose ominously from the surface of the river and started walking towards us with slow, measured steps, and I knew - I still knew that we were going to be fine, but Kakashi's fear and Zabuza's lazy confidence were both very convincing.

"What do we do," Naruto hissed at Sakura. "What do we do?"

She wavered, white-faced, knuckles standing out in sharp relief against the handle of her kunai. Her eyes were darting furiously, looking for an exit, and I had a sudden doubt - academy training said the mission was paramount, the textbook answer would be to obey Kakashi's order and run, she wasn't going to do it, was she?

"We can't leave Kakashi," I said, readying more shuriken and making sure two of them were primed with poison.

"Those who abandon their teammates are less than trash," she agreed without missing a beat, and I realised she'd just been looking for a plan. "I think the Zabuza on the river can't move without releasing Kakashi-sensei. Naruto, can your clones defend Tazuna?"

He shook his head. "His sword is too fast! He'll dispel them, I can't, we can't -"

"Focus," I snapped. The water bunshin was closer, still taking lazy strides with its sword balanced casually over one shoulder. It was toying with us - or with Kakashi, who was throwing himself against the water prison with what looked like a drill whirling ineffectively around his hands. I tilted my shoulders to hide my mouth and hissed, quietly enough that Zabuza shouldn't hear me, "Naruto, we need you. I can't swap with a moving shuriken, it's too small."

Sakura sucked in a sharp breath as she understood and she nodded once decisively. "Delay the water clone. I'll take it. Naruto, stay on guard and keep making clones." And, without giving him any more time to panic, she lowered herself to the ground, sent out a trio of illusion bunshins to disguise which path she'd taken, and started running. I waited just long enough for Naruto to collect himself and press a henged clone into my palm before leaping forwards, circling wide enough to stay out of reach and flinging shuriken in quick succession. I focussed on the water clone, the poisoned shuriken going first - elemental clones could take more hits than shadow clones could, but the poison would contaminate the water and should disrupt it enough to give Sakura a chance - and the henged one held in reserve until I could get the angle just right -

Clone Zabuza ducked to one side to dodge Sakura's punch, and I threw the Naruto-shuriken. It whizzed over his shoulder, close enough that he dismissed it as a failed throw, and continued past the original Zabuza until it was hanging over the lake. I was reaching for it with kawarimi even before it de-henged into Naruto, yet more shuriken flying the second I switched - now would have been a really good time to have a quick-fire flame attack but I had to make do with what I had and at least my aim was damn good. Zabuza - the original - was forced to dodge or take three inches of spiky metal to his carotid artery; he dodged, and I had a second of hanging in the air above the river while I reached back to the bank to switch again, then I was plummeting down just as I hooked onto another of Naruto's clones. I took a breath, lining up my next shot for when I was back on land, and -

The kunai slammed into my side out of nowhere and disrupted my concentration enough that I lost my grip on the clone I was switching with. I cursed, reaching frantically for another one, but I hit the water in the next second and lost kawarimi entirely. The force of the impact rippled through me like a shock, sudden and cold and stinging, and I turned desperately to find the surface.

It wasn't there.

I kicked, pushing my arms out and sweeping them through the water. I couldn't have fallen far, and Kakashi would be free now, all I had to do was get back to air, all I had to do was not breathe until I could breathe again. I wasn't a civilian, I reminded myself, it wasn't like before, I wasn't going to - it wasn't - The river pressed against my chest. I forced out kawarimi with a panicked surge, but you can't switch places through solid objects and the water was an immovable barrier; I kicked again and this time I moved, fingers scrabbling for the surface but instead I felt them sink into the mud at the bottom of the river, I'd swum the wrong way I couldn't breathe, canon-Sasuke survived this fight but I was drowning I couldn't breathe, my lungs were on fire I pushed off from the bottom of the river I didn't know which way was up I couldn't breathe there was water pressing against my nose I had to breathe I couldn't breathe I had to breathe it flooded in I choked I choked I was going to drown I couldn't breathe -

A hand gripped the back of my collar and hauled me up, coughing and wheezing to the surface. I flailed, trying instinctively to get a grip on them even as my ribs ached from the kunai wound and throwing up the water I'd swallowed, but they kept me at arms' reach until I was on the bank.

"Easy," they murmured, supporting my shoulders as I shook. I gasped, huge gulps of air rattling through me and scraping my windpipe raw as they went. "Easy, you're ok."

They tensed suddenly, and I looked up, too exhausted to panic. Was it Zabuza, had he got free of Kakashi - I blinked stupidly at the white and red patterned mask. That wasn't one of my teammates. What. What?

"I have to go," they said with an apologetic head tilt, and in the same movement they leant me against the closest tree and disappeared in a shunshin. I was too shaken to protest, leaning back against the trunk in an ungainly sprawl and trying to remind my muscles how to function. Distantly, I registered the sudden stillness as a ninja battle I hadn't even noticed hearing ground to a sudden halt, then voices - Kakashi, and the unknown masked ninja who'd saved me.

Oh. Oh, god.

I pulled myself to my feet. The kunai wound was a nasty cut, but it had missed anything vital. I was lucky. Both that it hadn't been a direct hit, and that… That Haku had pulled me out in time.

Oh god. I almost died. Again. If Haku hadn't saved me I would've -

I pressed my arm against my ribs to keep the blood inside and shook my head to clear it. I needed to get back to the others; they were just the other side of the bushes, and I could already hear Naruto shouting my name.

"I'm here," I said, pushing my way through the foliage. "Jeez, chill. I'm fine."

"Bastard, what the hell! Where did you go?"

"You're bleeding," Kakashi said bluntly. I twisted to the side and lifted my arm away to show him the wound. Sakura gasped something that was probably my name, but looking at it again, I didn't actually think the cut was that bad. If it hadn't ended up with me in the water, I'd be fine.

"No organs," I said, in the least professional status update anyone ever gave. "I don't think anything's broken."

"Ah," Kakashi said, pocketing his kunai and smiling. "That's good, then." And, still smiling - or eye-smiling, at least - he gently toppled over and crashed to the floor.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto and Sakura yelped. I blinked at him. Oh, yeah. That.

"Naruto, can your clones make something to carry him to the village?" I asked.

"We can't move him! What if he's dying?"

I prodded him with a finger of chakra, just in case he'd been injured worse than in canon. After all, Sasuke was meant to come out fine but I'd almost - "He's fine," I said, refusing to complete the thought. "Chakra exhaustion. Sharingans are for Uchiha. He's not Uchiha so it doesn't like him, that's all."

Yeah. That sounded like a perfect explanation. Fab.

I made a squeaked sound of surprise as someone hauled me up into a piggyback. It took an embarrassingly long moment to recognise the someone as Naruto, and longer to realise that I was being carried by a clone. "Hey, put me down," I said, hitting it hard enough on the shoulder to dispel it. It stayed stubbornly undispelled, so either it was the real one or I was being pathetic. "I'm fine. Put me down."

"We don't have time," Sakura said. She secured the last orange tie holding Kakashi onto his own clone chauffeur and looked back over my shoulder. "Tazuna-san, we need to hurry. Which way to your house?"

He pointed, wide-eyed but remarkably undamaged and composed for a civilian who'd just been on the edge of a jounin level fight, and Sakura nodded at the various Narutos around her.

"Hang on, bastard," the one holding me said, and I grit my teeth and accepted my ignoble defeat.

It gave me time to concentrate on not freaking out over how badly I'd almost disrupted the story by nearly dying not following the script, so. Win.

.

Thank god for Sakura. She was an amazing human being, a beautiful shining example of ninjaing done right, and making her the team leader was the best thing I ever did for Team Seven. Arriving at Tazuna's house, handling introductions, setting out a watch rotation - which I only had to fight a little to get included on, I just had a minor stab wound, that's all that had happened - all of these things were basic procedure we'd been taught at the academy, and she thrived on it. Basic procedure, plus a bit of basic manners and social awareness, both of which Naruto and I were somewhat lacking in.

"How are you so good at this?" I asked when the three of us - two of us and a Naruto clone, he was on watch at the moment - were left alone in one of the upstairs rooms to settle in. My voice sounded odd to my ears, forcefully cheerful in a way that betrayed how much effort it was taking to act like everything was fine. Which it was. I was alive, and Kakashi was alive, and Sakura was leading like a pro and even in my thoughts I was bubbly and upbeat and fine.

"Good at what?" Naruto asked. He dug through the packs he'd retrieved at some point and brought with him and passed me his very minimal first aid kit. I wrinkled my nose and didn't take it.

"My one's in my bag, it's got more things in it. And Sakura, being good at all this… missioning. With Tazuna and Tsunami."

She shot me a harried look. "I'm terrified," she said, too stressed to be anything but blunt. "Kakashi-sensei's completely out of it, you're hurt, I'm hurt, we don't know if anyone else is coming after us and I'm the team leader so I have to be responsible, except I don't know what I'm doing and I'm going to do it wrong but I have to do it anyway and I'm just, really, really under a lot of pressure at the moment."

Oh. My stubborn good mood cracked and I felt guilty, suddenly, for relying on her and not noticing how hard she was finding it. She was twelve, remember. This was her first c-rank and she shouldn't be on it - she should've been sent home the moment Tazuna revealed that there were more enemy nin coming after him. We all should've been. If I hadn't been so caught up in following the path canon laid out then maybe I would've stopped to consider that before blithely agreeing to continue.

"You're hurt?" Naruto asked, homing in on the important statement. "What - Sakura-chan, why didn't you say? Where? How bad is it?" He tossed me my first aid kit and started digging through Sakura's own bag for hers, completely upsetting the neat organisation of her stuff as he did so.

"No, not - not badly," she said, reaching over to pull the bag out of his reach. "I just punched too hard. My shoulder aches, it's not actually hurt. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." She took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "I'm fine."

"I have a heat pack," I offered. Taking painkillers while still on duty was risky, it was far too easy to ignore your limits and turn a minor injury into a major one, but heat packs were safe enough. And I almost wanted to reason that we wouldn't be attacked again until Zabuza had recovered, but… But. Think about that later, we're helping Sakura at the moment. "And you are good at it. We should've realised you were stressed, but I don't think you have to worry about doing it wrong."

She shot me a small smile as Naruto nodded frantically in the background. "Thanks, Sasuke-kun. I'm ok. I'm… I hope Kakashi-sensei wakes up soon, is all."

And that was about my limit of feelings for one conversation, so I said an awkward, "Yeah, me too," and pulled my torn shirt over my head to end the conversation. It was only when I heard Sakura's muffled eep that I remembered that taking my shirt off involved being undressed in company and I tried to angle myself away to hide how red my ears were when I emerged. Aborting and redressing would have been worse - also, wet clothes - so I continued with my original plan and inspected the tear as though nothing was wrong. It was a pretty clean cut, I should be able to sew it back together without any problem. Well, no, it was full of river (don't think) and bits of blood, but that would wash out, and the important thing was that the fabric was tough enough that it hadn't frayed and wouldn't need a massive patch to fix it.

As for the actual cut on the side of my chest… It wasn't that bad. Butterfly plasters would hold it, which was good; I had no problem sewing my shirt up but I didn't fancy sewing me up. After that, I'd just have to be careful rotating my torso and maybe rely on my right arm for a bit to give my left side a rest. I hesitated, one hand pressed against it, then grit my teeth. "Naruto, can you help me with the bandage? I can't reach."

"Um, I can try," he said. "You just tie it in a knot, right?"

I stared. Sakura stared. "You're lucky you have a healing factor," I said, and shook my head. It was only a chest. Boy chest. Boys went shirtless all the time. "Sakura, can you help me with the bandage?"

"Yes!" she squeaked, ridiculously high pitched and ridiculously red in the face. I huffed and gave Naruto my best bitch face.

"Learn first aid," I commanded.

.

Kakashi: where the hell is Sasuke i need to end this fight and save him
Zabuza: where the hell is Haku i need him to end this fight and save me

(Also, side note that Sakura is actually thirteen at this point. Sasuke on the other hand is twelve, and has put the other two squarely as "similar age but obviously younger than me because I'm an adult right" so. Everyone's twelve. Y'know.)