Break out
Characters: mainly Kakashi(29 years old; he was about 11 years old when Sasuke&Co were born; with 25 years he became their Jounin instructor) and Sasuke(18 years old; he was 14 when he left and he came back after 4 years- at least as far as I think; correct me if I'm wrong) Sakura and Naruto are about 18 years old
Summary: Sasuke breaks out, Kakashi tags along and Tsunade is really pissed off now.
--------
"I plan to leave again," Sasuke calmly stated like they were talking about the weather. Kakashi only levely stared at him, leaning back in the uncomfortable hospitalchair.
"And?" he asked after a moment of silence.
"And I will go kill Orochimaru. He and his lapdogs are getting annoying."
"And?" Kakashi patiently asked again. Sasuke growled at him.
"And what?" he bit back, black eyes stormy as he folded his arms over his chest.
"Why do you tell me? Don't you suspect I will run off to Tsunade any given time and tell her about your plan?"
"You can either come with me or I will knock you out long enough to escape. Believe me when I say you won't find me again if I decide not to be found. Your decision?" Sasuke patiently stared at Kakashi, waiting for his answer.
Kakashi considered the whole mess. He was pretty sure Sasuke wouldn't be able to beat Orochimaru, not if he hadn't trained under the snake-master himself for the past four years and hadn't gotten a better hold on his Sharingans.
"You probably will get killed one way or another and me being there will just be another shinobi less in Konoha and two more names on their death-list. I am pretty sure Naruto and Sakura –who will be back from their missions soon- will be furious that you have gone and gotten yourself and myself killed. So…if you are really sure that you can defeat Orochimaru I will accompany you, under the condition that we come back to Konoha after you killed the snake-master."
"Ok," Sasuke said easily and produced two fully packed field bags from nowhere. "Let's go."
Kakashi stared. "You had all this planned out already?"
"Yep." And Kakahsi again had forgotten that Sasuke was some kind of genius, too.
-
Another thing Kakashi had forgotten about Sasuke was the fact that he was still 18 years old, still tried to kill his brother and still hadn't mastered the Mangenkyou, seeing as Naruto was still bouncing around happily. And he was still very unorganized, leaving nearly everything to Kakashi.
"I left a letter to explain our leave," Kakashi said evenly as they settled down after a day of running, just outside the borders of firecountry.
Sasuke shrugged, worrying himself more with making a decent fire.
"I also copied some informations about Orochimaru from the Hokage office. He seemed to have moved around a lot lately." Kakashi dug out some papersheets from his backbag and folded out a map on his knees. "He servered his connections to Snow Country and left Kabuto in charge of his base in Sound. Since then he has traveled around, building up a new group of mutants to replace Sound's Four."
Sasuke poked the fire with a dry stick, eyes flickering over to Kakashi quickly and then away again.
"Know anything about it?" Kakashi asked casually as he marked something down on the map. The black-haired teen squirmed a little, then let the stick fall into the fire and slumped down on the ground beside Kakashi.
"Orochimaru already has a new Sound's Four. I was one. When I fled he was readying battle-strategies to destroy Konoha. I already told the Hokage during one of my interrogations."
"The part with being one of the Sound's Four or the one with the battle-strategies?"
Sasuke shot Kakashi a sour look. "I was one of the Sound's Four. And I only told them about Orochimaru's attempt to get rid of Konoha."
Kakashi 'hm'ed in confirmation and marked more things down.
"Aren't gonna you question me any further?" Sasuke asked, obviously surprised.
That was the longest discussion they had ever had, Kakashi thought as he lifted his head to stare at the Uchiha.
"I am sure you are old enough to tell me everything else which is of any importance," he finally said and went back to reading his papers.
Disbelieve clearly written on his face Sasuke watched Kakashi for a short moment, then got up and settled down on the other side of the fire. He took out some raw meat from his bag and roasted it over the fire.
"During the most interrogations they just wanted to know how much I learned from Orochimaru and what he was planning. They didn't concern themselves at all if my loyality still laid with Orochimaru," Sasuke started. Kakashi waited patiently for him to continue.
"In the last interrogation the Hokage herself was present. She didn't believe me anything concerning the Sound-nins who had attacked us. Seeing as she wouldn't believe me even if I told her the truth, I decided to leave."
"And why exactly did you decide on me to accompany you?" Kakashi asked curiously.
Sasuke shrugged. "So somebody is there to bring me back if I am too badly injured to not be able to make it myself. And maybe you can help me and keep Orochimaru's underlings at bay while I kill him."
"To eleminate him we have to find him first," Kakashi reminded him. He thought he saw red shimmering in Sasuke's eyes as the teen stared at him from over the fire, then a slow smirk spread over the Uchiha's lips and he said, "That won't be a problem. He is already searching for me and will find me sooner or later. We just have to wait."
-
Is it worth it? Kakashi thought as he watched the night-sky. At the edge of his vision he could see Sasuke, rolled into his sleepingbag and eyes closed, hand tucked under his pillow and griping a kunai even in his sleep.
Is it worth to become a traitor for a traitor?
Ruffling his anyhow ruffled haired some more with his hand, he traced the scar over his left eye, Sharingan exposed at this late time of night.
Still a dept to pay…?
-
The girl at the reception smiled shyly at them as she handed them their keys. Kakashi took them from her with a wide smile on his full red lips; Sasuke was standing beside him, a bit shorter than Kakashi now.
"Never knew Naruto's Sexy no Jutsu would come in that handy one day," Kakashi said as he admired his female form while they passed a window on the way to their rooms. He had differed his hair to a black-red mass, curling down to the mid of his back, and full breasts drew every male's attention to his form. Sasuke was more the rough-handsome form of women, short, blueish hair and green eyes combined with a muscled frame but still enough curves to identify him as a woman.
"You seem to enjoy yourself awfully much as a woman," Sasuke commented quietly.
"Well, yes! Why not?" Kakashi grinned brightly at his companion.
-
Chakra burned and weapons were flung seemingly careless. One of Kakashi's shadow-clones was hit and degenerated into smoke and some dry leaves. There was the sound of thousand of birds and the attacker died.
That won't be enough, a voice whispered in the back of Kakashi's skull as he straightened from his last victim and whipped the sweat from his eyes. Both his normal eye and the Sharingan were trained on the two figures high up in the trees, burning away their chakra to defeat the other. A sound behind him, nothing but a too loud breath, and Kakashi whirled around and threw himself into another battle, knowing that it wouldn't be enough!
-
In the end, he at least thought it had been enough.
Kakashi stared unblinkingly up into the sky. He wasn't sure anymore if his right arm had been cut off or was still connected to the rest of his body. Corpses were strewn all over the field and Kakashi was buried half-way beneath some.
The crunching sound of breaking bones echoed across the battlefield as somebody carelessly walked over the dead bodies.
His eye felt awfully dry when Kakashi blinked it after a long time. What was with his Sharingan, he didn't know. The shinobi with the big battleaxe had nearly severed the left side of his face off. Thanks to a graceful move all damage Kakahsi had sustained was a long, red line over his Sharingan. He wasn't sure if the implant still worked. He couldn't open it anymore with the blood gluing it shut.
"You are really getting old," a familiar voice informed him. Kakashi's eye narrowed. The grey orb moved to focus on the man standing beside him. It was Sasuke's face, body and voice, but could he trust it?
"Sasuke…" he breathed slowly. "…or Orochimaru?" There was the flash of white teeth as Sasuke's lips were stretched into a cold grin.
"Decide for yourself," he said. His gaze was sweeping over Kakashi, taking stock of his injuries, then it moved over the battlefield, considering the many corpses. "He put up a good fight," he continued, still staring off over the battlefield. "For being a Sannin." Black orbs focus on Kakashi again. "You really need medical treatment."
Kakashi didn't resist when Sasuke moved him out from under the dead bodies and slung his left arm over his shoulder after he had bound his right arm together as best as he could. But when Sasuke was about to set off while supporting most of Kakashi's weight, his left arm tightened around his neck, making Sasuke acutely aware of the fact that Kakashi could snap his neck easily form his position.
"How did I look when we stopped to rest at this inn one week ago?" Kakashi rasped, staring intently at Sasuke. The Uchiha heir's eyebrows rose.
"Long, red curly hair, full breasts and lips, slender frame," he finally listed.
"How did we escape from my house when Orochimaru's Elite-nin tried to catch us?" Kakashi prodded further.
"You used a one-handed technique; tiger, horse, ox."
Kakashi wasn't satisfied yet, "How did I survive the fire-storm of the last of the Elite-nins?"
"You were buried under the dead body of the shinobi you killed just moments before."
Kakashi's arm tightened further around Sasuke's neck, then it loosened and Kakashi's closed his eye. "Get us home," he said and Sasuke obligated.
-
"Whenever you two are together he is left as a mess and you just look fine!" Tsunade ragged as she pointed at Kakashi's unmoving form which was stretched out on the pristine white bed. Sasuke sat on a chair beside the door, arms crossed over his chest and glowering darkly at the current Hokage. He still felt sore from when a horde of ANBU had "tested" if he really was Sasuke Uchiha and not Orochimaru.
"And not just that!" she hissed, blue eyes narrowing until they were mere slits with uncontrolled, violent emotions sparkling in them. "You seriously want to tell me you killed Orochimaru and now are back here, willing to accept any punishment I will put upon you!"
Sasuke just nodded.
"Well then," Tsunade said, trying to slip on her cool poker face which had saved many well-paid missions after she had lost her temper in front of a customer. She succeed. At a wave of her hand four ANBU members appeared silently in the room, two crouched over Sasuke on the ceiling, one on the windowsill and the last one moving in front of the Hokage. Everybody in the room knew that if Sasuke had really killed Orochimaru four ANBUs weren't by far enough to restrain him. Either Tsunade didn't care or was confident that Sasuke wouldn't try anything stupid in the heart of the Hidden Village.
"Sasuke Uchiha, for the next twelve months you will be staying in a cell in the cellar of the Hokage tower. If you resist or try to break out, the guards are advised to hurt or kill you."
-
"You know, somehow it was stupid of you to come back here," Kakashi rasped as he leaned against the cool metal bars of Sasuke's cell. The sickenly yellow glow of the chakra barrier Jiraiya had put up inside Sasuke's cell was the only light down here.
Sasuke only grunted his reply, leaning back on the narrow bench. The heavy cuffs around his wrists clinked against it each other. "How's your arm?"
When Kakashi didn't answer, Sasuke's eyes slid open and focused on the grey-haired ninja. Kakashi stared sightlessly ahead, right arm still in a sling, even when it had been over three months now since their battle against Orochimaru and his lapdogs.
"Fine. It's fine," Kakashi said as he straightened suddenly, eye curving into a happy arc.
One moment Sasuke had been in the corner opposite from the metal bars Kakashi was halfway leaning against, in the next second both of his hands were wrapped around the bars, chakra barrier ripping at his form to force him back again.
"Don't give me that shit," he growled through gritted teeth, the strain of the barrier on his body increasing. "Will you ever be able to properly move it again?"
Kakashi stared at him, body involuntarily having moved away from the bars when Sasuke had crashed against them. Then his eye closed and he breathed a single word, "No." and Sasuke snarled something intelligible right before he was hurtled back from the metal bars. He was smashed into the wall and Kakashi could sense the ANBU members arriving.
"Please leave now, Hatake-san," the ANBU with the owl-mask asked him politely and Kakashi just nodded.
-
Sakura was silent as she worked on fastening the bandage on his shoulder. She hadn't visited Sasuke, neither had Naruto. Partially because they hadn't been allowed to -everybody knew that if they really wanted, they could see him any time- , partially because it hurt too much to look their long-lost team mate in the eyes, knowing that they could do nothing. Kakashi was the only visitor Sasuke got.
"There, everything finished," Sakura murmured.
"Thank you," Kakashi said politely, presenting her with another of his eye-smiles and tugged his shirt on one handed. After their check-ups he couldn't move his right arm for at least two hours. Normally he couldn't really move it either -too many dead nerves, too much pain- but after they had looked it up, it was blissfully numb. Probably the only point why Kakashi still bothered with showing up at the hospital once every week.
"You should take better care," Sakura said gruffly, straightening his mused collar. She flicked a delicate hand at his chaotic hair. "And maybe you should get a haircut soon."
He only smiled at her again for worrying about him and waved a hand at her when he left the room. A fine shinobi, that was what she had become, Kakashi mused. They all had become fine shinobis he realized as he stopped outside the big doors of the hospital. But somehow they still reminded pretty childish, Kakashi thought as he watched Naruto at the Ramen stand, challenging Lee into Ramen eating and somehow dragging Choji and Kiba into it, too.
Well, he chuckled silently to himself as he turned into the opposite direction, they would grow out of that.
"My Eternal Rival, I challenge you to Ramen!" Gai boomed from where he sat beside his student.
-or not. Kakashi groaned.
-
"Obito," Kakashi said calmly. He stood alone in front of the memorial stone, morning birds chirping their lonely tunes while the sun slowly painted the sky light blue. "You gave me an eye." Reaching up with his left hand, Kakashi removed his headband. "I gave you an arm." His right arm, today not in a sling, throbbed in time with his heartbeat and Kakashi felt strangely at peace.
Time went by and Kakashi was still standing in front of the memorial stone. There was no intimidate duty for him -no noisy genin to train, no paperwork to look up, no S-rank mission to lose his life at, no Sasuke to keep watch about… And with a start Kakashi realised he hadn't given his arm for Obito. He hadn't thrown his arm out to catch one attack aimed for Sasuke's unguarded back to even the odds between himself and Obito. He had done it for Sasuke. And what kind of frightened him was the thought that for Naruto, Sakura or anybody else he probably wouldn't have done it.
-
There was a polite knock from the front door and Kakashi looked up from his one handed press-ups, surprised.
"I am coming!" he called when a second knock sounded. Quickly undoing the bandage which held his right arm on his back because he couldn't manage that simple task on his own any longer, Kakashi strode to the door.
"Ye-" Kakashi's single eye literally bulged out of its socket. "Sasuke?"
"Hello, I was told to look after one Kakashi Hatake because he seems to have some problems with his right arm." Sasuke smirked at him, hands stuffed lazily in the pocket of his dark trousers. There were no restraints on him anywhere and Kakashi could only feel two Anbu members hovering nearby.
"Uhu," Kakashi mumbled.
They stared at each other, Kakashi trying to find an explanation for Sasuke standing in front of him right now and not rotting in some cold cell and Sasuke looking all cool and hip.
"So," Sasuke finally said. "Can I come in?"
"Oh, yes, sure!" Kakashi quickly stepped aside and let the Uchiha inside. He closed the door and followed Sasuke in the kitchen. While the black-haired teen made some tea, Kakashi stood in the kitchen door, unsure what to say.
"Drink it before it gets cold, it's green tea," Sasuke told him while he set two cups down on the table. Kakashi shuffled forward and perched himself on a chair. Sasuke was so polite to stare into his own tea while Kakashi pulled down his mask to take a quick sip.
"It's good," Kakashi stated.
"I know," Sasuke said. "I made it, after all."
For a moment Kakashi just looked at Sasuke, then caught sight of the small smile twitching his lips upwards, and had to grin.
"Care to tell me how you got free?" he asked and slouched much more casually in his chair. "Or do you want to look through the newspapers first?"
Sasuke dove for the newspapers Kakashi had gathered in the last weeks. And while he watched Sasuke go systematically through them, Kakashi thought he had found the answer to the question why he had bothered with keeping all the newspapers.
-
The wards were all over Sasuke's body, on his back and chest, along his arms and around his knees and ankles. There was even one lowly circling Sasuke's neck.
Kakashi catalogued each of them carefully while Sasuke wrung out his wet shirt. The Uchiha seemed to have forgotten that his chakra had been bound by the wards and had jumped right onto the pond while trying to catch the shuriken Kakashi had thrown. Now his clothes were dripping and his hair was flatted against his head. He looked grumpy for having forgotten such an important fact.
"You still up for some throwing games?" Kakashi asked lightly from where he was seated on the veranda, nearly his whole assortment of kunais and shuriken stuck in the wood around him. For the last quarter of an hour he had thrown at least three pieces at one time and Sasuke had to catch them and throw them back to him in a certain angle so that they logged themselves into the wood near Kakashi.
Kakashi could practically feel the ANBU members perched near his house bristle because he had brought himself in such a dangerous situation. Sasuke could easily miss-throw a kunai or shuriken and then he could lose his eye or worse. But Kakashi trusted Sasuke enough not to do something like that to him. He was after all his favourite teacher, right?
-
"These are boring, corny and what do they call it? Not allowed for underage people?"
"You don't have to read them," Kakashi put in mildly while he mixed the tea, fully concentrating on not sloshing some of the substance over the rim of the cup. Sasuke sat in the living room and watched his movements in the kitchen through the open door. He was waving around one of Kakashi's infamous orange books.
Setting one cup down in front of Sasuke, Kakashi took his place opposite the Uchiha at the low table. "On the contrary I could say that you are pretty much obsessed with reading newspapers."
"That's something else!" Sasuke protested. "It is a good thing to keep oneself updated about the happenings in the villages!"
Kakashi raised a disbelieving eyebrow at the teen. "You really believe the important information will be put down in newspapers?"
"No, but I didn't mean such things. There are written other things, who marries who, who died, what's new on the market, which weapon rose in price and things like that." Sasuke took a big gulp of his tea. Kakashi just shrugged but had still a disbelieving air about him. He lifted his cup to his face and was about to slip his facemask down with the same hand that held the cup to take a quick sip but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Just the fluttering of eyelashes, the shifting of the dark orbs behind it. Sasuke wasn't politely looking away like Kakashi was used of him but instead was watching him, obviously trying to catch a glimpse of his face. Instead of drinking the tea, Kakashi lifted the cup a bit higher and sniffed at it.
"I think I forgot some sugar and mint," he said cheerfully and got up to wander in the kitchen and add it. With his back to Sasuke he made a show of tasting it before returning to the living room. For the rest of the afternoon he didn't touch the cup again. Sasuke didn't show any outward reaction but Kakashi could practically smell the disappointment oozing off him.
-
"What are we doing here again?" Sasuke asked in a bored voice. He was sitting on one of the big boulders at the side of the swallow river, chin in hands and hair still mused from sleep.
"Further up the river a class of six year old Academy students is having a field day. We are to stay here and watch out if one of the kids drifts off and catch it before it can get any farther." Kakashi was toeing off his sandals and letting his Jounin vest fall to the ground together with the bag he normally carried at the back of his belt. His right arm was tightly bandaged and the sling Sakura had ordered him to use stuffed in one of his pockets. "To say it without so many words: We are having a day off!" With these words Kakashi discarded his dark shirt and gloves and jumped right into the river.
When he surfaced again, facemask and headband clinging to his face and the bandage around his right arm a bit browner than before, Sasuke was looking down at him darkly. His pant legs and sandals were soaked through, thanks to Kakashi's jump. Then an evil smile stole its way on his face.
"How about a fight?" he asked calmly, stepping down from the bolder and shedding his shirt.
"That would be pretty unfair with no chakra for you, don't you think?" Kakashi mulled, bracing an elbow against the stony underground and letting the water wash over his lower back and legs.
"Oh, with you having only one functioning arm…" Sasuke trailed off, smirking down at Kakashi. "Or are you afraid I will beat you, old man?"
Kakashi snorted and pushed off the ground to let himself drift to the middle of the river. "In your dreams, brat."
-
To be fair Kakashi only used chakra when he was about to lose balance due to his right arm and he had to say he and Sasuke were evenly matched. But if Sasuke would have been able to use both his Sharingans and all the forbidden techniques he had learned from Orochimaru…well, let's just say Kakashi was happy the chakra seals were where they were.
Pushing off the slick underground Kakashi jumped back and delivered a roundhouse kick to Sasuke's stomach. Too low, too far to the left, his mind informed him when Sasuke curved his body around his foot with ease and tried to punch him square into the face. But he's surprising slow, too.
Flipping back, Kakashi tried not to slip on one of the slick stones. For a moment he struggled, tried to put out his right arm to steady himself and instead hit the water with a loud splash. Sasuke was a black blur moving in his direction and instinctively Kakashi rolled to his side and shielded his stomach and chest with his legs while he lashed out with his arms.
Stones dug into his bare back as Kakashi stared up at Sasuke in surprise. His right hand was hooked in one of the teen's trouser pockets, the other hand about to deliver a solid punch to parts of Sasuke's lower anatomy he better didn't punch if he didn't want to feel the Uchiha's holy wrath. One of Sasuke's hands was up to defend aforementioned body parts, the other had a death grip on the rim of Kakashi's mask. He could kill Kakashi in four different ways from this position.
"I win," the Uchiha breathed, eyes lightning up.
Kakashi blinked. Then growled in outrage and for a short second reminded Sasuke of a big, unhappy dog. "Why you? I am the winner!"
"Forget it, I am the one who has you in the worse situation," Sasuke said arrogantly.
"And this-" Kakashi waved his left arm about to punch Sasuke in certain vulnerable places around. "-isn't bad or what?"
"It wouldn't kill me," Sasuke replied.
Kakashi narrowed his eye. "Are you sure?"
Now it was time for Sasuke to narrow his eyes. "Don't you dare." Kakashi didn't listen. Sasuke stopped his punch just before it could reach its destination.
"That means war," he growled.
What followed could only be described as water wrestling. Limps whirled through the air, about half of the river was inhaled and then coughed back out and finally Kakashi was able to put a safe distance between them. They stared at each other, wiping water and blood from their chins.
"I still say I win," Sasuke panted, dark hair plastered to his cheeks and ears. Kakashi thought he saw red shimmering in the depths of Sasuke's eyes.
"And I say: In your dreams!" Kakashi replied firmly. He saw how Sasuke gritted his teeth in frustration in the subtle shift of his jaw and was prepared for the next series of punches Sasuke threw at him.
The slender needles pierced the water where Kakashi's neck had just been moments before. Shifting his focus in the blink of an eye from Sasuke to the shinobi hidden in the high trees to the side of the river, Kakashi snatched the needles and threw them back. They didn't hit flesh but the bark of the tree as the enemy had already moved on. Face hidden by a dark cloth with two holes for the eyes, the shinobi appeared on top of Kakashi. The long spear in his hand was aimed for Kakashi's heart but before it could meet its aim, Kakashi had already used his chidori with his left hand and jerked the spear away with his right arm. Blood coloured the water around him red, most of it from the enemy but some from Kakashi too. As Kakashi broke through the surface of the river he saw Sasuke struggling with a female shinobi to his right and two other shinobis moving in his direction from the left. Without hesitation Kakashi reached up and lifted the headband from his Sharingan.
-
"Really, the way they keep bugging us we could be S-ranked criminals with a sky-high bounty on our heads," Kakashi mused. Sasuke just shot him a cool look which told him that Sasuke probably had a bounty on his head with enough zeros on it ends to drive anyone crazy.
Four sodden wet forms lay between them, securely bound by strips of clothes Kakashi and Sasuke had torn from their shirts. The shinobi didn't have any signs on them which indicated from which country they were and Kakashi didn't remember any of their faces from the Bingo book.
"You can move your right arm," Sasuke pointed out while he tightened the bandage around his wrist where the kunochi had cut him open.
"Yep," Kakashi said happily. "I will go to the hospital so that they can see what caused it."
-
The silence between Sakura and Sasuke was awkward. Kakashi sat on the examination table, shirtless, while Sakura looked at his right arm and Sasuke leaned against the wall beside the door. Sakura tried her best to avoid Sasuke's eyes but when they meet, her green eyes shyly flickered away and she blushed a little.
"She grew into a remarkable woman," Sasuke said once the examination was over and the two of them were on their way home. "But please tell me she hasn't any crush on me anymore."
Kakashi glanced at him, swinging his right arm back and forth without any pain since months, and just eye-grinned at the Uchiha in answer. Sasuke groaned quietly. "At least the rest broke out of their fangirlism," he murmured quietly. Kakashi continued to smile, remembering the many pink and light blue envelops he had thrown out before Sasuke had seen them, and very nearly started chuckling but held it back. Maybe Sasuke should get the mail just once, and count all the letters addressed to him.
--------
I hope this chapter hasn't too many errors. I really tried to improve! And I beg for comments, as always!
Bye,
Sacral
