"Kakashi!"
The cry went up into the night. The wind swayed through the trees on the front lawns. The small house sat squatly between two taller houses. Even the tree was a small maple, dwarfed by the oaks on the lawns on either side.
Sasuke wanted to throw rocks, maybe hurl a goddamn boulder through the teacher's front window. He leaned against Iruka's car, glaring at the house, wanting to burn it down with his anger.
Movement. Sakura and Sai stopped shouting; Ino and Iruka stopped hollering. An upstairs window slid up, and Kakashi peered out of his squat little house and peered at them.
"Kakashi!" Iruka said. "Orochimaru took Naruto. We need your help!"
"Orochimaru?" Kakashi said. "Isn't he dead?"
"You know he's still around!" Sasuke snapped, coming onto the lawn and stalking towards the house. "He's kicking around that crumbling castle of his and now he's got Naruto! So get down here!"
"Sasuke-" Iruka said.
"He's got Naruto?" Kakashi asked, leaning onto one elbow.
"That's what we said!" Sasuke shouted.
"Well, I don't know what we're going to do about that. Not something worth getting out of bed for."
"Excuse me?"
"I don't know how to get to Orochimaru, and since I'm a lost cause I should be getting back to sleep."
"What the hell are you talking about? Orochimaru's castle is in the forest!"
"So drive there."
"We did."
"And you found just an old crumbling castle? No Orochimaru?"
Sasuke said nothing.
"Just old ruins," Iruka said. "I don't know how to get to Orochimaru's world."
Kakashi shrugged. "What makes you think I do?"
Sasuke couldn't believe this. "What do we have to do to get you down here? Smash your car? We've got a tire iron in the trunk. Why don't I take it and smash your car up?"
"Oh no," Kakashi said lazily. "Not my Honda."
"Sasuke-" Iruka warned.
But Sasuke had already taken the tire iron out of Iruka's trunk and was advancing on Kakashi's car.
"Don't, Sasuke," Ino said. "This won't help."
"It'll help plenty," Kakshi said. "I have an excellent insurance policy on that wreck."
"I'm going to do it," Sasuke said, facing the teacher.
"Here's a question for the class. Why would Orochimaru want Naruto in the first place?"
Sasuke fell silent.
Kakashi watched him intently. "It's not like Orochimaru would have much need for the fox-demon. So why Naruto?"
Sasuke forced himself to meet Kakashi's eye. "I don't know."
"But that's what I'd like to find out, Kakashi," Iruka said. "I need your help."
Kakashi turned his gaze onto Iruka. "All right. Let me grab my coat. But we'll still need to find someone who knows more about this sort of thing than I do."
Sasuke nodded. "I think I might know someone."
ooo
Sometimes it got so bad that Sasuke would find a quiet place to sit and fantasize about suicide. It was hard; you had to be in a certain state of mind to really think about offing yourself, and he could never get there. instead he floated about in a sort of fugue state, unhappy to be alive and alone. During the winter he wanted to just lie down in the snow and not get up. During the summer he wanted to throw himself into the river. Yawning before him all he could see was an emptiness, compounded with Itachi's fluttering wings above. Sometimes he just wanted to leave.
Once he'd bought a ticket to Paris. He didn't know French, nor did he know anyone there, but it was the first name he saw on the vendor website. The name beneath it had been Amsterdam. He would have gone there if his vision had just been centered a little bit lower.
He'd driven all the way out to the airport and had sat in the airport's parking lot for four hours, thinking about classes he was going to miss, friends he was leaving behind, Itachi and that goddamn house. Finally he watched his flight take off and leave without him.
Naruto had been a swarming bright light bursting into the dust of his house. Sasuke was not going to let Orochimaru have him.
"Hinata," he said to the others as they got into Iruka's car. "We need to go see Hinata."
ooo
Jugo leaned back in the passenger seat of Shikamaru's car as it drove slowly along the streets, following Iruka's car. "What I don't understand," he said, unwrapping a lollipop, "is why we're not back at Narutard's house waiting for him."
"What did he just say?" Shikamaru snapped. "What did he just say, guys? Did I hear him right?"
In the back of the car, Deidara and Sasori rolled their eyes. Temari sat staring through the window, watching the buildings pass.
"Don't tell me--" Shikamaru said, turning a corner. "Did Jugo just tell us we should go back and squat in that kid's place? Did he just say that? Deidara, care to explain to him again why we shouldn't do that?"
Deidara said nothing. He glanced at Sasori, who shrugged his shoulders.
"You just can't appreciate the simplicity of my plans," Jugo said. "You're just addicted to your own overly-complicated shit-ideas, that's what."
"Let me drive you back, Jugo. Let me drive you back and then you can sit in that house and get shot my the police the moment their fingers hit nine-one-one."
"You pussy; we'd grab the kid and disable the guardian. What's the-- I just don't know what the problem is here."
"The problem is that there's too many unknowns. Obviously."
"What's obvious?"
"They could have friends come over. They could drive out and stay at some other place for the night. They could drop in with a whole party behind him."
"So we disable a bunch of people. More the merrier."
"You want to get nabbed by the police I'll go drive you back."
"I think it's better than just following their car around."
"We know how many people are in there. We can see them. We know what they look like. We always have them all in one localized area. I like that. I like knowing these sorts of things."
"You just don't know how to live dangerously."
"You want to play daredevil I'll drop you off by the bridge."
"Love you too, Shikamaru."
Temari looked up. "We're not planning on hurting Naruto, are we?"
"If we have to," Jugo said, grinning.
"If we have to," Shikamaru said sharply.
"I don't want him to get hurt," Temari said.
"What," Jugo said, "You in love with him or something?"
"Something like that."
Shikamaru cocked his head towards the back of the car. "What was that?"
"Don't worry about it."
"Are you sure? Because that sounds like it could be something to worry about."
"You won't have to."
ooo
Hinata's house was a narrow white-washed old house in the north end of the town, away from the suburbs, nestled in between two orchards. She lived with her grandmother, who could always be seen gardening during the warmer seasons. The rosebushes were bare now and leaves swept up along the car tires as Iruka passed them, pulling into the driveway.
"Stay here, I guess," Sasuke said, getting out of the car.
"I think I should come with," Iruka protested.
"It's all right," Ino said, nodding. "Hinata would probably have a minor heart attack if we all showed up on her doorstep."
Sasuke crossed the dark place between the car and the light above Hinata's door. He glanced back at the car, squinted into the headlights, turned back and knocked on the door. Had they been followed coming here? Sometimes he could never tell. Town roads went onto country roads, went onto highways. Someone could inadvertently follow you from one end of the town to another just to turn onto highway eighteen.
The door opened. It was Hinata, looking terrified, wearing flannel pajamas. She looked tiny there in the large old door frame.
"Hinata, hi," Sasuke said. "Sorry to bother you, but I need your help."
"Oh. Come in."
This was unusual. Hinata sort of backed off into her living room, leaving Sasuke to cross the threshold of the door. He closed it behind him. He had never been in Hinata's house before. It was dark, only a single lamp turned on in the living room, the orange glow spreading to an easy chair, a coffee table, a painting on the wall, but to not much else. Maybe he caught her in the act of some reading.
She went and sat down in the chair, picked up the book, started fidgeting.
"Hinata, is everything okay?" he said.
"Sasuke," a voice said.
He turned, and saw Kabuto standing in the hall opposite him. The hell was he doing here-?
"How are you doing, Sasuke?" Kabuto said, smiling.
"Fine," Sasuke said.
This was wrong. This whole thing was surreal. Kabuto used people, yes, but would he ever take someone like Hinata under his seductive wings? Would Hinata let him?
Something hit him like a train, throwing him into the wall behind him hard enough to cross his eyes. He hit the carpet, and so did two photographs that had been hanging there.
"Oh god," he said, turning.
The shadow in front of him solidified, unfurled outwards, grabbed him. "Sasuke," Itachi said.