Sasuke had only ever been on two boats before, one on the way to help that irritating bridgebuilder, and the other when they were going to the Land of Snow. He had to admit, he didn't really care for the experience. At least he could walk on water now, but since he had no idea where they were going, it seemed like a terrible idea to leave the ship.
Sifu had commissioned the boat after a quick stop to Mifune-san, and was doing all the navigation personally. Even the crew didn't know where they were going, which was a constant source of worry for all of them. Sifu wasn't concerned, though. He obviously knew exactly where they were headed, and had been in command on a boat before.
Just who the hell was Sifu, anyway?
Sasuke grumbled low curses to himself as the boat rocked against the waves on the ocean. It certainly wasn't helping his appetite, he'd barely been able to get anything down since they boarded the stupid heap of metal. Sifu practically had to force-feed him soup every night, or Sasuke wouldn't have eaten at all.
They'd already been on the boat for a few months, and still Sasuke hadn't seen any indication that they were nearing their destination. He hoped it would end soon, or he'd probably try to jump ship and take his chances with the sharks.
He heard someone coming down on the deck near him, and slowly turned his head, trying not to aggravate his nausea.
"Sifu" he greeted weakly, clinging onto the railing with white knuckles. Maybe if he held on hard enough, he'd stop wanting to hurl into the water.
Sifu looked over him calmly, and held out his hand. "Let's get you inside" he gestured back to the cabin they had been sharing "you're likely to get even more ill staying out in the cold like this."
Sasuke refused the hand his sensei offered him, and stumbled towards the cabin. He lost his footing a bit, and Sifu caught him. He wanted to protest, but honestly he was far too cold, tired, and hungry to make the effort. Sifu carefully helped him into the cabin and onto his bed, where Sasuke indicated that he needed a bucket again.
Sifu retrieved the bucket from the corner of the room and Sasuke released what little contents were in his stomach for what felt like the millionth time on this trip. When he finally felt like nothing else would come up, he dropped the bucket onto the floor and rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow.
"We'll be at our destination in a few hours" Sifu said kindly, placing his warm hand on Sasuke's back, and he wriggled a bit under it. It felt nice, the ship and ocean were so, so cold.
After a long moment, he processed Sifu's statement, and maneuvered his head out to eye him suspiciously. "Really, we're almost there?" He couldn't believe it. He was almost sure he was going to die here on this boat, cold, hungry, and angry.
"Mmmmhmmmm" Sifu hummed in the affirmative, and Sasuke completely relaxed his muscles, taking in the warmth and comfort of his bed. Just a few more hours, and he'd be on land again. Of course, there was a return trip involved, but hopefully by then he'd at least have firebending and a decent indication of how long the hellish trip would last.
He closed his eyes and dreamed of warm ground beneath his feet.
Iroh looked over at his visibly relieved student and smiled. Sasuke obviously was not meant for sailing, but after they left here it seemed unlikely he would have to be on a boat again.
Sasuke was reclining on the ground, leaned up against a tree. He was sifting sand lazily through his fingers in his right hand, and his left hand held a mug of soup he'd been drinking. It would probably be best to spend a day or two here on the beach, letting Sasuke regain his strength before making their way inland. The crew was busily setting up camp on the beach, and were obeying his instructions to remain only on the beach. Luckily, Mifune-san had recommended a very professional crew who seemed to have no intentions of disobeying any of his orders.
He let Sasuke recover on the beach for a few days, checking up on him intermittently. Sasuke seemed content to lie on the beach under the sun, only returning to the ship when no one else was available to bring him food.
After the third day, he directed Sasuke to change his clothes and gather his equipment, and they set off towards the ruins. Sasuke was quiet and contemplative for the journey, stopping only occasionally to look at intricate carvings. Iroh saw him making tracings of the carvings occasionally, which was new. Sasuke had never demonstrated interest in earlier civilizations or cultures before, but then again Iroh had never taken him to any ruins before. He hadn't even noted any in his travels through the Lands of Iron, Tea, or Sound. Perhaps the continent had been unpopulated until relatively recently, but Iroh couldn't be sure.
He waited patiently for Sasuke to retrieve another rubbing, and tuck it into his pack. "Ready to continue?" Sasuke looked up at him and nodded, situating the pack on his back.
It took a few days to reach the occupied part of the city, and Iroh was almost surprised at how friendly the Sun Warriors could be. He had forgotten the inherent warmth they gave, being so connected to the life-giving powers of fire.
"You have been here before, Dragon of the West" a Sun Warrior noted as they examined himself and Sasuke. "Did you tell anyone of this place?"
Iroh shook his head, and put his hand on Sasuke's shoulder. "No, I navigated the ship myself, and provided the location to no one. My student here was not informed of where we were coming or what we would find here."
The Sun Warrior nodded, and admitted them to the ziggurat.
Iroh turned to Sasuke, and put his hands on both shoulders. "I do not know if they will allow me to come with you, but believe me when I tell you that you are worthy of any task they may set before you, and will come out victorious."
Sasuke straightened, and looked Iroh directly in the eye. "I will not fail you, Sensei."
The Sun Warriors did not, in fact, admit Iroh to come in with his student. They directed him to wait while Sasuke went through the trials alone. Iroh tried to take solace in the fact that Sasuke had practiced the Dancing Dragon form to perfection, but he couldn't help but worry.
On the other hand, Sasuke was bound to do anything he was set on. Iroh smiled as he reassured himself, and leaned back to gaze thankfully at the top of the mountain where he knew Shaw and Ran would be waiting for his determined student.
Sasuke was thus far unimpressed. The Sun Warriors had presented him a flame from the "first fire" which was pretty interesting, and then essentially told him to work out his glutes by climbing up a ridiculous flight of stairs. He climbed the stairs carefully, making sure that his flame did not waver. It was a long and painful process. If he hadn't had a flame, he would have run up the stairs at his usual speed and been there an hour ago.
He grumbled to himself, but held the flame close to him to keep the wind from snuffing it. Sifu wouldn't have brought him here and made him suffer through a long trip on a boat for a jaunt up a mountain, and he would not disgrace his sensei.
The Sun Warriors had called Sifu the "Dragon of the West", and Sasuke was very eager to ask his sensei about that particular nickname. Sifu had said that he was well known in his home country, was this it? He spared a quick glance back at the ruined city behind him, and dismissed the idea. Sifu didn't grow up here, he was from somewhere less tribal. He couldn't imagine Sifu in one of those loincloths.
Then he did, and started to choke a bit on his laughter. No, Sifu had obviously been here before, but he wasn't from here. But he had thought of this place with a great deal of respect, and so Sasuke would too.
When he finally reached the top, he saw two caves. No one had told him about this part. He stood at the top, puzzling as to which path to take. Then he finally saw what he thought must be lights coming from both of the caves, but as the lights grew closer he considered holding his fingers out and screaming "Kai" at the top of his lungs. He activated his Sharingan, but what he was seeing evidently was entirely too real.
"Dragons." His mouth moved without his knowledge. "Sifu sent me to find dragons."
Two dragons, specifically. One red and one blue, flying through the sky. When they noted him, they flew towards him and began to make what he could only define as a dance.
'Oh. Duh.' He thought, irritated with himself for not realizing that Iroh had already taught him the move that he needed for this particular situation.
He quickly aligned himself with the dragons, and began going through the last kata that Sifu had taught him, unimaginatively titled "Dancing Dragon". When he reached the end of the kata, he noted to his ultimate horror that the dragons flew closer to him and opened their mouths.
He didn't particularly want his last words to be, "Oh, shit", but there it was. Fire streamed from their mouths, but it was unlike any other fire Sasuke had ever seen. It was a symphony of color, warm and light and loving on his face. He was surprised to find that dying evidently wasn't nearly as bad as he'd imagined, when he realized he wasn't dying at all.
The dragons stopped their torrents of flame and flew back into the caves, even as Sasuke reached out his arm to them.
The heat on his face was gone, but he still felt a crackling warmth in his chest. Sasuke cautiously put his hands on his torso, but there was no fire on him. He appeared to be totally fine, to his surprise.
So what had changed?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was time to see if this had been a colossal waste of time, or not. He didn't want to go down and disappoint Sifu by not succeeding, after he'd gone through all this trouble for him.
He pushed out, and went to the first move of the Dancing Dragon again. Instantly, the warmth from his chest shot out and covered his arms and hands. He went to the second position, and was gratified to feel that the warmth then extended to his legs.
He opened his eyes as he went to the third position, and was almost terrified. Flames were licking up and down all the surfaces of his body. He punched with his right arm, and flames shot out five feet in front of him.
If Sasuke were the baka, he'd be shouting and jumping and throwing flames in front of anyone stupid enough to get within a mile of him. But he wasn't. He was Sasuke Uchiha, the last of his clan, an avenger.
He fell down on his knees and cried instead. He finally had a chance at killing Itachi. As he wept, the flames receded from his arms and legs, curling up into his chest in a comfortable ball.
Sasuke cried until he couldn't cry anymore, and then shakily stood again. If he had to show weakness, at least it was on a deserted mountaintop. If anyone had seen him at all, it was two reclusive dragons, and he knew they would share his pain if they even cared at all. Sifu had told him how the Fire Nation had hunted and killed all of the dragons they could find, for what appeared to be no reason at all.
These two were likely the last of their kind. They were more Sasuke's kin than almost anyone he'd ever met. And they had shared their knowledge and gift with him, whether it was because they sympathized with his cause or because they acknowledged his worth, he didn't care. Either option was more than he could have ever asked for.
He squared his shoulders and turned back to the stairs. This time, he didn't have to go slowly, he had another dragon he didn't want to keep waiting.
When Iroh looked up to see his normally disgruntled student beaming at him, he thought he may have been dreaming. That wasn't a look that normally occupied Sasuke's face, and even when it did, he did his level best to hide it from sight.
"I did it, Sensei."
That answered that, then. Iroh finally let all of the tension fall out of his shoulders, and wrapped Sasuke in a spine-crushing hug. "I'm so very proud of you, Sasuke" he choked out, and felt Sasuke's arms hesitantly wrap around his back, too.
"I feel like I should ask these people if they know they're living under a couple of dragons" Sasuke whispered, and Iroh couldn't help but laugh, pulling away and wiping a stray tear from his eye.
Sasuke couldn't be that clueless, could he? He looked up to see Sasuke still smiling back at him, and he entirely lost it. Sasuke, his angry, angsty, emotionally constipated and fun-hating student had made a joke.
Iroh immediately resolved to write this in his journal to celebrate the occurrence's anniversary.
Iroh ended the day's lessons with a smile, and beckoned Sasuke closer.
"You did very well today. I am glad to see that the soreness on your shoulder is gone."
Sasuke just looked confused. "Shoulder soreness?"
"You were always rubbing at that spot behind your neck" Iroh demonstrated for him, and he could see comprehension dawn on Sasuke's face. "I thought maybe the dragons used some healing fire on you, or maybe you were less stressed."
"Maybe…" Sasuke grumbled, turning his back towards Iroh and beckoning with his arm. "Shishou, would you check the back of my neck and see if something is there?"
Iroh felt like he was missing something major, but acquiesced. He pushed Sasuke's collar down a bit, and examined between his student's shoulders. Iroh didn't know what Sasuke was expecting, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that Iroh could see. "No, there's nothing there that I can see" Iroh said placidly, letting the collar straighten back into its normal position. "You were expecting something to be there?"
Sasuke shifted and pulled away, nervously brushing his fingers against the spot in question. He took a few steps, and turned back around to face Iroh.
Iroh was growing rather concerned. What would worry Sasuke like this? Unfortunately, asking the boy would be self-defeatist in nature. Sasuke didn't take prying well, and would very easily shut himself off completely. He would open up eventually, but Iroh had to force his questions down into his stomach, that coiled in on itself and hardened like a rock. He still didn't like seeing Sasuke this upset.
"Orochimaru…" Sasuke mumbled evasively, and Iroh tried not to seem too eager for him to finish his sentence. He carefully maintained a blank face, and hoped against hope that this once, Sasuke would be a bit forthcoming "He put a seal on me. He said it would give me power, and it did, but it felt like poison and it made me so angry…"
"Ah" after reading the information Mifune-san had obtained from his corpse (and Iroh really didn't want to think too much about that), Iroh wasn't even slightly surprised that the monster had experimented upon Sasuke. Come to think of it, the report had mentioned something about strange seals covering Orochimaru's body.
Iroh nodded slowly, and noted that Sasuke was pointedly staring at the ground. "When was the last time you used it?" Iroh asked delicately, taking care to seem as non-threatening as possible.
"Almost a year ago, now" Sasuke said shortly, "Orochimaru liked to see me use it, but I'd only been with him a month before…" 'before you electrocuted him so badly his ancestors could feel it', went unsaid.
Iroh hummed again, signaling to Sasuke that he was deep in thought. Sasuke shifted a bit from foot to foot, obviously worried that Iroh was going to be upset with him. But Iroh wasn't angry. Sasuke hadn't used it in all the time he'd been teaching him, and he seemed to know what it did. Maybe the dragons burnt the poisonous mark out, or the inner fire he'd been given rejected the seal. It was likely they'd never know how it happened, but Iroh was glad it was gone.
"Well" he said lightly, turning to the ship with his nice, warm bed in it, "if the dragons burnt it off you, they must have known how much it pained you. Do you think you need its power anymore?"
He waited for a response, and to his immense relief he received one. "No, Shishou Sifu, I do not. I do not need the gifts of poisonous snakes to reach my goals."
Not exactly the answer Iroh had been hoping for, but he didn't expect Sasuke to entirely open up about his feelings ever. The boy wasn't exactly a wordsmith on the best of days, in any case.
But the sentiment was good, and that's what counted.
"Come, Sasuke" Iroh calmly began walking back in the direction of their ship, "we have much training to do tomorrow. And we leave for the Land of Iron again in two days' time, it would be best if we did not waste the time we have."
There was no reply, but he distinctly heard light-footed steps following his own.
Sasuke didn't know how to describe it, but he felt… lighter, maybe? Than when he had gone up those stairs with the first fire. Colors seemed a bit brighter, and he didn't feel quite so cold and isolated all the time. Was this how he had felt before the curse seal?
No, probably not. He felt better than before the curse seal. Then, he'd been a weak, lonely boy with no family, with constant nightmares and a paralyzing fear of getting close to anyone. He didn't particularly care for his teammates at first, but the more time they had spent together, the closer he had found himself. And if he grew close to them, they were a liability. Itachi could easily come and find and kill anyone he grew attached to, he had already demonstrated that he would when he came and put Kakashi Sensei in a coma, and tried to capture Naruto.
Sasuke had understood how fixated Itachi was on his isolation even before he'd placed him under that genjutsu. The nightmares after that were even worse, Itachi had shown Sasuke how he'd slaughtered everyone else in their clan, not just their parents. Sasuke had ended up counting the number of people, and wasn't surprised that every single clan member had been accounted for. He'd obsessed over their names and faces, terrified that he'd forget any one of them.
Now, the nightmares weren't completely gone, but they weren't as vivid and didn't occur as often. In fact, if he got enough sun, he slept the whole night through uninterrupted, even on this kami-forsaken boat. He was still afraid that Itachi would find and hurt Sifu, but his shishou could take care of himself.
And Sasuke didn't intend to let Itachi get that close this time.
But strangely, Sasuke found his thoughts drifting more and more to happier times, when his otouto had been so kind to him. He couldn't quite reconcile the brother he'd worshipped with this cold mass murderer, no matter how hard he tried. Before he'd just written it off as inconvenient, and concentrated on getting revenge for his clan.
Now that wasn't so easy. Sifu encouraged him to think and meditate, which forced him to confront these conflicting thoughts and feelings. Life had been much simpler when Sasuke could just relegate his brother to the role of "emotionless monster", but this was much more complicated.
Sasuke was still sure that Itachi needed to be dealt with, but he couldn't quite bear to hate him anymore. Hating his brother quickly turned into hating himself for remembering loving him, and Sifu had advised that kind of thinking led only to despair and madness.
So maybe he didn't have the mentality needed to hunt down Itachi and kill him in cold blood. But that didn't mean Sasuke couldn't protect the things and people he might care about. He would still need to be strong for that, and it would feel less like he was cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Sasuke stretched out on the deck of the ship, feeling the sunlight embrace the skin on his face, and the warm wooden deck on his back. He could see the heat of the sun, even through his closed eyelids. It was amazing how different the trip back to the Land of Iron was from the trip to the Sun Temple. No seasickness, no dizziness. Just spending his days training, or sprawled out in the sunlight (and sometimes training by napping in sunlight). It was even more pleasant than before, and Sasuke could feel his inner fire replenishing from the exposure. If this was what Iroh had always felt when he napped outside, Sasuke almost couldn't blame him for wanting to spend so much time doing it.
Incidentally, he finally had something in common with the Uchiha nin-cats, though Sasuke thought that had rather more to do with general feline laziness than any affinity with fire.
He could probably find out, but that contract was probably lost, or buried in a vault on the Uchiha property somewhere. In Fire Country. In Konoha.
It seemed unlikely that he'd ever be able to go back there now. Even though he wasn't with Orochimaru now, he'd certainly left with him, and that's all the new Hokage was likely to see. He probably had a bounty on his head by now, and he figured the only people who'd care to see him were the baka, Sakura, and that Yamanaka girl, maybe. None of which had any say as to whether he lived just long enough to ensure the Uchiha bloodline and was sent to die in T&I.
Even though the deck was bright and warm, Sasuke felt himself shudder involuntarily at that idea. Ibiki had been a terror during the Chuunin exams, and he couldn't imagine he was any more pleasant at his day job.
No, he'd live out his days happily anywhere that wasn't Konoha, thank you.
Besides, Sifu was only of the only people Sasuke didn't find incredibly annoying. No sense in making him live alone in the desolate wasteland that was the Land of Iron.
"Land ahead!" he heard someone calling out above him, and Sasuke smiled to himself. Finally, after an eight month long trip, he'd be back in the Land of Iron with real food again. He could even stomach ramen with Naruto, now.
On second thought, no. No he couldn't.