Chapter 12
-;-
Sasuke eyes the man before him. Wondering why he was the one seeing a psychologist and not this bastard.
"Uh huh. We're ignoring Yamanaka-sama's orders about me and sharp objects, I presume."
"Nope. They're blunt," Kakashi prods the kunai on his palm. Tip bending and snapping back. "Harmless. All but a choking hazard. And I don't see you stooping so low as to swallow them, mmn~?"
"...Mmn ."
He had him there. Sasuke's anemic pride just so happened to put its foot down upon that one.
"Hey, aren't those the ones we played with at the academy?" Naruto asks. Splayed out some meters off, stretching his stubby legs. Besides him Sakura hurriedly smothers a sound into her hand.
Refusing to be embarrassed, Sasuke accepts the toy. Grumping to Pakkun down at his feet, "This is your fault, isn't it? I'm not supposed to be training. I'm supposed to be on the journey of self healing ."
"Exercise is a form of healing," Kakashi pats his head, guiding him by the back further onto the training ground. A large patch of grass surrounded by woodland. Cozy. Remote. Sasuke could see this place being a perfect spot for a picnic as a kid. Not the layout for child-soldier training. "Which is why today I've arranged my cute little genins to be exercised under the biggest health freak of Konohagakure."
Dots connect. Sasuke worriedly surveys his surroundings.
"I don't think you've thought this through very thoroughly."
"I try to make thinking an ongoing process."
What a funny guy.
"Who is it?" Sakura asks.
"Gai."
"The gay Gai?" Naruto's head pops up with a lascivious grin, sing-songing, "The boy~frien-dAH! " A kunai stabs the ground between Naruto's legs. "Kaka-sensei!"
"Huh, did I hear something?" Kakashi airily. Pinkie dusting his ear. "Must have been my imagination."
Naruto screams. Kunai hurtling straight at the man's back.
The kunai gets snatched without so much as looking "Oho," Kakashi twirls it with a finger before pocketing it. "Thank you, Naruto-kun. I thought I lost this."
The indignant, puberty-pitched scream could have given Sasuke a good chuckle had he not caught sight of a green latex beast marching over. Muscular arm slashing the air in cheerful greetings, smile beaming, and munchkins trailing after him.
A chill dips down his neck and curls in his lungs.
One of the munchkins had a floating ghoulish fellow. Clean red line drawn across his neck. Giving occasional spurts of arterial spray.
He grumbles a curse.
-;-
Sasuke hadn't time to sit and soak up the sun. Not that this was particularly unusual, though that day had a most unfortunate beginning.
Gai's 'Most Extreme and Fortifying Warmup' involved a disparaging one hour set of running non-stop at maximum speed. If he caught any hint of slacking he'd sick Lee on the poor soul. Lee, Sasuke had learnt upon quick intimacy, was a behemoth.
Sometime during the chaos, he may have complained about wanting to die. And Naruto may have slapped him across the face.
And sometime during it all, the Hyuuga turns to his sensei to ask, totally unprovoked;
"May I pair with the Uchiha to spar, sensei?"
"Bwuh ?" Sasuke reels on Sakura's shoulder. Having acquired it as an impromptu cushion. The girl was patting his back. Possibly affronted, possibly heartened he was using her as a wall, or possibly concerned he was about to fold.
"Why would you want to do that?" Naruto demands of Gai's haunted student, poking Sasuke on the red-slapped cheek. Visibly turned someone would ask for Sasuke of all people. Deep within his memories, he recalled there was a time when people revered Sasuke for his capabilities. What a time to be alive. Nowadays; "He'd throw the match."
And Sasuke makes an agreeable sound.
Not at all in favour of being paired with that eerie child.
The lonesome girl of Gai's team gives them all a side-eye.
Sasuke finds a large portion of his life as of late was spent being on the receiving end of such looks. With or without his teammates' presence.
"...Why?"
"'Cause Sasuke's an absolute freak?" Naruto says in the sarcastic tone of reporting that the air they breathe was an immense contribution towards life. "He'd break his own arms to get out of work."
At once those teammates turn to the boy in question.
"I like my appendages as they are," he assures.
Naruto's eyes his gangly biceps. Squinting at the wrists; gruesome red lines scarred up along them. Scabbing the skin. The inane need to cover them squirrelled up Sasuke's spine. An inclination he followed. Folding them over his chest.
"Liar." Naruto gruffs. Gaze uncomfortably heavy.
Lately, the kid ran hot and cold whenever Sasuke is within firing range. He never knew what Naruto really thought about him following his meltdown. Sometimes he would act as though he'd take a kunai to the chest for him. Other times he'd burst into anger at the mere sight of him.
And then there would be a peculiar grey-area where he'd see-saw between Sasuke being made of glass and gunpowder.
"Sensei," the creepy kid starts walking towards him and Sasuke makes a sound not unlike that of having spot a spider on his bedroom wall. Backpedaling behind Sakura and placing her in-between them. The child pauses, surveying this act as visible cowardice in affront. "I believe sparring together will be most beneficial."
Sasuke would truly like to know where this line of thought started and cut off. Instead he courageously staggers to his feet - pulling Sakura up with him, ignoring her scoff - and reaches for his one-eyed sensei.
"Nah. This is going to be hilarious," Naruto suddenly decides. "Maybe an ass-whooping from a stranger will knock some sense into him. Sakura-chan, what do you think?"
She considers it.
Sasuke was aware the girl had a mean streak in her, but he had been hopeful that school-girl crush could waver somewhat in his direction.
-;-
Shino claims his bugs have powers.
"Can you send a swarm on Naruto?" he asks the kid over dinner. Another alumni meeting he had been strong-armed into.
Black sunglasses glint at him across the table of sizzling meats. "No." Reasoning in that mild-mannered way of his, "I need proper incentive."
"Oi oi oi," Naruto prods his side, half-heartedly apologizing when it touches a superbly bruised rib. "I apologized, yeah? How could I have known the Hyuuga hated you so much?"
"It's Sasuke," Shikamaru's mutter emerges from somewhere behind the boulder that was Chōji
Naruto considers.
"What did you do to piss him off, anyhow?" Ino cranes her head around Naruto. Pupil-less gaze similar to the undead looming over Sakura's head.
Sasuke had apparently fucked up the Hyuuga's notion of destiny.
'Please forgive him,' pleads the spectre he had picked up off the Hyuuga. 'His childhood was one of-'
"Ugh ," he swipes the air behind him. Hand sliding through the doll-eyed man and shutting him up.
"Geeze," Ino says. "Just asking."
"I think, um," Sakura wavers, garnering the entire table's attention. "I think Sasuke proposed to him?"
-;-
Without any consideration or warning, Sasuke had wound up listening to a woe-ful tale of traditional abuse and survivor's guilt from the homicidal kid's ghostly Father - all the while getting chased through a training ground.
Kakashi and Gai had waved them off. The former wished him good luck and a cursory 'don't die'.
"Are you kidding me right now?" he panted, sliding to the left to avoid a truly skilful attempt to send him careening into a tree stump.
"I am not," Hyuuga Neji told him. "I fully intend to right the wrong of your fate."
Now this Sasuke actually forgot to listen about. The child's reasoning behind this odd distaste towards him before Sasuke even knew the other's existence - truly confounded him. In a way that was almost hurtful.
Neji went on about it at the start of their one-sided spar, but the kid's dead Father was too busy prattling away in his ear about his tragic backstory to even hear him. Somehow the ghost caught up on the fact he could hear him. Must be those freaky eyes of his.
"My…fate."
"Yes," Neji seethed. Apparently catching onto the fact he had been completely ignoring him. "You have a reputation of not treating the life you were given responsibly. Stories of your misconduct in the field has spread, Uchiha Sasuke."
"-Oh ."
"Oh?" Neji sneered. Kunai twirling around his index fingers. Displaying such skill and half-heartedness Sasuke found it endearing - also annoying. He recalled being this age once and still fumbling about with basketballs. "You survived a genocide. The sole Heir to one of the world's strongest Dojutsu, and continue to throw it all away!"
'Forgive his attitude, Uchiha-sama' the Father bowed his head. Sasuke swatted him, curiosity about the weird child growing.
"Why do you care?"
"You're pretending your fate is worse than it is."
Hang on now.
"You think surviving a genocide wasn't that bad?"
In the world of child killers and pesky ghosts, Sasuke had heard his fair amount of bullshit.
Neji's grip on his kunai audibly creaked the leather handle. "I think you're taking your life for granted. And I cannot wilfully abide by your selfishness."
"And your solution is to beat me up?!"
"If you wish to die, then far be it for me to keep you."
A lightbulb popped above Sasuke's head. "You want to help?"
Neji cocked his head, pupil less and dull eyes giving nothing away. "Typically this is the moment where people start sweating."
"I've been sweating," he had said, taking the time to digest the words. Someone hated him so much that they wanted to kill him. "Are you…even allowed to kill me? We're comrades."
The boy straightened, nodding in a manner too severe for a child, "In the Chunin exams I will meet you and end you."
"Oh wow!" Sasuke couldn't help but gasp aloud. The Father beside him was fretting, but Sasuke paid no mind. He was weightless. For the second time that year he could see a clear way out of this torturous life.
The life that wasn't meant for him.
The life he had wrongly stole and as Neji so cleanly put, wasted .
He had finally met someone who saw him .
How did he see him so clearly? "What made you this way?" He had asked.
' He never was the same after his sealing ,' the Father mourned aloud. Touching the cloth binding his forehead. Sasuke glanced at the old ghost, then to Neji. An identical silk cloth covering his own.
"Everything in life is inevitable. Pain and loneliness especially," Neji said, only now half paying attention to him. It seemed Sasuke interest in his words had sparked a fuse inside of him. "I was born to be a slave to my betters. This early realization brought a certain perspective of the world to come into focus."
Sasuke cocked an eyebrow, watching the same hand motion of Neji touching his forehead. Side by side, Father and son, it was like watching the future in real time.
He laughed. "This world really sucks, huh?"
Neji blinked, lowering his hand as though catching himself. "There's no reason why it shouldn't be."
The two of them stared at one another, an awkward, mutual realization that the other might not be so bad creeping to the forefront of conversation.
"Gai-sensei, might be worried I already killed you," Neji excused himself and turned to head back. "His pestering can be grating."
"Uh huh."
'Please! Please help him!' the Father leapt towards Sasuke. 'Let him know his seal isn't meant to be a collar! It is a gift! Our birthright!'
In the police force he had witnessed victims stand up for their abusers, and seeing it reenact in this world made something sour burst in his mouth.
Like Hell he'd stand for this type of crap again!
"Your seal, is it a dog collar or what?"
' Uchiha-sama! ' the ghost gasped.
Neji shot across the clearing, looking more ticked off than he had at the start of the spar.
"You're a scumbag, Uchiha."
Sasuke told Neji's dad, "did you hear that? I'm a scumbag, I can't help you."
"An insane, selfish scumbag that has no contribution for being alive."
"And are you going to put up with being a slave, or do something about it?" Sasuke asked. In a motion so sudden and unforeseen that Neji could have done nothing to prevent it, pulled up his headband.
The tattooed seal was grotesque. More of a branding than the eloquent scriptures he's seen on other weapons.
He swore, feeling the ill-secretion of chakra on the kid's forehead.
"You…" Neji had gone pale and within a blink disappeared in a gust of leaves.
-;-
"Oh yeah, that happened," Naruto giggles. "Dude got rejected at the same time."
Shikamaru's slack expression had pulled taut, causing Sasuke to reassess whether he should take Sakura's assumption more seriously. Had he accidentally acquired a child bride? God he hoped not. The dead were bad as is.
"Uchiha," the Nara doesn't blink. As a matter of fact, not many at the table were blinking. "You didn't actually take off his headband, did you?"
Dread prickles the hairs on the back of his neck, "I may have."
"So the stories in class were true?" Sakura gasps, clasping Ino's hands in rare showmanship of commiseration.
"I don't get it," Naruto eyes the lot. Taking in the tense atmosphere.
"Wow," Shikamaru laughs, not a happy sound. "I knew you were a prick, Uchiha. But you've really outdone yourself. You just ended an entire line of Hyuuga royal bloodline."
Sasuke chose to look away from everyone's pinning stares and try to make sense of his words. For some inane reason snatching the headband off Neji was a courting ritual of this world. An incredibly useful piece of knowledge to have gotten earlier - so much for his body's patchy memory.
In summary, "I courted Hyuuga Neji… And I wasn't rejected."
"Of course he can't reject the courting of a Clan Heir!" Ino shrieks, flinging to her feet and taking deep breaths.
"Does this mean Sasuke's in a relationship?" Naruto asks the table, simultaneously horrified and gleeful.
"Male husbands are taboo in Clan culture for the reason alone they can't propagate," Hinata says. There was a communal jolt and abrupt silence, save for the spitting and sizzling of forgotten meat. Up until now they had forgotten Hinata was there. Shyness making her easily overlooked.
She was pale. Pale as Neji had been in the forest.
She was also staring at Sasuke like he was the sun blossoming out beneath storm clouds. "He'll be severed from my family and removed from the branch tree."
That all sounds a bit extreme, if you ask Sasuke.
"Can I just say I have no romantic feelings towards Hyuuga Neji and no desire of marrying him?"
"Then why did you propose?" Shikamaru hisses. "You make - no - sense !"
Sasuke opens his mouth, preparing to explain how he was confused and simply searching for a reason as to why Neji wanted to kill him so badly - and decides to quell it. Nobody would understand, they were all perfectly content feeling at ease in their body and world.
"Explain, Uchiha!"
"Yes, explain Sasuke-chan," Kakashi pops up to their table. Pleasant-eyed and deceptively cheerful. "Please explain why the Hyuuga Clan Head is calling a team meeting."
-;-
[Not a neji/Sasuke fic. Purely platonic and hateful]