Rejoice children, I return.
-;-
Chapter eight
-;-
Sasuke is dreaming.
He knows this because - Itachi is there, patting his head, filled with love - then something sinks against his sternum.
Sharp edges of a kunai blade submerging into his soft skin. Brushing past ribs, a lung - until it can't go any deeper.
He can feel every way it slices tissue and muscle, every line of metal and grooves from the lives it had taken. This is the kunai his parents gave him.
It seats itself into his body and stays there from the moment he watches his brother turn and walk away, to the moment he drags himself across the floorboards, out and out into the streets. Gruesome red line spreading after him.
He was shouting, wailing -
"Aniki!"
He woke to a lingering sensation of death and decay with added pressure on his chest. Blurry-sighted, the familiar face of a grumpy pug floated into view like a puppet show.
"Be ready - "
"In five," Sasuke catches his breath, "You've said so. Every day for the past week."
"Think you're a smarty-pants, do you?" Pakkun leaps off, "make it two. Chip chop, cub. Your teammates will be here any second, and don't think they won't drag you along with them just because you forget to wear shoes."
That pug, Sasuke glowers after the trotting rolls of fat. All the way to its chaos master, Hatake.
That punk.
There, Kakashi sat at the table, stirring a cup of coffee and oblivious to the way he had completely totalled Sasuke's pitiful peace.
The moment he declared himself Sasuke's honorary guardian, Sasuke had been strong-armed into a meal plan and workout routine. From sunrise to sunset, the man didn't give up. Going a step further, his teammates were dragged into the mania.
And throughout it all, Rin was there. Laughing and reciting her self-written poems. He hasn't gotten a moment to investigate that girl's reason for haunting.
In short, Sasuke wanted to die.
Which….wasn't unusual.
"Don't forget the ankle and wrist weights," Kakashi yells over a kettle's whistle.
Death sounded nice.
- ; -
[Mold had begun unnaturally shifting spots around the apartment. Neighbors started complaining about leaking taps, burst pipes and sudden cold spots.
Rin had a new glow to her ghoulish skin.
Sasuke wondered when Kakashi might finally notice something funky was going on in the air and hire an exorcist. He glanced ruefully to Rin.
That would be the day.]
- ; -
Agitated groans fill the mission halls one late Konoha afternoon. Chunin and Jōnin do not react, do not show pity, simply keep their dignity and remind themselves the small orange boy can't keep it up all day.
"C'mon gramps!" Naruto actually slams a foot.
"I suppose…" the Hokage - an old psychopath in cultist white drapes - hums and takes a look at mission queries scattered along his desk. Somewhere in the room, a person chokes. "Let's see here...hmmm...A droll bodyguard, C rank mission to the Land of Waves could be educational..."
"H-Hokage-sama!" one of the mission desk employees stutter. "This team's capability level - and please excuse me Hatake-Senpai - isn't so much beyond catching neighbourhood cats! Bodyguarding civilians, venturing to the Land of Waves which is known for bandits. They...they could get killed!"
And this is how Sasuke finds himself smiling.
- ; -
Despite a short, understandable dispute about sending barely-trained children out of the frying pan and into the fire -
[A nail in Sasuke's coffin]
- they end the day assigned protection detail to an old drunk who gives Sasuke the distinct impression of being a lying sack of shit. Either he skimmed out some dire details, or was just a baseless human being.
This mission stunk worse than anything he'd ever had the displeasure of seeing, and Sasuke kept his suspicious trap shut.
"Listen," Kakashi hauls him out of musings by a forehead flick. "And finish that ramen or I'm getting Pakkun."
"Please - I just ask for this small favor!" As always when he gets dragged to this God-foresaken noodle stand, the ghost of Ayame's mother is despairing and pleading. Her caved, disfigured face oozing into Sakura's broth. "I've kept my promise. I haven't told anyone you can see us. Haven't so much as hinted towards poor Rin-chan. I've done whatever possible to make you happy!"
Sasuke slurps his noodles. Pointedly making eye contact with the complementary pack of toothpicks on the bench.
"- pack your gear, we're leaving five am sharp."
"Uh huh," says Naruto, "so...you mean lunchtime."
"No," Kakashi scratches his masked face, "I mean six."
"You just said five," says Sakura.
"I said seven."
Kakashi eye-smiles into the silence.
"Maa~ you got me. I meant eight."
"Sensei!" Sakura explodes. Temper tugged easier than string cheese. "For - God's sake!"
"Does everyone know how to pack gear? Yes? Good, thank you for the meal Sakura-chan! Sasuke I expect you to be home by 11." A swirl of leaves replace their sensei, and as the dust settles, Sasuke meets the harried gaze of Naruto's.
"...Hey - "
"Don't even, Naruto. We're splitting the bill."
"Not that," Naruto rubs his hands together. Suddenly coy. "I..erm...don't know what to pack - exactly…."
Sakura eyes her teammates.
Nope.
Sasuke dumps money next to the toothpicks and would have made a hasty retreat had he not rammed into another person. Hands snatch him by the lapels of his jumper. Almost punching his collarbones. Over the week, his jumper had lost its loose-fitting feel. With all the food and healthy habits Kakashi had been dumping on him, Sasuke had begun out-growing his clothes.
"Careful, Uchiha-san," Shino warns. Allowing him to regain his dignified footing. "Why? Because a small gust of wind could snap you in half. Like a twig."
Sasuke gives the veracious child a withered look, says, "I wish," and gets succinctly dragged back to his seat before he could attempt another runner.
"Sheesh, Shino," Sakura nods in welcome to team eight, "Could you try being a little less - you?"
"I shan't."
"Right on." Naruto raises a fist and gets left hanging.
Aburame refrain fist-bumping. They keep well-measured distance at all times in case someone has worn bug repellent.
"I think he's awesome," says Kiba. "Hey, Hinata. You recommended this place, what's best?"
Naruto swung around to the stuttering girl so quickly the girl might as well have spiritually ascended before their very eyes.
"Please, Uchiha-sama," the mother's face emerges through Sasuke's noodles. He almost inhales a fishcake. "Otherwise... otherwise I'll tell Ri - "
Sasuke jolts. Conversation chitter to a close. Falaying into an excuse for a lavatory, Sasuke pelts into a nearest alley like a jackrabbit dashing from hunting season.
["...He did pass the psych eval, right?" Kiba distantly asks.
"There's no doubt about it," Shino says. "He didn't."]
Sasuke rounds two corners before turning to the ghostly woman. Eyes alight. "Alright. Fine," he contends, "You've had your fun. Tell me what to do to get you to shut up."
She cracks her jaw open with a smile, "My grandmother's wedding ring fell off during the Kyuubi attack." She raises her hand in gesture. Four out of five digits missing. "If...if you could locate and give it to Ayame-chan. I will forever be in your debt."
Her reason for haunting was a damned accessory.
"You want me to locate a ring that fell off your fingers thirteen years ago."
"Yes."
"...The fact that this was thirteen years ago doesn't strike you as a bit - oh, out of the question?"
"Whyever?" She cocks her shattered spine, "You are Death."
"I am not - oi!" before he can mount a long-suffering argument, the woman drifts back to her family. "Sweet suffering Jesus I hate you transparent drifty fu - ack!"
Inside his oesophagus. A cold, hard and bitter mass explodes. Surging upwards and sending him to his knees, Sasuke hacks up a tiny object as though it were made of glass.
On the ground with a 'clink', lands a silver ring. Slimily coated by spit and blood.
"Oh that's just…" Rubbing his throat, Sasuke reckons he ought to be absolutely shitting himself. "Not kosher."
Even for him. This leaps beyond his world of bizarre.
- ; -
"You're not forcing me to Naruto's for a grand old time of team bonding, are you?" Sasuke hazards, doing his best to wiggle free from Sakura's delicate deceiving grip on his arm. Eventually he limps in defeat when she recruits her nails.
"I am," Sakura says. Smiling an all too promising smile. "Naruto doesn't know how to pack his gear, so we're going to help him."
"Thanks but I, um, haven't really prepared for guests…" Naruto belatedly informs. "Ah well. I'm sure it's clean enough."
It was more than clean enough.
"You..." Sasuke gazes about the small apartment. Somewhat incredulous. "But how?"
"It smells nice, doesn't it?" Naruto points to what appears to be a scented candle on the coffee table. "An ANBU comes around and cleans for free sometimes!"
Sakura's eyes dart about, not knowing what to look at and how to look at it. Given Naruto's poorly constructed self-respect and...stink, it was understandable they had prepared to walk into a pigsty.
" A - ANBU?"
Also understandably, ANBU - the CIA of this world, Sasuke put it, were known for being a black ops sort of underground taskforce. Assassinating high class terrorists. Infiltrating other hidden villages, that type. They were the boogeymen of the Ninja class.
ANBU were not Nanny-huffing-McPhee.
Babysitting, housewives extraordinaire they were certainly not. Do not go thinking as such.
"Yep!" Naruto however, seemed to. This child was not giving blondes a good look.
"Right," Sasuke blazes onward and settles himself on the couch. "Where's your backpack?"
Naruto darts off.
Sakura turns to Sasuke with rattle-snake speed, "This must be related to that secret-thingy," she says in a small conspiring tone, "No self-respecting ANBU would clean a random genin's house. For free. It's absurd!"
Not particularly eager to go snooping into the lifestyle of the Leaf villages' sacrificial kid, Sasuke agrees and let her words float in one ear and out the other.
"You know it's still weird that you're living with Kakahsi-sensei, teme."
"Hmm?" Sasuke stops his scribbling on the provisions checklist Sakura had handed him moments ago. "Believe me kid, it doesn't exactly tickle me to be sleeping next to him every night. He gets these night-terrors. They're annoying."
He keeps asking for Rin - when the girl is right there, patting his head and probably causing the terrors.
"Umm," Naruto goes quiet. Not knowing how to respond to the knowledge that the man he was beginning to look up to was secretly broken. "Sakura?"
"Nightmares are normal for veteran shinobi," she says. Reasonable as required. "You can tick canteen off, Sasuke."
"Mm," he does.
- ; -
Squeezing out a line of poorly constructed excuses, Sasuke ditches his team and rounds back to his own apartment.
"Kenji!" he hisses. Bulldozing in and mildly surprised to see the dark festering mass of mold on his walls down by half-percent.
Through floorboards, fazes Kenji's ugly mug. "You're back."
"For a hot second," he says and moves around like a headless chicken trying to locate a backpack he stole from Itachi's bedroom right before he set it on fire.
While doing so, he updates a curious Kenji on his plan of action.
"Uh huh," Kenji floats cross-legged beside Sasuke up-ending his hallway cupboard. "Your plan is to 'accidentally'," using air quotes, "get killed by these two ninjas who will attack this drunk dude because you know what's going to happen. Cause you know Fate's grand design," he went to enunciate clearly, "Fate."
"What're you getting at?"
Kenji flaps his arms, "It just seems to me," he says, "Seems to me that Fate is sticking to this Plot like gum. Like adhesive fucking glue. You don't think it's a bit odd that you haven't been able to kick the bucket all these years? After all your damned creative attempts? That someone is always there just in the nick of time to slap you back to life?"
Doubtful, spiteful, Sasuke harrumphs. "Death can't avoid me for long. All it has for it so far is sheer dumb luck. I'm weak and pathetic. As if the Plot can strong arm me along forever."
"...That's a sad excuse."
"I'm a sad excuse," Sasuke interjected with the casual acceptance of someone who hasn't done all that much soul-searching. To be fair, Sasuke saw souls everyday. Why would he want to look at his own? "Have you got any new clues why Rin's haunting Hatake?"
"You could ask Naruto's mother. She's known Rin and Hatake since they were genin."
Sasuke places the box of empty nick-nacks ANBU retrieved from the burnt Uchiha estate down, and looks at his...friend would be stretching it.
Corporeal acquaintance.
"That's all?"
"All I was bothered to. You're not my boss," Kenji shrugs, "Besides, Rin's a creepy-ass Konoha ghost. Uzumaki is the only undead-lady who's willing to interact with her. If anyone were to know what's keeping that little ghoul around, it's that chick."
"Damn, Uzumaki."
"Don't curse teammates, Sasuke-chan," Kakashi pops out behind Kenji, having the ghost shriek up through the ceiling. Screams echoing as he floats away, Sasuke blinks. Thankful Rin wasn't here to see Kenji talking to him. "You're looking for this?" Kakashi hefts up an old-looking backpack and gives it a critical eye. He squats, wagging the bag. "You know, I recall Itachi having the exact same one."
Sasuke snatches it from his grip and hugs the bag. Glowering. "That's cause it is his."
And whatever look Kakashi gives him, he doesn't care for. He was too busy being surprised at himself.
Godfrey. He was Godfrey. Remember.
"I've noticed," his sensei says instead. "That the muscle you've gained hasn't agreed with your pint-sized clothing choices."
"Sensei," Sasuke hazards, "Are you calling me fat?"
"I could if you want."
"Shut up."
"Because you've gotten fat, I got you some new shinobi clothes," Kakashi, in a motion too quick, picks him up under the arms and kawarimi's them to his apartment. Where Sasuke once sat, a log clatters to the ground.
For the first time, Sasuke is thankful for the torture Kakashi has put him through, as he manages to land a kick on the man's pointy chin.
"So ungrateful!" Kakashi cries and drops him. Rubbing the sore spot and sending his own competing glower.
"Uuuugh, stop your squabbling," Pakkun jumps onto Sasuke's lap and settles. "Show pup the merchandise."
Silent, Kakashi presents a shopping bag to Sasuke while staring at some spot on the wall.
"Gee," Sasuke took it and peered inside to find a blue turtleneck shirt and the standard black shinobi pants. Interestingly enough, there were no sign of an Uchiha emblem.
That suited Sasuke just fine.
Feeling claws dig into his thigh slightly, Sasuke meets Pakkun's half-shut stare. Conveying he ought to say something. To indicate his appreciation of the man going out of his way to gift him clothes. Something of the sort.
It is difficult, but Sasuke manages.
"Thanks, Sensei."
Whatever impressive stoicism Kakashi's got going for him, it gets broken the second Sasuke utters that single, ingenuine sentence.
"Aaaaa," Kakashi's pinhole gaze soars from the wall, to the window, to Pakkun, to the ceiling and then finally the kitchen. "I should make dinner." Which could either be one of two things.
Baked salmon with rice.
Or a veggie-filled omelette with rice.
"Was that good enough for you?" Sasuke hushingly asks Pakkun once the rice cooker trills. "Does that satisfy you, your pug-ship?"
"Tch. Sure, Pup."
- ; -
Gai gets wind of team seven's C rank mission, and wails tears of pride all over Sasuke's breakfast. This loud interference forces Kakashi to make a hasty exit as an excuse of 'not wanting to be late'.
"Their Youth has changed you Kakashi!"
"You're early," Sakura gasps when Kakashi's hasty kawarimi's lands them at Konoha's entrance. A giant, Wall of China type situation containing the Village, has one exit. Being this humongous wooden door that looked to take a team to open and close.
If Sasuke didn't already feel like a prisoner, this surely smacked the label on it.
He wonders if it's fire-proofed.
"Kakashi-sensei has this friend, Sakura," Sasuke tells the young girl. Out the corner of his eye he keeps a visual on Kakashi. The man was already watching him. "A very well-built young man in tight spandex. I'm convinced he's his boyfriend."
For this he's bonked on the head.
"Hush, you."
Too late, Sakura is already starry-eyed and beaming. "Sasuke-kun." She grins. "Tell me everything."
"Lies and slander," Kakashi protests and gets ignored. "Where's Naruto-kun?"
"Eh?" Sakura rears from her gossiping and peers around the slow movement of early Konoha.
Only a small number of merchants and shinobi were up and working. No sight or hint of their orange teammate was to be found in the crowd.
Hints being mayhem and grumbles of disgruntlement.
Half an hour passes and Tazuna stumbles around a horse and carriage. Nearly getting run over if Kakashi hadn't yanked him by the string of his hat under his chin.
"And here I thought Kakashi-sensei was the one to be late," Sakura mutters under her breath.
"Let's get a move on, then," Tazuna waddles away to the Village's border desk just by the gate.
"Hold on. We have one missing," Kakashi holds the man back. Again using his hat's string. Tazuna slaps the hands away, grousing and choosing to sit on the ground to wait. From a bag at his hip he pops open a bottle of sake.
"Glamorous," huffs Sakura, while Sasuke wondered if he would get into trouble if he were to ask to share. "Um. By the way, Sasuke-kun…?"
Sasuke frowns at her sudden change of tone. "Yeah."
"I like your new style, but um," she bites her lip, clearly cautious about something. Sasuke checks if his fly was open. "Your Clan's crest…"
"What about it?"
"It's not there." To be clear, she points at her own back. Where the Haruno family crest stood proud.
"Sakura," Sasuke says. She shifts awkwardly. "Why on this sorry planet, would I want enemies to know I'm the last Uchiha? They'd want to kidnap me and force me to make babies."
Tazuna chokes on his sake, and keeps choking as his mind replays what the twelve-year old said.
"Er," said Sakura, blushing furiously and not knowing how to fill the sudden silence near the gate. People who weren't even in the conversation was staring at Sasuke like he had just crash landed from outer space.
What? Did he say something too political?
"Funny," Kakashi pats Sasuke roughly on the head and gives a fake, monotonous chuckle. "Funny kid. Funny, funny, funny."
"Yeah I think we've established that," Sakura hisses. Patting her red cheeks and avoiding eye contact from every organism in a five foot distance.
"Sorry I'm late guys!" Naruto, the blonde idiot that he is, rescues the silence by pelting on over. Backpack jolting on his shoulders like a second human. "You'll never guess what happened. I met Teuchi-san on my way over to say goodbye. And a letter arrived for him this morning with his wife's wedding ring in it! They've been trying to find it since - like, forever! Isn't that awesome! Ayame-chan -"
"Can we go now?" Tazuna interrupts the unknowing ghost story.
"That's really awesome, Naruto-kun," Sakura saves her teammate's frozen grin. Sakura, the secret saint she is, asks him to tell her all about it as they pass through the gate.
- ; -
Two days of non-stop, monotonous trekking continue without a puddle of water and Sasuke's murder.
"Raven for dinner, anyone?" Kakashi drops from a tree and begins de-feathering. From a safe distance, Sasuke stares at the omen in silent apology.
"Again?" Naruto grumbles, poking the fire with a stick. "Man, what is up with these ravens?! Why can't we catch a rabbit."
Because, Sasuke internally gripes, rabbits are purehearted and love life, which I personally don't.
"Yeah. Or a fox," Sakura muttered. Oblivious to Naruto's own woeful expression. "Foxes taste nice."
"Raven's aren't so bad," Naruto hastily goes to help Kakashi, confused as everyone else when Sasuke suddenly chuckles.
- ; -
There is a puddle, and then a shadow in the air.
Then two impressively big men wrap Kakashi up in shuriken chains and tug him into a messy pulp of human organs.
Sakura shrieks, Naruto shrieks, making Sasuke wonder aloud, "You know, I'm dead certain shrieking won't help."
"No time for puns! Formation A!" Sakura orders and as one team sevel form a circle around Tazuna. The man was crouched on the ground, arms above his head and shaking from head to toe. "Stay there, Tazuna-san. We'll protect you."
"Not so fast," a disembodied voice grumbled around and from above. Two men pop into sight, shuriken chains stretching for the civilian.
Sasuke, very confidently, lept into its path. Wrapped both chains around his arms and gave it a good tug. Catapulting forwards like spiderman, both feet smack right on the men's kissers and drive them to the ground. With added ankle weights, he's pretty sure he's broken their noses and front teeth.
"Right on!" inspired, Naruto forms an army of clones and pounces on the two men. Slashing zipping ninja wire all over the place.
"That's the spirit," Sasuke giggled after having hopped himself over the clones like they were legos, and back to Sakura. The girl was shaking. Pupils blown and fixated on prying off the shuriken chains wrapped into the skin of his forearms.
"Nice work, team," Kakashi drops from a tree.
Shocking.
Clones pop from their admirable work in tying the beaten and bloodied shinobi to a tree stump, leaving Naruto shooting after Kakashi and hugging him.
"We saw you die!" he sobbed into the green vest.
Kakashi looked down at the distraught genin, unblinking. He patted the kid's head, looked to Sasuke and a frozen Sakura - no doubt silent in fury at getting pranked - and all Sasuke could offer was a shrug.
Then Kakashi's gaze dropped to Sakura dumping the chains, and how they had come from Sasuke's bleeding arms. In a second he was gripping Sasuke. Frazzled and wild-eyed.
"Sakura, open my pack and take out the med-kit. In it you will find a corked bottle with a needle, I need you to fill it," while saying that he had taken off his mask, which was the first of this shocking ordeal, second being him sucking on one of his cuts.
"What the fuck!" Sasuke went to shove Kakashi off.
"I need to get the poison out," Kakashi calmly explains before going back to it.
"P-Poison?" Naruto fumbles and grips Sasuke's torso from shrugging off their sensei. "Calm your tits, teme. We're tryin'a help."
"Yeah, and I don't want it!"
"Got it, Sensei," Sakura returns and with instructions, jabs Sasuke in the shoulder with it. "Sorry!"
"Ow!" he yelps and suddenly loses feeling in his muscles and falls back into Naruto.
"Oh! oh! Sensei! Sensei teme is weird!"
As odd as losing the sensory system is, Sasuke can't help but grin up at the blue sky. Awareness lost to the clouds floating across the sun. It was nice. A rare moment of peace before everything sunk dark from the screams.
- ; -