So, I had intentionally made the last chapter and this chapter all one chapter, but for some reason this website won't let me upload documents with more than 10,000 words, so I had to split it in half. This is the second half of the chapter, so make sure to go read the first half if you haven't yet, or a lot of things won't make any sense!
Anyway, returning to the chapter. Hope you enjoy it!
The holy water Neji had gotten was very weak, Sasuke could tell from the second the mason jar was placed in his hands. It had been diluted to almost a quarter strength, and the jar was only half full. Not that it wouldn't do the job by itself, but Sasuke had been hoping to be able to dilute it further to get more of a stock, and with such a weak solution, that wasn't possible.
But he only smiled at Neji and stored the jar safely in his satchel. He wasn't a priest, but perhaps he could look up the incantation to bless some more water online. It wouldn't be as strong as his original stock, but it might be at least as strong as the jar Neji had provided him with.
After storing the holy water, Sasuke gave a glance at the clock. "Well, it's been about an hour. Do we want to-?"
"There's no need."
Sasuke swung around to find the source of the voice that had spoken, and he saw Naruto standing next to the window with his hands shoved deep into his pockets and an introspective look on his face.
"Ah, Naruto, there you are," Sasuke said briskly. "I was wondering where you'd disappeared off to. We're getting ready to-"
"I said, there's no need. Lee's fine."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed as Naruto's words sunk in. "How would you know?" Taking in his disheveled appearance and guilty countenance, it suddenly hit him. "You snuck out, didn't you?!"
Naruto's apologetic wince was enough to tell Sasuke that he was right, and a feeling of betrayal stuck him. Of course, Naruto was his own person and not beholden to Sasuke to make all his decisions for him, but they had made an agreement to go together after the hour was up. Though, Sasuke supposed, this was how everyone else must feel when he always went off on his own. It was a bitter taste of his own medicine.
Shikamaru was the one to break the silence. "How was Lee?"
"He was… absolutely fine." Naruto shook his head in amazement. "He and Gaara were sitting down on the sand, and both of them were laughing. I don't know how he did it."
"He could do it because Lee possesses something the rest of us here lack." Shikamaru cast a quick glance out of the corner of his eye at Sasuke. "An untainted heart and the inability to discriminate. By expecting the best of someone, he unconsciously brings those pieces to the surface. It's his superpower, for want of a better word."
Sasuke had been trying, he really had. Deep breaths, counting to ten, trying to picture calming images in his mind- but none of it was working. Something snapped inside him and he couldn't take it any more, so he stalked forward and tried to grab Shikamaru's collar, but his hand passed right through the ghost and he was left foolishly off-balance.
Gritting his teeth, Sasuke righted himself and spat, "I am done with your shit, Shikamaru! And don't try and tell me you don't know what I'm talking about, because you sure as hell do!"
"Woah, woah! Lay off him, Sasuke! What's gotten into you?" Neji tried to jump in between the two glares colliding off each other and causing sparks of menace to decorate the room, but Sasuke unapologetically shoved him out of the way.
"Stay out of this, Neji! I know you've been too distracted by the carrots he's been dangling in front of you to pay attention to what he's actually been doing, but I have! And I am sick and tired of all the things he does!"
Shikamaru's eyes were filled with a quiet, dangerous intent. "And what, pay tell, have I done?"
"Act out your little farce of standing by the sidelines!" Sasuke fumed. "You insist on pretending like you're too lazy to even breathe in our directions, but everyone knows your hands are dirtier than all of ours combined!"
"Sasuke!" Neji started forward again, but this time, Shikamaru swung his arm up block his forward momentum without breaking eye contact with Sasuke.
"If you don't like my methods," Shikamaru said, coldly and clearly with a clip to his speech that Sasuke had never heard before, "Then perhaps you should stop relying on them."
"What do you mean?" Sasuke gritted out angrily.
"Much as we pretend to hate how each other operates," Shikamaru said with steel in his eyes and cut glass in his voice, "We are too alike for that hate to be truly real. What exists between us, therefore, is more akin to a rivalry, and not a hatred. And why? Because we use the same methods."
"You lie!" Sasuke hissed, grabbing for Shikamaru's collar haul him forward, and this time it was corporeal and he succeeded in bringing them almost nose to nose.
"You only wish!" Shikamaru fumed. "What do you accuse me of all the time? Manipulation. Well, buddy, you use the same manipulation, and what's more, you rely on me and my methods of manipulation in your oh-so-special I'm-alone-and-the-most-important-player plans! Why did you send me with Neji yesterday? Not just because he didn't know the way - you could have easily given him a map - but because you were relying on me to keep him from running after you!"
"That's not-" Sasuke started to retort, but Shikamaru stabbed a finger into the center of his chest.
"Don't you even think of denying it, because that's not the only time it's happened. I kept Kiba and Shino from following us to the beach and stopped Naruto from being a dumbass and following you when you confronted the Akatsuki!"
"Hey! I'm not a dumbass!" Naruto interjected from the sidelines.
"Can it, Naruto! This is my fight!" Shikamaru snapped. "Anyway, my point is this: I have saved your ass more than once using my methods, so maybe you should stop casting blame around on everyone except yourself and accept that you're just as guilty of manipulation as I am. And if you can't admit it, I think our paths will part here."
The hard glint in Shikamaru's eyes, the steel in his voice, the determination in his gaze and the disgust in the curl of his upper lip- they all came as an unpleasant surprise to Sasuke, but one he kicked himself for not having seen coming. The two of them had been able to coexist peacefully for a while, but in the end they were just too similar and too different at the same time to get along. Both unwavering alphas and natural leaders who valued intelligence over brute strength, but with a different set of morals and a different sense of self, their conflicting opinions only exacerbated by the differences in the eras of their upbringing- there was simply no way they could have been friends for long, if at all.
The knowledge brought Sasuke no sadness, just a selfish and guilty sense of relief that he wouldn't have to deal with Shikamaru anymore. He could go about this the way he had always done it: quickly, deftly, with acute sharpness of mind and a quiet determination. And alone.
Alone.
Without the aid of the phantoms.
Without Naruto.
That thought made Sasuke falter, but only for the most infinitesimal of moments. He cast his gaze in Naruto's direction and locked eyes with him, noting the fear he say there. It wasn't like the fear of before, being afraid of some person, of hurt and pain, of something tangible. This fear was intangible: the fear of losing someone you cared about.
The look in Naruto's eyes was begging him not to say anything, to accept Shikamaru's claims and stay, but Sasuke found a shield of ice had crept around his heart when he hadn't noticed, and it was impervious to the raw emotion flung desperately at its hard exterior. Ice was his life; it was in his blood and his eyes, his voice and words, and every gesture he made. He wasn't deserving of a warmth like Naruto.
"Fine," Sasuke said with cold detachment, feeling his body freeze over as he slowly looked back to Shikamaru. "Let us part ways here. It seems as if I can manipulate no further use out of you, so I will cast you aside like the expendable garbage you are."
Even Neji winced at the frozen daggers in Sasuke voice, and Naruto shrank back with a look of unbelieving betrayal on his face. Only Shikamaru remained unaffected, glaring back at him with disdain.
"Cast us away? Oh, that's rich. Well, if that's how you justify your actions to yourself so you can sleep at night, so be it. You won't have to bother with us ever again. It'll be everything you've ever wanted, Sasuke: you'll be all alone, no one to argue with you, no one to dispute your claims, no one to have a different opinion than you… and no one to hear your cries for help." Shikamaru turn around sharply and started floating toward the wall. "Come, Naruto. We're leaving."
But Naruto remained frozen as Shikamaru floated past him, his face still showing a pitiful expression of stunned horror. Spinning back around, Shikamaru spat, "Naruto! Wake up! We're going!"
Without a word or a deviation in his expression, Naruto turned around slowly and floated through the window, leaving the room behind him somehow chillier than it had been. Shikamaru made as if to follow him, but stopped just before he ghosted through the window and turned back.
"You know, the first time I played chess with you, I realized something: that you weren't entirely whole. But as time went on, you grew better, and I thought you might have a chance of truly living. But congratulations, Sasuke. For the first time in a long, long time, I have been proven wrong. You're fractured, Sasuke. And you always will be."
"Get out," Sasuke growled icily, pointing to the wall Naruto had just disappeared through.
"Fine by me." Shikamaru eyes narrowed dangerously. "But don't expect to cross paths with us ever again. I protect my family, Sasuke. And now it's time for you to protect yours."
And then he was gone, melting away as if he'd never existed. Even the faint presence of his aura soon faded away from Sasuke's range of perception, leaving him, for a moment, almost able to lie to himself and say that there were no such things as ghosts and the whole summer thus far had been an elaborate hallucination caused by stress and the shock of finding himself in an unfamiliar environment.
It was impossible for Sasuke to tell how long he stood there, staring at the blank wall as if it held the answers to the universe, but he might have stood there for a long time yet had Neji's anger not boiled over, causing him to swing a fist at the side of Sasuke's head without warning.
Sasuke ducked the fist with ease, having been trained physically while Neji had not, but it threw him off balance, mentally as well as physically. Pressing his advantage while Sasuke was showing a momentary sign of weakness, Neji lunged at him again, but this time Sasuke caught his fist, bringing him to a grinding halt.
"What the hell is your problem?" Neji almost screamed, his hair in his face and his eyes full of an angry fervor. It was, Sasuke had to admit, the most upset he had ever seen the Hyuuga.
"What the hell is my problem? What the hell is your problem?!" Sasuke spat, grappling with Neji until they stood almost nose to nose. "What the fuck kind of lies has that cheating ghost been filling your head with that you'd believe his shitty excuses?"
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Neji yelled, shaking Sasuke and himself in the process. "Sasuke, this isn't like you! Please, just tell me what's wrong!"
"I've just finally gotten fed up with everything and everyone and decided not to pull my punches!" Sasuke exploded. "Is that so hard to believe? That I've given up on being politically correct? Because it shouldn't! You should've seen this coming a long time ago."
Neji stepped back a single, small step, the look on his face almost akin to a sad horror. "No. It's not hard to believe. I just thought you had a little more dignity than this."
Before Sasuke could formulate a suitable reply to that broken jab, there was a knock at the door, and all of a sudden, he was filled with a blinding, white-hot flash of murderous rage. He didn't know who it was, but whoever was on the other side of that door was going to die for daring to disturb his railings! Even if it was Sakura! Especially if it was Sakura, that nosy bitch.
Shoving Neji away from him, Sasuke stalked toward the door and yanked it open viciously, fully expecting to paint the hallway the same shade of red as the color clouding the corners of his vision, but was stopped but the sudden realization that this person was not Sakura, or anyone else that he recognized from the Hokage, for that matter.
It was a tall, lanky boy, a young man, really, in his early twenties, but his hair was, curiously, a shade of silver, like an old man's. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses with circular lenses sat perched on his nose, giving him a kind of scholarly, disarming air, but his dark eyes were quick and sharp.
Drawing himself up, Sasuke spat with as much venue as he could muster, "And who are you?"
The young man appeared taken aback by the rough nature of Sasuke's verbal attack, but he squared his shoulders nervously to speak. "I'm Kabuto. I don't think we've met before, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to keep it down; this is an inn, and some of the other guests here are complaining about the amount of noise you're making."
"Is that all?" Sasuke sneered.
Kabuto gave a single blink in surprise. "Y-yes, that's all, I think."
"Good. Then you can run along and tell them they can enjoy their peace and quiet, because we're leaving for the rest of the day. Come, Neji."
Sasuke swept past the stunned Kabuto without even checking if Neji was following along after him. He knew that the other boy wouldn't like being called along like some kind of servant, but he would like being left alone even less. But Sasuke didn't care about any of that. Now was the time to focus on the issue at hand. Now was the time for progress to be made.
And the ice surrounding his heart thickened and froze solid, making it easier for the black spot that resided deep within to gain purchase and grow.