The feel of muscle and skin beneath Sasuke's fingers was as familiar as the ground beneath his feet. The frantic racing pulse against his finger tips rushed in double time to his own. The delicate feeling of a crushing windpipe… Sasuke had plenty of experience at such things. Strangulation was, after all, an effective method of control both in and out of battle, and one he'd used countless time to subdue an opponent. It compelled more than just defeat, but total surrender. Any idiot could land a lucky kill. Forcing an opponent to give you the information you needed without leaving a mark on the body however - that was what a shinobi did.

Sasuke leaned forward even more and glared down at his current "opponent." Harry's impossibly green eyes were wide and jittery. He could feel each minute fluctuation in his cousin's heartbeat and breath. All logical reactions to a carefully exerted force.

Except Harry's hand never trembled. He kept his weapon pressed firmly on the offensive, held precisely over the most vulnerable part of the human body. That, if nothing else, was enough to convince Sasuke that his cousin was withholding significant information.

"Who trained you to fight?" Sasuke demanded, even as he put more pressure against the point at his neck. If Harry was going to push him, he was going to push back. He never walked away from a challenge.

He didn't know whether to be pleased or not when his cousin gave ground. Harry didn't lower his weapon completely, but he let Sasuke push his arm down. He gave up the advantage of having Sasuke's head tilted to an awkward angle, and by doing so, surrendered control of the situation. His cousin might think he knew how to use a weapon and he was probably more than proficient with it, but it was clear to any seasoned fighter that he wasn't a killer. He simply lacked the all or nothing attitude that came after taking everything from someone else.

Sasuke watched the slight quiver that finally worked its way into his cousin's hand, the pinched look in his eyes, the steady but sharp inhale and exhale of breath. No, his cousin was no killer. Not yet. But if his reactions and determination were anything to go by, it was only a matter of time.

Sasuke now had a new goal to add to his swiftly growing list. Just below killing Itachi, and keeping his cousin alive, there was now the task of keeping his cousin a civilian. The Uchiha clan may have been a ninja clan, but look where it had gotten them. No – it would be much better for all involved to keep Harry away from that.

Sasuke took a deep breath. Then another. That was the thing to focus on. Someone had been teaching his cousin things he shouldn't know. Someone had threatened him. Neither had progressed far enough to cross that barrier between fighter and man-killer. The important thing now was to gain control of the situation again. He needed a plan of attack. Like any other confrontation of two wills, he needed a strategy. Something aggressive enough to compel his cousin to answer without compromising any of his primary goals. Simple – theoretically. But he wasn't declared a genius for nothing.

Naruto was still hovering behind him, his energy practically physically vibrating around him. He was yapping about something, his voice buzzing in Sasuke's ears the way it always was, telling him what he should and shouldn't be doing.

"Shut up, dobe."

And for once, there was silence.

Sasuke leaned in till his bangs brushed against his cousin's. "Harry-kun," he said quietly, in a voice far more gentle than he really felt at the moment. "I can't count on you in a fight if I don't know what you're capable of. Who taught you?" It was a reasonable enough question. He only needed to know so that he could decide whether or not someone needed to have their arms broken.

Harry stared back at him, nearly cross-eyed in the effort from behind those ridiculous glasses. Sasuke's proximity was clearly causing his cousin discomfort and Sasuke was very careful not to let the self-satisfied smirk show too early. The sudden shift in tone was enough to throw the other boy off balance, and Sasuke wasn't about to pass up the opportunity. Just because he didn't usually bother with social niceties didn't mean he didn't know how to lay it on thick. "Harry-kun," he repeated. "What if whatever you're afraid of really does follow you here? Don't I deserve to know what I might need to defend myself against?"

….Bull's-eye!

Harry's eyes widened even further, and Sasuke had to fight down the urge to snicker in triumph. It was only to be expected, after all. Sasuke never missed his target.

Behind him, Naruto made a gagging noise like he'd tried to swallow his own tongue and chocked on it. Let him. The only thing that mattered was the way Harry's breath hitched, and the steady pressure against Sasuke's neck disappeared as Harry's fingers went limp.

Sasuke moved without thinking – moved the way only a well trained weapon did. Habit and muscle memory led him smoothly through the steps. With only a sharp twist and a flick of his wrist he had the weapon pointed up and away. Harry's distraction was not enough for Sasuke to disarm him, but it was all the opening he needed to regain complete control. Pinning the other boy's wrist up above his head, firmly enough that it couldn't even twitch, Sasuke felt safe in ignoring the threat.

"Do you understand now?" he whispered, his tone once more in his own rough, blunt way. "This is not a game. Secrets cost lives. It's the first thing a shinobi learns. It's often the last thing they'll ever know. Your secrets could cost me my life. They could cost Naruto his life. They could cost me your life. We are not doing this anymore." Sasuke paused and slowly breathed in deeply. "Harry," he stressed. "You have to tell me."

Harry pulled on his wrist. He tried twisting his arm free, yanking it back and forth with enough force that there would be bruises latter. When that didn't work, he moved onto the offensive, trying to lash out with knees and elbows. While Sasuke would have a few new bruises of his own, it was still too little too late. The angle was all wrong. Some training on defensive tactics might not be remiss. It shouldn't be hard to get his cousin up to the level where he could execute the basics sufficiently. Not getting caught in the first place was the main key, but there were a few more creative moves that Sasuke had picked up over the years that he could share… For now, all Sasuke had to do was merely hold his position, firm in his own practiced ability to keep an opponent down.

It was cruel in some ways, trapping someone like that. It hadn't happened often in Sasuke's life, but he could remember vividly the frustration and hopelessness of being unable to buck off another's weight. Freedom of movement was one of those things that were so deeply ingrained in the psyche: the ability to act and have your body respond, to at least be able to try, to be a part of the surrounding environment for better or worse. It was more than just finding yourself up against an unmovable object; it was to be that unmovable object. It was instinct to fight back.

Sasuke bore it silently. It wouldn't last for long, and it was ultimately in Harry's best interest. He knew that, and it was a simple matter of holding to that. It wasn't long before it became obvious that the effort was futile at this point. Harry slumped suddenly, hanging almost in a dead weight from his pinned position. He was panting, slightly, with his face twisted up into a respectable impression of a snarl. More frustrated than anything else, Sasuke suspected. That was fine. He could work with frustrated.

Sasuke opened his mouth to start in on his next assault, fully prepared to play off of Harry's obvious preoccupation with playing the hero when his cousin cut him off.

"I can't," Harry blurted out into the waiting stillness, repeating himself in a voice that was little more than a harsh whisper.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Can't, or won't?"

"Can't!" Harry snapped back. His eyes stayed focused, glaring at Sasuke's shoulder as if he couldn't bear to even look the other boy in the eye.

"Who?" he growled out.

Harry merely shook his head, jaw tight.

Sasuke bit off a curse before jerking his hands away from his cousin. He needed space before he did something he really would regret. This refusal to talk wasn't a show of loyalty or some other sort of misplaced idiotic concept like that. Harry wanted to tell him. He knew it. He could see it in Harry's face, hear it in his voice. He was scared of something. And whatever it was, whatever they'd threatened him with, whatever they'd done to him – it was more intimidating than what Sasuke could manage without actually hurting Harry. Which in Sasuke's mind could only mean one thing: that someone had hurt him and that was even more infuriating. He couldn't exactly torture his own cousin, and he suspected that anything short of that just wasn't going to work.

And his mind was only too willing to imagine the sort of methods one used to keep a person from talking. Everything from Orochimaru's complex psychic warfare to the more mundane use of fists and clubs – he could easily imagine a hundred different methods in just the same way he could call to mind a hundred different jutsus. It didn't take much to jump from that bit of ordered recollection to imagining Harry in the place of all those nameless, insignificant victims from before. He already had the clear memory of Harry's bruised and bloody face drained of color and terrified at the sight of a masked man in the window. Those ANBU masks only had one purpose. And if Harry had seen one before, then that meant he'd been far too close to – to the kinds of things one didn't mention around jumpy genin, much less ignorant civilians and was that why his cousin was somewhere in between the two?

And how the hell was he supposed to fix this if Harry wouldn't – couldn't – tell him about it? How the hell was he supposed to undo what had clearly already been done? And what if there was even more to it than he realized? Normal civilians didn't wake up in the middle of the night terrified and then try to pass it off as nothing. Sasuke had had the PTSD talks just like every other genin in training, and again after his brief…departure. He knew what the signs looked like. He had an intimate acquaintance with enough of them to recognize the symptoms. How in the seven hells was he supposed to fix that?

Sasuke clenched his fists and physically tried to shake away the memories and imaginations of possibilities. He didn't want to see it, even if he needed to know. He had to force himself to stop picturing it and focus his eyes back on the here and now and the mess at hand.

Harry was slumped against the wall. He was coughing weakly even as one hand rubbed gently at his throat. The other was held low, but once more pointing his weapon towards Sasuke. Instinct made Sasuke want to disarm him again. Instead he forced himself to stagger back another step. He wasn't going to attack his cousin. No matter what. He wasn't going to be that person. He continued backward until a chair bummed into his leg and then, with barely a thought and a twist of his hip, he caught it with arch of his foot and sent it flying across the room. The back edge of it caught the window, cracking the thick glass into a spider web before cheap wood splintered into a dozen pieces. He had now managed to destroy Naruto's entire dining room set. Pity there wasn't more of it.

For a moment, there was complete silence. Naruto stood frozen over what remained of his table. He didn't move, but Sasuke could see the tense arch of his feet, the slight cock of one knee, and knew the other boy was ready to make a race out of it if Sasuke should even twitch in Harry's direction. The slight possibility that such defensiveness might be necessary was worse than a hard blow to the chest and it left Sasuke stunned enough that he couldn't breathe. Even Harry's ragged coughing had fallen silent, his eyes wary, and his weapon still drawn.

The sharp, single rap on the door hit all of them like a slap to the face. Harry's armed hand jerked partially towards the door before snapping back. Apparently, Sasuke still ranked as the bigger threat. It was not as complimentary as it usually was.

None of them moved. Then knock came again, louder, and hard enough to shake loose the spider web above.

Naruto scowled. "Busy!" he shouted back before efficiently seeming to ignore the door's very existence in order to focus all of his (limited) attention on the storm brewing in his sitting room.

For Sasuke, however, it was a welcomed distraction. After all, it gave him every right to tear apart whatever miserable, presumptuous, miscreant that would freaking dare interrupt. With an inward snarl and a silent step, Sasuke stalked across the distance and flung the door open with one hand while the other slipped a kunai out of one pocket and jabbed it straight for the neck. If it had been a civilian, thing might have been rather messy. But civilians stayed away from Naruto's apartment as much as possible and a civilian never would have made it as far as the door without one of them noticing the intrusion. Instead, metal crashed into metal and with a piercing shriek, slid off one another again.

There was the faint rustle of leaves from down the hall and Kakashi smiled.

"Am I interrupting?"

Sasuke cursed but let both of his arms drop limply to his sides. As distracting as a good spar with Kakashi might be, the older man had a serious objection to dueling within the city limits. At least with Sasuke. And it was one thing to blow off some steam bashing heads with a comrade and an entirely different thing dealing with a vaguely disappointed and very much annoyed Kakashi. Sasuke scowled even as he stepped back away from the door.

And Kakashi just grinned and grinned. Though Sasuke noted that he didn't lower his kunai until Sasuke moved back. With a flick of one eye, the older man took in the broken furniture, Naruto's nervous stance, the cracked window and Harry's distinctly bruised throat. One white eyebrow shot up.

"I guess it's a good thing I decided to use the door this time and not the window," he commented as if to himself. Sasuke didn't miss the sharp edge to it however. And while any other time he would have made it a point of pride to ignore the man, this time was different. Something twisted and heavy seemed to fill his gut even as his face heated. There were going to be bruises. Hand shaped ones, all over his cousin's neck.

Kakashi didn't need to say anything. Sasuke could figure out on his own that he had managed to mess up something as simple as not hurting his cousin himself – much less defending him against outside threats. Sasuke clenched his fists. He wanted, in a way he hadn't for many years, to hit something. Except everything disposable had already been destroyed and all that was left was warm living flesh that was perhaps a bit too close to the very thing he was trying not to think about.

With a small shuffle, Kakashi managed to rearrange himself until his back was against the door and his hands in his pockets, as he did that half lean, half slump, that managed to make him look smaller and shorter than his true frame ever should appear. "Is there a problem, Sasuke-kun?" he murmured.

Damn straight there was one, and Kakashi damn well knew it. Sasuke glared back at him. Maybe picking a fight with Kakashi would be a good idea…

Then Naruto laughed, high and sharp. "No, no problem," he interrupted with a stuttering chuckle. "No problem at all. Why would you think there was a problem? Everything's fine. Nothing we can't handle. Right, Harry-kun? Right." The blond boy inhaled sharply. "What's up with you, sensei?"

…for Naruto, that was actually subtle.

Kakashi grinned back with equally fake cheer, but his response was directed to Sasuke. "The Hokage would like to see you, Uchiha-san" he said. "Both of you."