"I have been summoned."
Sasuke doesn't react at first because he is focused in his training, he thinks, he feels a second skin wash over his body. It prickles like it does when he fought with Naruto against Zabuza, knowing without knowing that the other boy was the cloned Shruiken. This is the same. He has a feel where Shiro is and will be, adjusts the genjutsu in tune with the other animal. A taste of what Kakashi is talking about when he lectures bonds and teamwork… that, until everything breaks.
Sasuke whips his head to his sensei with red eyes free-wheeling. "What."
Kakashi nods sadly as if actions were out of his hands, as if he weren't responsible, as if things 'couldn't be helped'. He has the audacity to shrug. Sasuke glowers. "I've been ordered a long-term mission. Two weeks."
Sasuke closes in on himself, mind calculating but he already knows the answer. Two weeks minus the time he has left equals two days. Two days before the finals of the Chuunin Exams start. Two days is before his match with Gaara of the Sand.
Two days just in time before he dies.
Sasuke tries to keep the frustration in, to school his face into a proper mask – like the ANBU that his brother was – but it's not working. He vents in breath, in-out-stuck-choke and Sasuke can't catch his air. There is a panting of stale oxygen that is part panic, part an attempt to calm himself. Bitter, short breaths that could instantly combust in a Katon… he could kill something, burn-him. Sasuke doesn't know how to process this feeling, this absolute, heart-wrenching detest.
At himself, he part-thinks, he's really too emotional. Too hopeful. Sasuke swallows thickly and he makes a note to beat the feeling out of him later.
"Then what do you suggest I do. Homework," he says bitterly, barely holding back the infernal bite and the screams. He was pissed and frustrated before but not like this, not this close. He shouldn't be surprised (though he is.)
Kakashi tells him what he should do in a monotone order, a long-term assignment, if not the last. He drones with his eye to the sky. When the man finally acknowledges him, finally engages with just what he is doing, he looks at his Sharingan with one dark eye lidded and dopey and empty. It's the color gray instead of its usual black, washed out and unrecognizable. The look scares him. "I apologize for the inconvenience," he says.
Liar.
Sasuke could laugh if it was funny and if it wasn't at his expense. Instead he keeps his mouth shut. Kakashi doesn't say anything either.
Shiro isn't good at staying focused. Without Kakashi to be here and regulate the training – the true alpha that he actually follows – the puppy doesn't bother to follow rules. He may even be deliberately disobeying, or whatever he thinks he's doing. Sasuke doesn't care the source reason, he just wants to end it.
"Seriously, what is it now?"
He doesn't know much about puppies and packs and betas but this, he thinks, would be classified as a 'temper tantrum'. Shiro grumbles curled up on the floor as he is, tail tucked in folded legs and nose in his paws. His ears are tufted thick, tan and melded close to his head. Sasuke sighs.
"Shiro." He crouches to where the ninken is, par on his level because maybe that'll help. He hopes. "I don't understand dog-speak."
He gets a huff for his honesty.
Sasuke pockets the kunai in his hand, he had it out for training but he guesses they aren't training anymore. Kakashi said that teamwork is everything, mandatory and imperative, and that he must work with the ninken in tandem. But what should he do when the ninken doesn't want to work with him?
(Two weeks.)
"Shiro, what's wrong?" he asks and he never asks. No one asks him either for that matter. The puppy tightens inward at the question, refusing the hand that Sasuke intended to slip in, maybe scratch his belly to distract him a little.
Smart dog.
"You don't want to do this anymore? Fine," Sasuke says as he seats himself where he is and chooses to ignore the dog any further. At his words Shiro peeks his furry head, perking his tail a-wagging.
Of course. Great, he could roll his eyes. Sasuke shakes his head. "Take a break. Run around. Pee or whatever - have fun," he waves him off because obviously this was the end-goal. Shiro chirps in response.
The sun is hidden in the clouds and the wind is slow. The shadows of the trees happen to reach right over his eyes. Good. With Shiro scampering off there's nothing he can do, he's already trained this morning (he still isn't getting anywhere). He might as well sleep.
When they come home it's a more chipper returning - Shiro who has been pushed at his sensory limits and his working mind patterns, his physical speed… but mostly been allowed to play. The ninken is happy. With energy to spare he runs to and fro bringing gifts to Sasuke's hand, only to go back and find further random knick knack. Sasuke doesn't mind, he throws whatever sticks he's been given and sometimes Shiro chases after them, and sometimes he don't.
(It's easy.)
On the other hand, it's also hard. The air is cold enough to inflame the both of their noses, Sasuke and Shiro, who promptly sneezes into furry paws. This is stupid.
Sasuke wipes the sweat out his eyes because his Sharingan is important and the water-salt burns. The heat of his body is sharp, an obvious furnace of pumping blood because he's the only being running this hot, he's the only one who has to do this. Homework. Kakashi will get his if he catches pneumonia.
Though the man won't even care, probably. Sasuke drops the thought.
It's too early and too cold, too exhausting to do this and succeed. But he has to try. "Earth Release: Fanged Art Pursuit," he says and Shiro is gone.
Sasuke runs.
It's a humming in the Earth louder and buzzing closer, nearer as Shiro comes. Sasuke speeds over the land. This is how they are bonded, through a thick crust of rock and dirt and grass, knowing without knowing where the other is. Shiro is surprisingly a patient dog. He doesn't act so quickly as to attack at the first opportunity and he doesn't so much as to make a twitch. The ninken likes to wait him out, to stalk and this Sasuke learns the hard way that his olfactory senses are good. Even through the cold, foggy air, he's a predator; he's a cat.
He's also too young to break through the frozen earth, to be quick enough. Too young to bite him very well anyway. Sasuke and Shiro have to keep trying.
Fourteen times. This homework is a joke, this homework is a lie, it's a betraying, Kakashi just wants to-
"Shiro, once more." The ninken grumbles because they've been practicing for days the same thing, not getting anywhere. Sasuke's just as frustrated as him. He's doing his best as 'mission captain', secondary alpha, not to let it get to him (and not to let it burn). Good ninjas don't allow emotions. He may hate this of Kakashi, hate what he's done and where he stands but Kakashi isn't here anyway and orders are orders.
Even if they are gripping at his hair, pulling at his teeth, itching under his skin so utterly stupid of a training. Even if this is useless against Gaara.
Earth Release for a Sand shinobi.
He makes the hand signs – tiger, snake, dragon, dog – and waits. There's got to be something better. And there is, right?
In the daytime, the Nakano Shrine isn't as looming. It's quiet and peaceful. The trees that surround the area are most of the same height and bright green in the wake of spring. They sway with the wind in sync, rustle their leaves like hands clapping and the sound is inspiring. The entrance is red and gold - and a little white, there is a placard of a fan at the top. Sasuke follows the steps but he's done this before, having been here many times.
Ever since the massacre, the place is deserted. The Nakano Shrine may be on Uchiha grounds but in its heyday it was open to all public: inner Konohans and foreigners alike. Now no one comes except him. Sasuke would take the time to maintain the place but it's uncommonly huge, sacred, he wasn't allowed when his father conducted clan meetings in there.
(And his brother too, he was allowed.)
But no one is here anymore to stop him from entering the double-gated doors, from by-passing the black Uchiha stone. He thinks the ghosts understand. Without his family around there's no one to help him with his Sharingan. No Kakashi. So he must go back to the source where his brother once directed him; he needs more power. Sasuke will train in this.
It's become a habit. He likes to visit. This is the only place that is familiar, that is family even though it was by the words of his "brother". An inanimate shrine that tells him more than anyone could, than anyone did… and he's learning. He's finally a real Uchiha.
All the secrets of the Sharingan stored in one place, this is where, this is power, maybe he can win-
Sasuke follows the laws on stone and trains.
It's not immediate truthfully, it takes a while. But he sticks to this path because… that homework was stupid, that training wouldn't help, Shiro would die and he will die. He can't. Sasuke trains himself here with the ghosts directing him and it's been a week's investment. Four days left.
He's tired and it's still morning, if only a little past 11. In his bed, Shiro naps. The dog's never questioned him for them teamwork-training less, then again, he's a dog. Maybe the ninken doesn't care. Shiro follows him into the shrine a few times, investigative then bored, scratching at the wall to remind him to open the latch. Otherwise no opinion, only him occasionally sleeping in while Sasuke goes out to train.
That was today. Sasuke peeks him napping before he resolutely steels himself. He doesn't want to check because he doesn't want to be disappointed, he doesn't want to disappoint his family. But really, he needs to see if he's bore fruit.
So Sasuke stands in front of his bathroom mirror, his skin is pallid, heavy bags underneath his eyes. His hair is oily and matted with sweat, and he smells like old dirt and the morning. He's still out of breath, hard panting from running to get to here, from his training.
(But Sasuke was faster, he could see the crisp of the leaves on the way home, please,)
When he directs what's left of his chakra flow – instantaneous, instinctive – black becomes red. And there in his right eye, he holds three tomoe.