. 16 .
Ash consumed everything.
Swallowing up a green landscape and purging it into smokey, putrid gray.
Masaki squints to the blue lit sky and doesn't have time to take in the snowfall of Orochimaru's hideout. No time to recall the familial stench of fire and corpses.
The hand on his wrist tugs and pulls. Masaki drew in a slow breath, stumbling through foliage.
Bruises from chains and syringes welt up. A dim reminder of pain and reality.
"Be honest with me, 'saki," Sasuke demands. He's limping. Face morphing down from the spell Orochimaru cursed him with, a dark hole seared atop a bright soul.
Masaki isn't sure if Sasuke knows Orochimaru is alive in his neck like Tom in a scar.
"If I hadn't ignored you that night at the festival, would life have been a little bit different?"
"I think," words come out slow. Slipping and falling, "you overestimate me, Sasuke-kun."
Twigs snap beneath his bare feet. Ears ringing.
Luna is twelve and watching her first thestral trot out of a bush.
Masaki watches whispering wrackspurts fly and pop out beneath branches and trunks. Latching onto Sasuke's shirt and hair. Talons gripping into skin.
Lured to the honeysuckled despair inside the boy.
"I'm not. I don't," Sasuke stops to look back. Glower stilling Masaki. The boy wavers, bracing a hand against bark on a tree. "After everything, you still think those idiotic Doctors and narrow-minded Clan elders are right? You're not a schizophrenic, 'saki… Saki ."
Sasuke tries to meet his gaze - but there are too many tiny feet and talons crawling over Sasuke and feeding into the mess inside his head. A mass of hushed whispers.
" Get off him ," he hisses.
All stills.
A hand grips Masaki's shoulder from behind and tugs. Hand clamping down a scream and – safety engulfs him like a warm bath.
Kakashi bares his father's katana.
"Heya, kiddo's."
. 12 .
Asuma doesn't expect to spend the first outing with his genin squad picking up a Yamanaka stray.
Fresh out of the hospital psych ward.
Immediately, he knew this was Inoichi's kid. One left of a twin.
"Sensei," Shikamaru says, holding the lanky child's arm as though he was scared the boy would randomly saunter off to Suna. Last Asuma saw the child, was when he was nothing but a pink, squishy babe cuddling up to his late sister. The years and mental illness appeared to have done a toll.
Never has a Yamanaka looked so eerie.
"This is Masaki-chan, the guy I was telling you about."
Asuma half-smiles. A pleasant, polite one. "Nice to see the one Shikamaru can't beat in sho-"
Masaki says; "Your health is trash."
Uh.
Asuma does a quick take.
"Kid. Who taught you to speak like that?"
From the stories Hatake told in passing, the Yamanaka kid was odd, weird, delusional at times, yet frightfully good-natured all around.
Asuma was half expecting a vegetable offering of some sort.
The kid called him trash!
"Masaki-kun," Hinata comes up to the boy's other side and taps his arm. Sparing Asuma worried, half-hearted grins of appeasement. Hinata, such a sweet child."You can't…speak like that t-to a superior."
"Mmm." Asuma shudders at the lilac stare. "Trashy lungs."
Shikamaru turns his head into Masaki's neck, a useless attempt to hide his no doubt disrespectful amusement.
"I can assure you, Yamanaka-san," Asuma goes on. Wanting to make a good appearance in front of his newly admitted genin. 'Hey,' he wants to show, 'See? I can play nice with your wacky friend! I am a good sensei! Some of my best friends are mentally ill!' "My health is peak -"
"Trash."
Goodness fucking gracious he needs a smoke.
. 8 .
Masaki pokes the unconscious blonde boy in the belly. Mesmerized as the orange energy swirled around his finger before settling back.
Luna used to do the same to Harry's scar whenever he fell asleep on Hogwarts grounds. Exhausted from the tri-wizard tournament, relationship torment and general torment life dealed him.
Luna didn't know it was Tom Riddle's soul she was playing with until Harry's body came back in Hagrid's arms and that green glow had gone.
"Masaki?" his father calls through the shop. "Did you open up early again? Masa.."
Masaki turned from his crouched and looked up at his father. The man had stilled. Hand frozen atop the doorknob of the supply room. Eyes struck past him to the blonde boy splayed out across a roll of fake grass.
Creatures of nerves zoomed so quick to his father that Masaki near shrieks.
"You…Masaki, where did you find this boy?"
"Out the back in a cardboard box, I think he's sleeping off a fever."
"A fever?" his father repeats.
"Or a stomach ache," Masaki mutters, prodding the belly button. Strange whisps of orange energy zap the hairs on the back of his hand.
A growl, low. Deep. One that starts in the pit of your lungs and bubbles up out a clenched throat - echoes in the back of his mind without passing through his ears.
"Not happy."
The man made a strange choke and swoops in. "Masaki, we're going to the hospital."
Masaki leans back to let his father scoop the odd boy in his arms. "If we apply some lavender essence to the temples, the anger in his stomach can calm down. He'll be fine," Masaki assured. Trying to catch his father with a smile of the confidence he felt.
"We don't know that."
The smile cracks, "But -"
"- Come, Masaki."
Masaki sighed, trotting moodily beside his father. Hand gripping the hem of his lilac haori sleeve to keep pace. The man was speeding through Konoha as fast as he could to not lose Masaki.
. 15 .
"I'm going to kill him," Sasuke whispers. Either late in the evening, early in the morning or somewhere in teatime.
Masaki's room has no windows. No clock. No sliver of a clue as to what date and time this world has come to.
Sasuke kneels in front of Masaki. Bruises blotching an eye and blood crusting his torso.
The mark on his neck is radiating a compressed black hole waiting to suck Sasuke's soul.
Lately, Sasuke hasn't been looking like himself.
"Then," Sasuke goes on, gripping Masaki's wrist as though sensing he was about to fade. Masaki wants to get out of bed and check if he's real. "We can escape."
Knowing to keep his voice soft, he wonders aloud, "You wanted to be here."
"Not anymore," his hiss slices the air. Dimness in the room crevasses shadows on Sasuke's diminished face. "The night before your birthday. Orochimaru will be too busy and the security around your door will lessen."
"Why?"
Static shoots off of Sasuke's arms. Tingling Masaki's wrist, "You'll be drugged."
Wrackspurts crawl out of Masaki's bed, across his body and settle on Sasuke's shoulders.
He wants to throw up, but there's nothing in his stomach. Does Sasuke know -"Why?"
"You don't need to worry about it. When you wake up we'll be free."
Wrackspurts sing. Sasuke's mind is thundering. Below the ground in dark dank cells, people are haunted by dreams.
Tell me one of your poems, his father asks.
"Listen," Masaki says.
"What?"
"You ever seen a bunch of crabs in a bucket?"
"Masaki," Sasuke doesn't show panic, but Masaki can feel the thunder getting louder. "Oi - "
"Well," Masaki tries to smile and picture talking to his father, "what happens is that now and then one crab will climb up on top of the others and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket, then, just as he's about to escape another crab grabs him and pulls him back down. Really ? I asked. really , he said, and this job is just like that, none of the others want anybody to get out of here. That's just the way it is in the postal service! -"
Inoichi's amused face slips behind Sasuke lurching forward. Grimy hands gripping his thin shoulders. Growling his name.
. 10 .
Kakashi doesn't know and refuses to question why the little Yamanaka is in his home. For a panicked ridden second, his chakra pumps into traps splayed throughout his apartment.
"You're creepy," he tells the child on his couch.
Masaki grins. Hugging a cushion that doesn't hide the fact that he was in hospital scrubs. Nor the plastic bracelet.
"Masaki-kun, aren't you supposed to be in the hospital?"
"I heard you were back from your mission," Masaki leans to the coffee table and pushes a jar of flowers in his direction. "Welcome home!"
Kakashi snorts, dropping down to summon his pack.
"Yo," gruffs Pakkun. Cocking his small head to spot Masaki scurrying off the couch to scoop him up. "'Saki-kun," The pug turns to goo into the boy's cradle. "Mmm, what's up boss?"
What a smug pug, "Please keep an eye on Masaki-kun while I go inform his father of his whereabouts."
"Spring another jail-break, pup?"
Pakkun's chiding tone has Masaki wilting. Kakashi makes sure to pat the boy's head in case he spirals into one of those depression episodes with a lot a dark poetry.
Affection helps, his psychologist told him.
Head pats.
"Kakashi needs flowers after missions, they help."
Pakkun arched a vacant eyebrow at him.
Oi , Kakashi wants to tell the little runt, who am I to deny free bouquets?
Deny all he may to outsiders, returning from grueling ANBU missions where all he sees is death, decay and the lowest of low lifes who don't deserve to be called human - seeing a bunch of flowers lessens something deep inside his chest.
"Maa," Kakashi sprouts to his feet, "I'll be back in a flash."
And he pops away to deal with an intensely worried Yamanaka.