You stand in front of the big, dark building, your eyes focused on the symbol engraved in the stone above the double doors leading inside. You have the same symbol sewn to the sleeve of the shirt you're currently wearing. Your hands clench in fists and you squeeze your eyes shut. You take a deep breath. I'm not a coward, you think. I can do this.
It's been two weeks since the conversation you had with Naruto about your parents' killer. For the most part, you managed to push it to the back of your mind but with the one year anniversary of your parents deaths draws closer, you finally decide that it's time you get some haven't told Itachi or Naruto or Sakura. You left your phone in your car because for the past half and hour, Naruto and Sakura have called you twice. Each.
You take a deep breath and step towards the door. You walk inside and head straight for the reception. You feel eyes on you but you ignore them. You stand in front of the reception and clear your throat.
The woman behind the desk looks up at you and raises her eyebrows. "Hello. How can I help you?"
"I'm here to visit a prisoner." You say curtly. "Yakushi Kabuto."
The woman's eyebrows raise even higher up her forehead. "Yakushi Kabuto is one of the highest security kept prisoners. You need to have a special permission to visit him."
"I do." You say and you purposely raise your hands and put them on the desk. The woman's eyes are drawn to the symbol on your sleeve almost immediately and her eyes quickly look up to meet yours.
"I see." She mutters quietly. "I'll check." She says and dials a number.
You push away from the desk and look around. There are two policemen standing at either side of the door. Neither of them is a member of your family. There are three other policemen standing by the vending machine, talking in hushed voices. You notice that one of them looks at you every so often and frown slightly. He looks vaguely familiar and he has the basic features of your family. Dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin. It's not enough for you to be certain if he's a member of your extended family and you can't see if he has the symbol on his uniform.
"Uchiha Sasuke." Your attention is drawn to the woman behind the desk. She puts a sheet of paper on the desk, a form, you realise, and hands you a pen. "Please, fill this. After that, you'll be allowed to visit the prisoner."
You nod curtly. You don't ask how she knows your name. It's probably your uncle who she had talked to just now.
You move towards the padded benches and you just notice a girl around your age sitting there, looking extremely bored.
You know in an instant that she's not from around here. She probably lives in the city.
She's holding the same form as you and you notice that it's only half filled. She's playing with the pen in her hands, her fingernails are painted pure black. She's wearing ripped clothes and a leather jacket and she has a lot of black around her eyes. She looks extremely thin and pale, and as you sit two seats away from her, you catch a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
You feel her watching you as you write your name down along with your date of birth. You look up and raise your eyebrows in silent question.
She pops a gum balloon loudly and continues to stare at you silently, chewing her gum. You notice that her red hair is a complete mess on one side of her head and you shake your head. She smirks.
"Who are you here to visit?" She asks. Her voice is low and husky, the completely opposite of Sakura's even, sweet voice.
"A bad guy." You don't know why you answer her. Usually you ignore strangers who speak to you. Especially girls, who have the annoying tendency to try to hit on you.
She smirks but there is something dark about that smirk. "Isn't everyone here a bad guy, sweetheart?"
You narrow your eyes slightly. "I don't think it's any of your business who I'm visiting actually."
She shrugs. "Fine, suit yourself." She pauses and then adds. "I'm visiting my father." She smirks at you, a slightly mocking glint in her dark eyes. "He's a bad guy. The worst, actually."
"Why are you visiting him then?" You find yourself asking.
She shrugs and taps the pen against her bare knee, exposed from the wide crack on her black jeans. "He's dying, apparently. His last wish is to see me." She frowns and looks down at her half-filled form. "I don't really want to see him. I came here because I wanted to tell him how much I hate him and how much of a failure he was as a father and a human being. But I think he already knows that." She licks her red lips and looks at you. "What about you?"
"It's still not any of your business." You respond and return your attention on your form.
"I told you why I'm here. It's not fair if you tell me too."
"I didn't ask you." You point out.
"How rude." She says but there is not much feeling in her statement. In fact, she speaks in monotone through the whole exchange. "I'm Karin."
"And I'm not interested." You respond.
She snorts and you look at her. "I'm not hitting on you, pretty boy. Don't flatter yourself. I'm just trying to be polite. Not much to do here, to be honest."
"Then leave."
"I will." She says and smirks at you again. "I'll wait for you to finish visiting your mysterious prisoner so you can drive me home."
You blink and stare. She stares back at you, the corners of her lips pulled into a smirk. "What?"
She sighs in an exasperated manner and runs her long, thin fingers through her messy hair. "My ride is gone. Won't you be a good little gentleman and give me a ride home?"
You snort. "What gave you the idea I was a gentleman?"
She shrugs and gives you another smirk. You have a feeling she substitutes her smirks for her smiles. Something you two have in common. "You just give off a vibe of good upbringing, I guess."
"I give off a vibe?" You asks, chuckling. She chuckles too and flicks her wrist dismissively.
"You know what I mean. So, you go talk to your bad guy and I'll wait here for you."
"Fine." You say with a sigh of defeat. You don't know why you agree. Under normal circumstances you wouldn't have. But the girl reminds you of you somehow; the smirk, the angry look in her dark eyes, the way she is sitting and speaking. Her presence doesn't bothers you nearly as much as most of the girls you've met.
She sighs, too, and then, her lips form a small smile. "Good. I was going crazy without a fag."
You can't help the disapproving look that appears on your face. A couple of years ago, Sakura gave you and Naruto a throughout lecture on why cigarettes were bad for people, after catching Naruto smoking with some idiotic upperclassmen. Needless to say, Naruto hasn't touched a cigarette since then.
"Oh, shut up." She snaps, even though you haven't said anything. "Get on with it, will you?"
"I might reconsider taking you with me." You remind her. "Stop being so rude."
"You won't." She says, sounding extremely confident. "You can't leave a girl in the middle of nowhere with no means of getting back home, can you? My family might worry."
You turn away from her and return to your form. She is right. You can't just leave her here knowing she can't get home. Of course, she can always call the person who'd driven here to pick her up but you don't feel like being an asshole. It's silent for the next couple of minutes as you finish your form. You stand up and walk over to the reception desk, putting the paper down. The woman takes it without looking at you and puts it in a folder.
Then she looks up, but her eyes aren't focused on you. "Isamu, Katsuo, please escort Uchiha-san to interrogation room 3."
Two of the policemen by the vending machine move towards you, leaving the one that looks like your relative there. You notice the symbol on his uniform, sewn on the breast pocket and looked up to meet his eyes. His face is impassive, something your family is unnaturally talent in, and he nods at you in recognition. You nod back, even though you can't remember who the man is and follow the two policemen through a set of double doors.
They lead you down a couple of hallways until you reach stairs that led downwards. One of the policemen flicks a switch and the staircase is suddenly showered in dim light. You follow them down into a cool hallway. The same policemen flicks another switch and the dim lightning reveals a seemingly endless corridors with doors positioned unevenly along both sides.
The two policemen stop in front of a door marked by a silvery 3 and turn to you.
"We'll ask you to not attack the prisoner." One of them, blue-eyed and blonde but strangely, he doesn't remind you of Naruto at all. "No matter what he tells you, you are to remain calm and professional. If you feel like you're losing your grip, knock on the door three times and we'll be in there in a second."
"Keep calm, Uchiha-san." The other man tells you. He is about your height and his features are kinder and softer than the other man's, as is his voice. "Yakushi knows how to push the wrong buttons. It won't be in your favour to let him get to you, or let him know he had gotten to you."
You nod curtly. Don't they know who you are? Of course you'll keep your cool no matter what. You're an Uchiha and Uchihas don't lost composure, even in the presence of their parents' killer.
The blonde policeman nods. "If you're ready then." He plunges a key in the keyhole and you hear a click. Then he pushes the heavy door open and steps aside to make way for you to go in.
Your hands clench inside your pocket and you step inside the room, your entire body arched in a defensive stance. It's very cold inside and dark, the only light coming from the flickering light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling, right above a metal chair where a man sat, chained from head to toe. You take a look around; three of the walls are stone but the one opposite of you, behind the chair, is covered in metal. There is nothing inside beside the chair, the prisoner and you.
The skinny man sitting on the chair lifts his head and his dark eyes meet yours. He looks worse than what you remember of him in the court room. His face is thinner, the pale, nearly translucent skin stretching over the bones of his skull. His eyes are sunken in their sockets and surrounded by circles and purple-ish bruises but the eyes themselves are alight with the same fervent, possibly mad light you remember.
His chapped lips stretch into a smile. "Sasuke-kun, isn't it? How delightful." He chuckles and then he coughs, his skinny body shaking as much as it can while being chained. "To what do I own the pleasure?"
"You owe me some answers." You say tightly, swallowing thickly. The wave of emotions that hits you overwhelms you for a moment and you blink rapidly. There's a lump lodged in your throat and your stomach is churning unpleasantly. You have a feeling that even if you tried, you won't be able to uncurl your fingers. You feel so incredibly angry that you have to force yourself to stay motionless, lest you lunged at the guy. It's painful to see him standing there; alive and breathing while your parents have long given their last breath.
You want to know why he'd done it. He had refused to say anything in the court room or to his lawyer, which had earned him a even harsher sentence than the one they'd prepared for him.
"Do I now?" He asks idly, cocking his head to the side in a thoughtful manner. "Are you sure you want to know the answers, Sasuke-kun? The truth is not very pretty in most cases. It can hurt you."
You grit your teeth and decided to ignore him and just get to the point. "Why did you do it?"
Kabuto throws his head back and laughs. The sound is weak and hoarse and causes him to cough but the smile he directs at you after he's recovered is nothing short of gleeful. "How refreshing. You're quite straightforward, aren't you, Sasuke-kun? Most unlike your parents, I must say. They weren't quite honest, were they? They always spoke in such riddles, never giving a straight answer. Your brother is like them, I can tell. He knows how to speak prettily. But you, you're not like them, are you? I can tell."
"Just answer my question." You snap tersely, narrowing your eyes in dangerous manner.
Kabuto chuckles again. "Ah, you're impatient too, I see. Well, if you insist." He meets your gaze and his lips stretch in a wide smile, a smile that gives you a sick, foreboding feeling in the pit of the stomach. "To be quite truthful, and you'll find I always am, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I admit that I don't regret their deaths all that much. Your mother was after me for a while, never knew when to give up and your father was way too ambitions and sneaky to be let to roam free. Who knows, maybe if I hadn't killed them, he might have ended up the president. Now that's a truly scary thought, won't you agree? Your father wasn't fit to lead people. He didn't quite meet the requirements. I think he had a bit too much selfishness in him, wouldn't you agree?"
You grit your teeth so hard it hurts and you take a deep breath to calm the erratic beating of your heart. Kabuto shuts his mouth and lets his word sink in, and sink they do.
They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is why they died? Because they were in the wrong fucking place in the wrong fucking time? They died because of some stupid coincidence? Why kind of sick joke is this? Like it isn't enough his parents were taken away from him long before their time but to know that it happened for nothing?
It is just too much to take in.
You look up and the glare you send Kabuto is one of pure, unadulterated hatred. His smiles back at you, like your righteous anger amuses him somehow.
"You.." You growl. You remember the policemen's warning about keeping your cool and your scoff at their warnings. Now you know what they were talking about. It isn't just Kabuto's words, it's the way he is looking at you and sitting; insolently, unapologetically — like he isn't a killer who'd killed two innocent people, and did experiments on countless others. He's smiling like he doesn't know he's a monster.
And that pisses you off more than anything you can imagine.
You raise a shaking arm and knock on the door three times.
"Oh, leaving so soon, Sasuke-kun? What a pity. I was starting to enjoy our conversation. It's the most stimulating conversation I had in a while. I'm afraid the company here is just dreary."
Your back tenses and your right hand clenches into fists. Just as you spin around, ready to march up to the bastard and sock him in the face, the door opens and the blonde policeman's stern blue eyes focus on you. That helps you calm down and you relax your stance.
You push past the two policemen without saying anything and march towards the exit. Your entire body is shaking with suppressed rage, you feel your eyes stinging and your throat hurts as you try to swallow the lump in your throat. You hate it so much. It's weakness, the emotion you're showing.
You storm in the entrance area and Karin jumps on her feet, her lips forming a smirk. "Shall we go, then?"
You storm past her without saying anything and you breathe somehow easier once you're outside. You head for your car, one of the few ones parked on the parking lot.
"Oi, what's up with you?"
You glance over your shoulder and see Karin exiting the building, heading straight for you. You purse your lips and don't answer. She is a stranger, after all.
"Are you still going to drive me back to the city?" She asks instead of pushing the subject.
For a second, you think of saying no but your good manners win over your temper and you snap at her to get in the car. She does and once she's in, you're off the parking lot and down the street.
"Nice car you have here." She says, patting the leather seat.
You don't answer.
"Whoa, what did that guy did to you, sunshine? Are you going to be like that through the whole ride?"
"Just shut up, okay?" You say. "I need some piece and quiet."
She purses her lips and crosses her arms, looking away from you. You relax in your seat and relish in the silence that follows. Then your phone rings.
You glance down and Sakura's smiling face greets you on the screen. You frown and look away.
"Aren't you gonna get that?" Karin asks, irritation seeping in her voice.
"No." You snap back and when she reaches for the phone, you slap her hand out of the way and grab it, dropping it between your legs. "And I'm the rude one?"
Karin shrugs, the familiar smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "Was that your girlfriend?"
You twitch. "No. Stop asking questions."
"Jesus, you're no fun, seriously." She shakes her head and puts her forehead against the window. "Wake me up when you get to the main square."
"Fine." You say, not at all offended by her accession of you.
The rest of the ride is spend in silence.