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Chapter 19
hold on to me 'cause I'm a little unsteady
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64年11月6日
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The ceiling is too white. Too sterile. Too still.
Akuto has memorised every crack in the paint by now, every flicker of the too-bright overhead lights, every shift of the tree outside as the sun wanders across the sky. He knows exactly how the afternoon light filters through, how it morphs into different colours before disappearing into the night. He knows because there's nothing else to do but watch.
His room is small. Private, arranged by Fuguki-oji. It's just big enough to fit a bed, two stiff-backed chairs, and a metal IV stand where the saline bags sway with every movement. The walls are pale, painted a colour somewhere between grey and white and beige, like the place itself can't decide whether it's dead or just waiting to be. A cabinet stands to his left. It's stocked with folded bandages, extra gauze, all sorts of stuff. In front of it, next to his bed, stands the heart monitor, though it's unplugged by now. A door to his right leads to a small bathroom. He can hear the pitter-patter of boots and the whisper of slippers in the hall outside. Everything smells of antiseptic: the sheets, the people, the food.
He's sick of it.
Out. He needs out.
He inhales. Braces himself. His right hand clenches against the sheets. His left—
Nothing. Still nothing. Will always be nothing.
He ignores it— ignores the sharp, twisting string where his arm should be, the phantom clench of fingers that aren't there. The pain isn't real but it is.
He takes a deep breath. It barely moves his ribs. He holds it for a few moments longer before exhaling a long, shuddery breath. Then, he swings his legs over the side of his bed. It should be simple. Muscle memory. And yet—
The seconds his feet touch the floor, ice shoots up his legs. The tiles are cold, like stepping on metal sheets in the winter. His body sways. The world tilts. Not violently, not all at once, but enough to send his stomach twisting. His vision swimming. His breath catching in his throat.
He exhales slowly and pushes himself up—
Too fast.
His vision blurs. Darkens at the edges. He lurches sideways— wrong. Uneven. His foot slips across the tile. His right arm shoots out at once, his hand grasping at air. His left— his stump— juts out uselessly. Doing nothing at all.
His knees buckle.
The ground rises to meet him.
Pain shoots through his nerves, his muscles, his bones. His pulse spikes. Scraped skin flares at his knees, the IV yanks painfully at this arm, and his shoulder throbs from the impact, but none of it stings as much as the pain flaring through his phantom arm.
For a second, he just lays there. As if the ground would swallow him whole if he just stays still long enough.
Akuto grits his teeth. He can't even stand properly anymore.
A deep breath. It burns his throat. His pulse throbs in his temples. He isn't sure if it's from pain or shame or frustration, but it doesn't matter. They all feel the same. Blended and mixed in this disgusting cocktail he can't help but keep tasting, no matter what he does.
Anger bubbles deep in his stomach.
His hand curls into a fist. No. No. He refuses. He won't lie here like a broken thing waiting to be picked up. To be helped up. He won't be found like this, like some helpless… helpless thing who can't take care of himself. Like some useless burden.
He plants his palm between himself and the cold, dull tiles. His muscles tense. His right arm strains, his fingers press hard against the floor. His legs shift. Searching for stability beneath him. His breath hitches— This should be easy. It used to be easy.
He pushes himself up—
His balance tips. His left side pulls him down like dead weight, like an anchor chained to his shoulder, yanking him toward the ground. His centre of gravity is wrong. His footing is wrong. Everything is wrong wrong wrong—
He shakes his head. Tries to shift his knee forward—
His body lurches—
He crashes down again, shoulder-first. A white-hot bolt of pain shoots through him, like lightning splitting through his nerves. It spreads fast; ripping from his shoulder down his spine. It knocks the breath from his lungs.
His teeth grit. His fist clenches. He slams his hand against the floor. It stings but the frustration, the helplessness, the humiliation are worse. Burn hotter. Bubbling beneath his skin like boiling water under a sealed lid. He squeezes his eyes shut. His chest heaves.
He stays where he is. Just breathing. Slow. Deep.
Again.
He shifts, presses his palm flat against the ground. Braces himself. This time, he moves slower. He digs his heels into the floor, anchors his knees, forces his weight forward carefully, slowly, like testing unsteady ground. His muscles shake again. Still weak. But he keeps pushing.
Then— His legs log. His back straightens.
He's up. Standing.
His whole body trembles. His lungs burn like he just ran a marathon. His head spins. His balance still feels wrong wrong wrong. But he doesn't fall again. He grins. A sharp, breathless thing. Barely there. More reflex than thought. His heart pounds quicker. Harder. For the barest of seconds, there's something else. Something sharp. Something that almost feels… good.
One step down. Thousands more to go.
He eyes the door. The walls still feel too close, the air too thick. He still wants out, still needs air, still needs something— anything— that isn't this room.
Walking is slower than getting up. The IV stand rattles with every movement as he pushes it along, his fingers curled tightly around the cool metal pole. His steps are uneven. His balance a disaster. But he manages to shuffle toward the door— about the speed of a snail, three steps in a minute.
The hallway's long and mostly empty, with only a few nurses rushing from room to room and two shinobi standing around, talking. Still. It's louder than his room. Soft voices are blending together, and he can hear the faint pitter-patter of boots on tile, even from other halls. Somewhere someone laughs. The bright light flickers overhead. It smells like medicine, miso soup, and bandages— like recovery. Like moving on.
He doesn't feel like he's moving on.
He feels stuck.
Akuto takes another deep breath and pushes onward. Down the hall, down another hall, towards the entrance door. Towards the outside. He's glad his temporary room is on the ground floor; he doesn't think he has the strength and patience to try stairs just yet.
He's just about to turn the corner, when he hears them.
Voices.
Low. Casual. Coming from the room to his left, where the door was left ajar. He's just about to move on, when—
"Poor kid."
He stops in his tracks. Slows his breathing. Stays still as water before a storm.
They might not be talking about him, but—
"Yeah. Without an arm? No way he's getting back to full duty."
The words hit him. But not like a truck, not like the car that brought him here. Differently. Worse. Slow and creeping. Like fingers curling around his insides, squeezing. His stomach twists. Not violently, not all at once, but bit by bit, the way poison takes a hold of you, paralysing you cell by cell, inch by inch; the way a sword might sink into flesh without you realising you're bleeding.
His fingers curl at his side, nails digging into his palm. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to pull himself out of this, just enough to feel something.
"But Iyokan-sensei said—"
"Well, even she can be wrong, can't she?"
They aren't talking to him.
But about him. Like he isn't standing right here.
Like he's already gone.
His face doesn't change. His shoulders don't tense. He doesn't flinch, doesn't snap, doesn't make a sound. He just lets the words settle. Lets them sink in. Lets them root themselves somewhere deep in his brain— by Hijiki's words, by the words of his parents from Before— where they can fester.
Then, he takes a step.
And another.
He keeps walking. Until the hall turns into another and another and then stretches out into a foyer, until he reaches the main entrance, until he awkwardly tries to shove the door open and someone comes running to open the door for him, like he can't just use his feet to push them open, like he doesn't still have a second arm he can use, like he's broken and useless and helpless—
He takes a deep breath and steps outside.
The cold hits him at once. Sharp. Too sudden. He takes another deep breath. The air is clean. Fresh. It smells of damp earth and mist and freshly mowed grass. But it's wrong. The openness, the fresh air, they don't feel like a relief. The outside feels strange. Foreign. Like stepping into a world that moved on without him. Like stepping into a world that holds no space for him.
He closes his eyes. Takes another deep breath.
Nothing. Doesn't help.
He swallows hard. The lump in his throat stays.
He pushes onward. He walks and walks and walks. Even when his legs start burning, even when his lungs scream and beg him to stop, even when his sides feel like they've been massacred by Nuibari. He walks, his feet taking him away—
A sound.
Sharp. Familiar.
Steel meeting steel.
His breath hitches. His feet took him somewhere that used to be safe, somewhere he could hide away and practice his ninjutsu and taijutsu and shurikenjutsu, and his aim with his bow and arrow—
But what good does this place do him now?
Still. His head turns before he can stop himself.
Of course, there are training grounds near the hospital. He's always been aware of them— even if he's never used them— he's even seen them before, back when Okan had walked him through the village, shown him all the nooks and crooks and useful places to know; like the training grounds near the hospital for the times when you wanted to practice dangerous or advanced techniques.
Not that he'll do that now.
He shakes his head. Still, his eyes remain peeled to the shinobi training across the plain. Their bodies blur. He can barely track their movements. But still. They feel slower than Hijiki. Slower than… Orochimaru. Faint sunlight flashes against their swords. They break apart, wait, then engage again. One swings their sword down. Blocked. A blur of motion. They disengage again. The other runs through a set of hand seals Akuto can't make out, can't place, can't perform—
His heart pounds in his ears.
They're moving like he used to. They're doing things he used to be able to do. No struggle. No nothing.
Just movement.
His fingers twitch—
His right fingers.
His left—
Nothing.
Again— the split-second delay before his mind manages to catch up, before he remembers. The muscle memory is still there, but the muscles aren't. The instinct is still there, but the limb isn't.
He should look away but he can't.
He can feel the weight of the sword in his hand. Can hear the familiar scrape of steel as he draws it from its sheath. Can see himself stepping forward, taking his stance, waiting for Okan— for Fuguki-oji, for Aneki— to make the first move.
But it's all in his head.
And nothing can make up for the truth—
He isn't like that anymore.
He'll never be again.
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64年11月11日
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Akuto stares at the ceiling, face blank, mind racing. Memories are dancing along the edge of his sight, his muscles trembling in the sudden cold. He can still feel the heat of the fire against his face, the cold of the metal, the weight of Utakata on his shaking and straining arms, and the electric pain that shot through his body when Kusanagi cut off his arm and the adrenaline faded at last. Bitter bile rises in his throat.
He shoots up from his bed, struggles with the bedding, and races to the bathroom. Throws himself over the toilet. Just in time. He throws up. Bile burns in his throat. He coughs, spitting the last of the foul liquid from his mouth. Akuto slumps next to the toilet, waiting for his stomach to settle, before he pushes himself up and flushes the toilet.
He takes a deep breath, takes in his surroundings. He spots the stain on the carpet that never quite left, the hammock in the shared back garden always surrounded by seasonal flowers you can only see from the bathroom window, the long-forgotten magazines Aneki left atop the cabinet, and Fuguki-oji's garish leg and arm warmers he never bothers to pick up, thrown in a corner.
He's home.
Akuto stumbles to the sink. A step stool is shoved under the sink cupboard, all angular and crooked, from when he last used it three months ago. He pulls it out, steps on it, and looks in the mirror. His breath catches. He isn't sure what he expected. Maybe Emery's brown hair and brown eyes. Maybe Akuto's brown hair and purple eyes. But the face staring back isn't his. Not really.
Where there was once unblemished skin is now an ugly, ugly scar running across the bridge of his nose, though it's been long since healed. It's not just that. The face surrounding the scar looks different now: sharper angles, hollowed cheeks, and eyes that are still too big, too wide. But dimmer. Even he can tell.
But he's still alive. He made it home.
He touches his pale, soft cheek and laughs. It's wild and bitter and entirely jarring coming from his young body. His laughter turns into breathless giggles until he calms down entirely, gasping for air. His breath hitches. Tears well. Akuto furiously rubs his eyes, commanding his tears to stay put, and takes a deep breath.
His stomach flutters.
He rushes back to the toilet, hunching over it. He waits for a long minute. Closes his eyes. Nothing happens. But the fluttering in his stomach doesn't cease either.
"Are you alright, dear?"
He opens his eyes and finds Okan standing in the doorframe, her eyebrows wrinkled in the way they always do when she worries and allows herself to show it. She comes closer and sits down in front of him. Pulls him into a hug. Akuto leans in and sighs.
"Nightmare," he says, voice muffled.
Okan plays with his hair, which is shoulder-length by now. "Would you like to talk about it?"
Akuto thinks about it for a second. Thinks about his and Aneki's conversation. Takes a deep breath. "It was… scary," he says, for lack of a better word, voice quiet. Barely above a whisper. He still doesn't quite know what to do with himself. His parents in Before never talked about feelings. His father, especially, got angry if he heard him cry— even when he was younger. He knows what Aneki said. What Okan and Fuguki-oji said. But still. "It was on fire, when I arrived— the base, I mean." He sucks in a breath. "I should've come home right away."
Okan pulls him even closer. "You couldn't have known Orochimaru would be there."
"They were all stronger than me," Akuto says, clenching his hands— hand into a fist. "Doesn't matter if it was Orochimaru. Could've been any of the Uchiha. Hell, it could've been Hijiki." He thinks he understands why they— why Kiri feared the Uzumaki so much. (Though it doesn't excuse the genocide. Nothing excuses something so terrible.)
"But it wasn't any of them."
Akuto sighs. "No. I got lucky, I guess." He fingers the hem of his shirt. "One of them got me in a genjutsu."
Okan huffs a quiet laugh. "Fighting Uchiha is difficult, not many make it out alive. Why do you think Konoha is winning this war?"
"She got cocky, I think," he admits, gripping his empty sleeve tightly. "Just left me lying in the dirt."
Okan's grip tightens, and her voice is hard when she speaks, "You survived, Akuto. That's what matters now. You're here, you're safe, and you're alive. It's okay to be scared and it's okay to feel overwhelmed by what happened. War… it can break the hardest of soldiers. But remember, surviving it its own kind of strength."
"Are you angry?"
Her voice softens again. "Not at you, my dear. Never at you."
"Not even…" Akuto goes quiet for a bit, bites his lip, then continues, "Not even if I… if I wanted to… stop?"
"Never," she says softly. "If that's what you want, we'll find something else for you." Akuto can hear her smile. He doesn't know if it's a sad smile, or a soft smile, or a happy smile. He isn't brave enough to look and find out, either.
"I don't know," he admits. "I just… I don't know."
Okan hums. "That's alright. You don't have to know just yet."
Akuto nods, but it feels like a lie. Like if he doesn't figure it out soon, he never will.
What happens if he never decides?
He presses his fist into his knee, jaw tightening. His mind is racing again, looping through questions with no answers, thoughts with no resolution, like a snake eating its own tail. He doesn't realise his breathing has picked up, grown shallower and more unsteady, until Okan's hand rests gently on his shoulder.
"Breathe, Akuto."
He exhales shakily. He really hates feeling like this.
"Can we just sit here for a while?" his voice a frail thread of sound in the quiet of the room.
"Of course," Okan says, gentle and soothing. She adjusts slightly, making herself more comfortable on the cold bathroom floor. They sit in complete silence. The only sound the occasional distant noise of the night and the soft, rhythmic breathing between them.
Minutes stretch into an hour, and gradually, Akuto feels his heart rate slow, and his stomach settling. His hand is still trembling a bit, so he clenches the hem of his shirt. He exhales deeply but shakily. Okan is right, he doesn't need to know now. He especially doesn't need to decide now.
He can think about it. It's not like there's much else for him to do.
"I'm scared, Okan," he says, the night making it easier to be honest. "I'm scared of not knowing what's next. I'm scared of making the wrong choice."
Well, he does know what's next, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying. He knows there's a fourth war coming, against Uchiha Obito and Uchiha Madara— against Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, if he's particularly unlucky. And in Kiri itself. He's pretty sure there's either a rebellion or civil war coming for Mei to become Mizukage. No way are the kachū giving in without one hell of a fight.
He doesn't even know how Yagura got into power.
Where does he want to be when the time comes? What does he want to be?
What can he even be?
Okan reaches out, her hand warm and reassuring on his arm. "It's okay to be scared, Akuto. Fear means you care about what happens next. It means you want to do better, and that's a good thing."