Chapter 21 - Frozen Teeth

Once they were alone, Karin spoke first.

"Let me explain."

Sasuke exploded.

"Explain? Explain? How the hell can you explain that?" He fought to keep his voice down, just in case that thing in the kitchen could hear him.

"Sasuke, please calm down."

"Oh, like hell I'm calming down. That was… that was…!"

He couldn't even bring himself to say the name now.

It was the nightmare all over again. But she said she had an explanation so there was, there was…

Karin just sat there, calmly, her eyes focused, intense, and pained.

"Okay. Fine. Explain," Sasuke said, after a while. His breaths were heavy and his mind was whirling with thoughts but he could concentrate. This meant she knew something, and he had to listen.

"Okay." She took a breath in and out. "Man, and it had to be you who found out about him first, okay… Funny how life works out that way, huh…"

Sasuke didn't respond.

"I guess I'll start at the beginning, then." Another breath, in, and out. "Pretty obviously, Ooda isn't my biological son. He's adopted, okay?"

"So it didn't come from you, then? That's a relief," Sasuke said.

(Truthfully, though, some small part of him felt slightly relieved for reasons he didn't feel like voicing to himself, out of shock and disgust and just no.)

Karin glared at him for a moment, sighing after another, shaking her head.

(She knew better than to expect an apology from Sasuke. She kept one hand pressed against the warmth of her stomach, as if to comfort herself, or what now grew within her.)

Eventually, she continued. "I took him in… well over twenty years ago. After I'd set up my clinic here. You know, after we finished clearing out most of the labs." Her eyes were downcast with recollection. "It was winter. The solstice, I remember. It was after I'd closed down for the night, and I was sleeping. But sometimes there are emergencies at night and I heard a knock on the door and it woke me up, okay. And this was late at night; maybe three, four in the morning. So I went to go answer the door and I… felt a very familiar chakra right behind it, and I ran because… But he was gone by the time I got there."

"'He' being…?"

She nodded. "Exactly who you think. I'd know that chakra anywhere, okay."

Sasuke clenched his teeth, but kept his mouth closed.

"Honestly, I was scared as hell - from the way that his chakra had disappeared I figured it had to have been a bunshin or something, and I couldn't feel his chakra anywhere else in the town, or outside it or… anywhere. And then…" And there her eyes softened, and she looked up. "…there was Ooda, just sleeping, like there was nothing wrong. He'd been left behind, like…" She laughed, slightly, bitterly, and lowered her eyes. "Like some sort of foundling child from out of a story or something. In a basket, with a note."

"A note."

"I know it's hard to believe, but it's the truth, okay?" She closed her eyes, and recited: "'My dearest Karin, this child's name is Ooda. I trust you to take care of him until I return.' That was what it said. It was in his handwriting."

"Do you still have it?"

"What, are you kidding?" Her eyes opened. "I burned it as soon as I could. What if someone found it?"

"Hm." Sasuke shifted his weight where he sat, trying to make it look like he wasn't squirming. "And, obviously, you didn't tell anyone."

"Of course not!" she snapped. "What, do you think I could just waltz back to Konoha and say 'Oh, I think Orochimaru left this baby that looks like him on my doorstep and he told me to take care of it until he comes back from wherever he is. Here, take it!'? They'd have… killed him." Her face fell. "I couldn't allow that, not to an innocent child, okay…?"

"You don't know that they'd have killed it," Sasuke interrupted. "You still should have at least told someone that… he had… contacted you. That he said he was coming back."

"Okay, first off? I doubt anyone would have believed me, at the time."

"I think that… you'd have pretty telling evidence on your hands, in all honesty," Sasuke said.

"Which brings me to my second point: telling someone would involve having to explain how I knew. And that'd involve telling them about Ooda."

For a brief moment, there was anger in her eyes. Karin could be very intimidating if she wanted to be, even to Sasuke.

"I couldn't. Take. That risk, okay?"

Something like a gross parody of a laugh scratched its way across his throat, like a defense mechanism. "Even though it meant that Orochimaru was probably still alive, but nobody was doing a thing about it?"

"Well, what else was I supposed to do? I was… nineteen, I was scared, okay? I thought I'd left that life behind and… there it was, just… catching up with me."

She smiled slightly, resignedly, a familiar smile, as easily applied to her ruined life as her ruined body.

"I guess I'm still more loyal to him than I think. Then and now. Even though… even though I told myself that… if Ooda turned out… strangely, or if anything more happened with Orochimaru then I'd speak up immediately. Tell the proper authorities. But at the same time, I didn't want to send anyone on any wild goose chases or anything, because that would only get me in trouble, so I stayed quiet until I could be more certain."

"And I take it that nothing ended up happening."

"No, he hasn't contacted me since leaving Ooda behind. And Ooda… well, he…" Karin sighed, again. "It's been hell, honestly. I couldn't sleep easily for years, wondering if he… would really come back. Not to mention if Ooda turned out…" She didn't say anything more.

Sasuke was quiet, for a while. Then, he said, "So you just… took it in and raised it as your…"

"My son," she said, because he couldn't. "He. Not it. Is my son, Sasuke."

Sasuke held the words in his throat for a while. "…so what is it-" Karin's glare was unfittingly punishing. "…he, then," he said, finally, "Orochimaru's child? Another vessel?"

"No, no, no. None of that. Ooda, he's…" She looked at her hands, and then back at Sasuke. "He's a perfect genetic duplicate. A clone," she replied. There was something in her voice like sad wonder. "I did tests on him, when he was little. He has the same fingerprints, the same blood type, the same DNA, even. I tested it all against the old profiles that… he left behind. I don't know how he happened, but… there he is."

The same… face, the same eyes, the same mannerisms, the same…

"Does… he know?" Sasuke asked, quietly.

"…heavens, no. I haven't even told him a thing about… well, him. I think he's better off not knowing…" She held her lips tightly together for a while, thinking. "I've wanted a normal life for him, more than anything."

"More than anything, huh."

"Absolutely." Karin looked at him with clear, hard red eyes. "I wanted to give him a life that… that Orochimaru didn't. Couldn't have. And it hasn't been easy, not in the least. He was teased so much for his eyes and his skin, when he was a boy, just for starters. And he's always got his hair in his face, now, no matter what tell him to do with it otherwise." She looked down, again. "He's so shy, it's like pulling teeth to get him out of the house. Twenty-three years old and he's never even been on a single date with a boy or a girl."

Sasuke choked, slightly. "Why do you assume… boy first?"

Karin gave him a very strange look. "You lived with Orochimaru for three years, surely you noticed something," she said. "I'm just trying to stay open-minded, since so much has carried over already, okay…?"

Sasuke's silence meant many things.

"Still," Karin continued, before his embarrassment could grow, "Ooda isn't… much at all like him. Sure, there are times when… when he looks at me and I could swear I've seen that expression before. When he laughs and I know that he used to laugh like that, too. But he's a good boy, he has a good heart." She tilted her head slightly, gently. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to settle down someday with a wife, and children. That's something I'd never expect of Orochimaru, but Ooda…"

There was a silence, for a while. Sasuke ended it. "So do you think there are… others like him, out there?"

"What do you mean by that? That there are other Oodas out there? It's… certainly possible," Karin said. She shivered, for a moment. "Again, I haven't heard a word from Orochimaru since he left Ooda with me, so he could be dead, now, for all I know, okay? Then again, I have no idea how he was even alive enough to even create Ooda in the first place…"

"No, no, I didn't mean that," Sasuke interrupted. He gathered his breath, thinking of those eyes, that boy, everything. "I meant, do you think he's made clones of… other people?"

Karin was quiet, for a while. "…what do you mean by that?"

"Well, I can imagine why he'd want to make a clone of himself. After all, knowing him…" He had to pause. "But… do you think he'd want to bring anyone else back?"

"…Sasuke, where are you going with this?" she asked.

He breathed in.

And out.

And said, "A few months ago, on a mission in the Land of Rice, I met a boy that looked… exactly like my brother. I thought I was… imagining things, for the longest time, but now I'm starting to wonder if maybe…"

Even with all of this evidence, even with this spawn of the snake shoved in his face, even with all of this, he still couldn't voice the possibility to himself.

Too much had been wrong so far.

And yet, maybe, somehow, maybe…

"…that maybe…?" Karin's face was confused for a moment, and then, "Oh, you don't mean…" She held her hand to her mouth. "Are you sure?" she said, very, very quietly.

"I could never. Ever forget my brother's face. Not with my eyes."

"No, I suppose you couldn't," she said. Her voice was still soft. "How… how old was he?"

"Ten, maybe eleven. Young. But I could still tell it was him."

"I'm sure." Karin ran her hand over the curve of her stomach as she thought, before it came to rest on her side after a time. Her face tightened with some sort of discomfort.

"So, that's what I meant. When I asked if you thought there might be others," Sasuke said, after that. "Because of what I saw."

He wondered, for a while, why his heart was beating so rapidly. He wondered why Karin had started breathing so quickly, too, all of a sudden.

"That could mean… anything," she said. She swallowed. "What was that boy's name, did you catch it? The one that looked like your brother."

"Yakata."

"Yakata…" She said the name slowly, as if committing it to memory. "I need to go write this down, okay?" she said, and braced herself against the table as she stood up. "I'll be right back, don't go anywhere."

"I won't."

And then she was gone.

And there Sasuke sat alone, his thoughts racing.

She hadn't said it was a coincidence. She had… accepted it, she had believed it. Maybe it wasn't so crazy, then?

Maybe someone. Maybe Orochimaru - he was still alive, he had somehow come back, too, he had - had brought Itachi back?

Yakata was Itachi. Revived. It was possible. It was… maybe, maybe even probable.

…what was he going to do about this?

"Pardon?"

Ooda, Karin's son, had appeared in the room eyes slightly wide behind his dense black bangs. He set down a teapot on a pad in the middle of the table.

When had he come in?

"Nothing. Just talking to myself," Sasuke said.

"Ah. Pardon me, then…" Ooda put down a pair of cups. "By the way, do you know where my mom went?"

Sasuke almost didn't shiver, that time, hearing that voice saying those words. "She said she went to go get something."

"Ah, I see, I see." Ooda picked up the teapot again, and poured tea into one of the cups. "I decided to make sandwiches, by the way. I hope you don't mind."

"That's fine."

"Do you like sugar or anything in your tea? I could bring some over," Ooda said, after pouring some into the other cup, presumably Sasuke's. "Mom doesn't like much in hers, but…"

"No, no, it's… fine," Sasuke said, staring at his knee afterwards. Ooda's movements, graceful and fluid and almost feminine, were unsettlingly familiar to him. It was better not to look.

At least, husky and rough though his voice was, Ooda didn't speak much like a woman.

"…I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry at all, but... how exactly do you know my mom?" Ooda asked, after a while of silence. Sasuke looked up and saw him standing near the door with his head slightly bowed, a small tray under his arm. "You look like you're a ninja, but I don't want to make any assumptions."

"…we used to work for the same person, let's just say," Sasuke said, after a while. He almost had to laugh, when he thought about it for a moment, considering who Ooda was. But his face remained still.

"Ah, I see… Well, then, I'll just leave it at that," he said, and smiled, so naturally, so unfittingly. "I'll be back with the sandwiches in a bit."

He left. Karin came back, afterward, with a notebook, and sat down before noticing, "Where did the tea come from?"

"Ooda."

"Oh, I see."

"We talked a little," Sasuke said. "He asked how I knew you."

Karin rolled her eyes, sighing. "Oh, Ooda… What did you tell him? And I apologize for the thing he said about your eyes, by the way, he sometimes does things like that. He's just endlessly curious about people, okay? I didn't think he'd actually ask you about them, though. Or how we know each other."

"It's fine," Sasuke lied. "And I told him that we used to work for the same person. That's all I could say. Since you haven't told him about Orochimaru, after all."

Karin gave him an uneasy smile. "Well, thank you, okay? I appreciate that."

"Don't mention it."

She took a pen from out of the spiral binding of the notebook, and opened it about midway, leafing past pages of her blocky handwriting. "So, can you tell me more about this boy you saw? What was his name again?"

"Yakata." A pause. "Honbo Yakata."

She wrote down something. Sasuke could have read it, if he wanted to, but he didn't, his mind staying focused on the boy's face in his mind.

"Where did you see him, exactly? You said it was in the Land of Rice, but…"

"A farming village. Tamina, it was called."

Karin's mouth tightened, and she scoffed, slightly. "Tamina… That name sounds familiar. I think… we had a lab near there. A breeding facility." A shiver in miniature ran up Sasuke's spine. "So, where, exactly, did you see…" She looked at the paper, and back. "Yakata?"

Ooda came in with the sandwiches, before Sasuke could answer. "Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting something," he said. He held the plate in his hands up a little. "Uh, I made sandwiches!"

"Oh, thank you. You can just leave them on the table; we're a little busy, Ooda," Karin told him, with a small smile. She covered the notebook, subtly, with her hand. Ooda nodded and did as she said. They were small sandwiches, cut into triangles and arranged in stacks.

"I'm gonna be up in my room if you need me," he said, as he was heading out. "And promise me you'll eat at least one, Mom."

"Go on, Ooda," Karin said, and he left, smiling. She waited a while before continuing. "He'll probably be up there for a while. You were saying?"

And Sasuke began to tell her everything.

The words came freely, finally, after the memories they were describing had been pent up and repeated and replayed and not shared for months and months and months. Karin's hand darted quickly over the paper, making quick bullet points of statements, collecting only the raw material in Sasuke's words, as she had long ago been trained to do.

(There was a lot he didn't mention. His shame, his anger, his foolishness, he all kept away from the heart of the matter.)

It was only when he started feeling relief, after she had filled three pages with bullet points, after she had asked him if he had seen any other children in the village of Tamina that he had found familiar, and he had said that he hadn't. That he knew only Yakata's face. Only after all of that, he finally asked, "Why do you want to know all of this?"

"I have a theory," she responded, laying the pen down on her notebook. "I don't like it, and I hope, I sincerely hope that I'm not right, but I'm starting to think that this might be related to our problems with Taki Kiine."

A pause. "…I don't understand," Sasuke said.

"I'd have to gather more data to make any solid assumptions. But I'm thinking…" And she paused there, and lowered her head, for a moment. "Orochimaru might have made them. Ooda from… himself; Yakata, from your brother; and Kiine from… some Uzumaki, I don't know. And I don't know how, or why, or anything else, really. But it's the only thing that makes any sense, in my mind, right now, okay? Crazy and… wrong as it all is."

It chilled Sasuke's blood, to hear those words coming from someone else. "But… that's what makes the most sense. Isn't it?" he said. "And besides, you know more about this than me."

She laughed, once, baffled. "What makes you think that?"

He pressed his lips together, thinking, his eyes drifting sideways. "You're the scientist. You actually know these things are possible. You can stay… rational about these things."

"What does that even mean…?" she asked, after a while. "I mean, just because I'm a doctor-"

"Nothing. Just… forget it," he said. He squeezed the insecurity out of his voice, so it was at its usual strength when he asked, "So what are we going to do?"

"We?" Karin barely held in a giggle, before sealing it into her mouth with her hand a moment later. "Well, I'm certainly going to be rummaging through the archives a bit more, that's for sure. See if I can find us a lead. I wouldn't dare approach the Taki family myself for information, though. I know better than that, okay? I'm in no condition to do much traveling, anyways." She looked at Sasuke, a second later. "...what are you going to do, Sasuke?" she said.

What was he going to do?

"I want to see Yakata again. And," he added quickly, "get some more answers from his family, now that I know all of this. For you, I mean."

Karin took a deep breath inward. "You'd have to be very careful, if you did that," she said. "In how you asked questions, in how you treated him, even. I'd avoid even mentioning this… clone theory we have. To either him, or his parents. We're not sure of anything yet, okay?"

"I know that," Sasuke said.

"You have to remember, Sasuke…" And she looked at him there, intensity and what was almost sadness in her eyes. "Yakata, if he is what we think he is, isn't Itachi. Just like Ooda isn't Orochimaru. Even if it he's really and truly a clone, he's bound to be a very different person."

Sasuke looked away from her. All he could think about was just the similarities. The grace, the glances, everything that made Yakata who he was.

"…you understand, Sasuke?" she asked.

"Yes, yes," he said, knowing she would stop asking if he said it.

(She knew it was a half-lie, but she knew it wouldn't make any difference, calling him out on it there.)

"So, then, what?" she continued. "After you meet with him again."

"Well, obviously, I'll tell you what I learn from them," he said. He crossed his arms. "And then I'll have to go home. I have children to train. I can't be kept long."

"And you won't want to see him again?"

He paused, there. "I don't know," he said.

(That was the truth.)

"Well, keep me posted, regardless. Okay?" Karin said. "Since I suppose this involves the both of us, now."

"Yeah. I guess it does."

"And… thank you. For telling me about that boy, Yakata, okay?" she added. She smiled at him, a real smile, but a small one. "If you hadn't told me about him then I wouldn't have come up with this theory. Maybe I'll actually figure out what's going on with Taki Kiine, at this rate! I don't know."

"Mm."

"But… you do realize what this means," she said. "If all of these things really are connected. Ooda and the Taki and Yakata. There might be more. For all we know, there probably are. We don't know what we're getting into, okay?"

"I suppose we don't. We'll just have to find out," Sasuke said. His head felt light, detached. "I think I'll be leaving, now. I don't see what else we can talk about." He began to stand.

"Sasuke, wait," Karin said. He paused, one knee risen, one on the floor. "Please, promise me you… won't tell anyone about Ooda. I've worked so hard to give him a normal, quiet life. I don't think that anyone outside of the village knows that he even exists. Hell, I've been sending him to his room whenever I know the Seal Team's coming to visit since…" She swallowed. "I don't want it to be ruined; for me, but especially for him, okay?" There was genuine distress in her voice. Her throat sounded closed-up. "Please, you have to understand. Don't tell anyone, okay?"

Sasuke thought for a moment, and then stood. It was the least he could do for her. "I won't."

Karin breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank you. Really, you have no idea how much this means to us."

He grabbed his bag. "I can imagine." He headed for the door.

"Oh, and Sasuke?" He turned around to look at her, kneeling at the table, one hand on her belly, the other on her notebook. "Take some sandwiches with you, otherwise Ooda will think I haven't eaten any." She was smirking, though the joke was on her, and not him.

Sasuke waited for a moment, then approached the low table again and took two halves. "I don't like sandwiches much, but I could use something to eat," he said. "Take care."

She stayed sitting as he left the clinic, tracking his dark chakra as he paused in the foyer, left the entrance, and walked out of the village and out of her range.

She was eating a sandwich half of her own when Ooda finally came back downstairs. "So I finally got you to eat," he said, smiling. "How is it? I kinda threw it together."

It was some sort of vegetable butter with cucumbers, and it tasted very fresh. "It's not bad. But maybe add a bit more to them, next time. Okay?"

"Sure, sure. Did Sasuke enjoy them? I wasn't sure what he'd like, so I went with something safe, you know?"

"I'm sure he liked them too. He took some with him when he left, in fact."

"Really! I'm glad." Ooda smiled. "When did he leave?"

"A while back. By the way," Karin added, idly, peeling off a loose bit of crust from the sandwich, "I need to go make a prescription for Ryouzai-san soon, you think you can deliver that to her house when I'm done making it?"

"Sure, if you want me to," he said. "How's she doing?"

"Ryouzai-san? She's doing better."

"That's good to hear."

"Mhmm."

Ooda settled himself across the table from her. Karin had long since closed the notebook, put the pen back in the spirals.

Then, "By the way?"

"Yeah?"

"Whatever were you and Sasuke talking about?" He added, when Karin didn't reply immediately, "I just heard him shouting from down the hallway and it got me a bit worried. Are things all right between you two?"

Karin took a very, very long time to say anything.

There were times when that voice was ever so much like his.

But, eventually, she did, suppressing the fear in her throat.

She couldn't tell him everything.

Not him.