Mixed With the Lightning of Slaughter [ch. 10]
previous: 9 - and after this our exile
10 - unwind the winding path
"All I can say," Suigetsu mutters as he pokes at the fire, "is that your family is seriously fucked up."
There's nothing Sasuke can say to that; after all, it's true. So he grunts in reply.
"Wow, you're more talkative than ever." Suigetsu makes a face as he flops onto his back and looks up at the sky. "You don't suppose he got dropped on his head as a little brat?" he asks the stars. "Or maybe Itachi ordered him to only say a word every other hour, and of course he was a good little boy and listened to his big brother."
Sasuke might've been stung into anger by Suigetsu's light mockery once, but not anymore--there is only an Itachi-shaped hole in his heart, and all things remotely Itachi pass through it with an unending silence, a wordless ache that flutters and lingers. He does not care to dwell on his brother for very long.
He is gone, Sasuke repeats in his mind. He is gone. Now there is just Madara.
And this-this is how he has always lived, running after the shadows of others to exact his own needy retribution. Itachi was his keystone, but Madara is a more than suitable replacement. If it was Itachi who struck the blow, it was also Madara who lurked in the background web of triggers and consequences.
I'm going to destroy the last of the Uchiha clan, he thinks, and remembers a young boy who once wished to revive it. The irony stares at him and laughs in his face.
He laughs back, bitterly, morbidly, with all the supremely bred cruelty that he has ever inflicted upon the withered possibilities of his old life.
Suigetsu shoots him a glance and slurps his water. "Mental," he says.
-----
“Lee-san, you said they started off in this direction?”
“Yes, that way.” Lee flexed his arm, a look of concentration on his face as he tested its fitness. “Don’t worry, my body is more than willing to be put to the task!”
Seeing Sakura’s less-than-convinced face, he added, “Also, I made sure to bring the medicine since I’m supposed to take it.” He grinned brightly and patted the flask with an earnestness that made Sakura smile.
“Tsunade-sama’s going to be really angry at you, you know. You haven’t had much time to recover from your surgery.”
“It’s my duty to help my friends!” Lee exclaimed again, teeth flashing and unrestrained exuberance in his every gesture. Sakura imagined Sasuke saying that in the exact same manner-and tried hard not to let out a shaky laugh.
“Baa-chan’s going to be angry at us too, Sakura-chan, so I don’t think it matters whether or not fuzzy eyebrows comes with us,” Naruto added sheepishly. “They’re expecting reinforcements, right? So they aren’t bothering to cover their trail.” He walked out along the tree branch and peered down, then jumped. “Right there!”
Sakura and Lee followed Naruto through the trees. It had been surprisingly easier than she’d expected to leave Konoha unnoticed, and not for the first time Sakura thought about how thin the Konoha nin were spread over all their missions. Even Kakashi-sensei wasn’t around to read perverted books and be perpetually late.
Kakashi-sensei has really bad timing for being absent. Figures.
They’d met Lee as they were leaving the hospital and as he was coming to see them. And once he’d heard what they were going to do-Well. She would have hated to be left behind and not be allowed to go after Sasuke-kun, and Lee was like that too.
“They didn’t leave too long ago, did they?” Naruto shouted. “We can still catch up to them!”
“Probably!” Sakura pushed off the next tree branch with even more force. They were going at a faster pace than ninja normally would choose for traveling through the trees. Naruto had incredible stamina, and Lee had speed training, and Sakura-admittedly she had neither, at least not to the extent of the others, but she had learned how to use her chakra and energy as efficiently as she could. I can keep up with this, she told herself, determination weaving with her thoughts into a patchwork of complete will.
… what were you thinking, Sasuke-kun? Or did they make you go? The way that one kunoichi had spoken-it had sounded like Sasuke had decided to leave.
I shouldn’t listen to what she said, Sakura thought. She’s the kind of person who loves to taunt others no matter what the truth is.
--remembered her heart beating in her chest, twisting with the mockery and illusion and yet the real sense of pain.
She hated herself for doubting, but she doubted all the same.
Maybe Lee knew something about it. “Lee-san,” she said, “so what did Shikamaru say during the mission briefing?”
Lee looked a little downcast. “Not very much. Just that you two had been injured, and Sasuke-kun was gone. He also told us about what we knew of the enemy-just how they fought. But you two know that best.”
The sound of Sakura’s breathing echoed heavily in her ears. “Oh,” she said, half-hoping, half-dreading more. It depended on what that “more” entailed. “And-anything about how Sasuke-kun left?”
She noticed that even Naruto was landing more quietly, straining to pick up every word.
Lee said, “Nothing. We don’t know what happened with that.” He gave them an apologetic glance.
“Sasuke probably couldn’t fight all of them at the same time like I could,” Naruto said in front of her loudly. Sakura could hear the false levity in his voice. “So Sakura-chan, we get to be the great awesome knights who have to come to save stupid bastards from the enemy!”
Sakura snorted at the image. Lee, on the other hand, looked absolutely thrilled. “I completely agree, Naruto-kun!”
“One of the girls at the Academy used to keep dreaming about how Sasuke-kun would be this knight who would sweep her away and get married,” she said, conveniently omitting the fact that the girl had been herself. I suppose I understand more now than I did back then. “Bright shining armor and everything. It wouldn’t be like Sasuke-kun, though. Anyway, it’s easier to move in green spandex.” She grinned weakly.
“You are too kind, Sakura-san!” The energy Lee possessed suddenly seemed to increase tenfold. “Calling me a knight!”
“Sakura-chan!” Naruto moaned as Lee passed by him.
They quickened their pace.
-----
"I've dealt with a lot of mental cases in my time," she says coolly, and tugs at her shorts. Her hair is more brilliantly colored red than ever before; when she touches her right temple, her hand comes away streaked with blood.
Karin does not bat an eyelash as she stands over the disabled enemy nin. There is no inviting smile on her face, no fleeting, meaningful look which she would normally give to Sasuke (or as Suigetsu usually said, “Oh, you mean how she wants Sasuke’s body-“ before turning into a puddle of water to avoid major injury). “So let me deal with this,” she tells him bluntly. “I deal with you guys every day anyway.”
Sasuke runs his hand over the handle of his chokuto. It isn’t every day that an unknown tries to track them down, but in any case he was utterly outmatched. In terms of numbers, their fight was not fair; but Team Hebi does not care for fairness. “Fine,” he says lowly. “Get whatever information you can out of him, then do what you like. Well,” he adds, “at least don’t kill him. For now.”
The corners of Karin’s lips turn up as she walks to the left of the ninja, who glares mulishly and says nothing. “Hey there,” she drawls. “I think you need a haircut, boy.”
Probably Akatsuki’s fodder, Sasuke reflects, and then thinks no more of it.
Later, he waits while Karin browses through her notes of the man’s ramblings on the nature of Akatsuki and its pursuit of the bijuu. “That looks very useful,” Juugo comments as he looks over her shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m surprised you even managed to get anything out of him, he clammed right up even when I watered his lungs,” Suigetsu adds cheerfully.
Karin rolls her eyes.“I did run a prison, you know,” she says, and her glasses glint in the sunlight. “I can make anyone scream.”
-----
She was going to need more sake soon.
Tsunade peered into the jug and frowned, then set it aside and turned back to her desk. “I despise paperwork,” she said aloud to the empty office, as if the nearby coat rack was going to come to life and step forward to read and sign the papers for her. She supposed that with Shizune’s absence it was easier to sleep and slack off-but her work was necessary.
Fixing Konoha after the attack was a headache, the village’s need to keep mission requests coming in even more so (where else would they get the revenue?)-the council was being bitchy to test how much backbone she’d show them (but they’d see who was Hokage around here, oh they would), and to top it off, the commonly acknowledged Uchiha genius (screw-up, she grumbled to herself) had gone gallivanting off with the enemy. At least she’d sent that message to Suna-Suna owed them. If Naruto hadn’t cared, and if the council members weren’t so rabid about the Sharingan, she’d have sent hunter nin instead and said good riddance.
Okay, so the boy was young and he was an idiot. She’d been young and idiotic once upon a time, and everyone had their phases.
It didn’t keep her from silently cursing Uchiha Sasuke for choosing to be an idiot at the most inappropriate times.
All right, we don’t actually know that he chose to go, Tsunade grudgingly noted. I suppose I should be a nice, generous person and give him the benefit of the doubt, but there was no sign of struggle from him in the room, as best as I could make out.
Should’ve made Jiraiya take the job of Hokage, then I could smack him every time he tried to creep off to the onsen. Stress relief. Damn it.
And no sake. And-
-oh yes, Naruto. Who’s probably sneaking out about now.
She would have preferred to keep him and Haruno Sakura out of this-emotions could screw with ninja on missions and blind them in certain circumstances-but she didn’t have the resources. She simply could not spare people to keep the two genin cooped up in their hospital room-how would she explain to them that they were on guard duty for pipsqueaks, instead of working on assigned missions? She couldn’t use up her own time to keep watch either-and Naruto was not the kind of person who listened to orders when he was hell-bent on something else.
The best I could do was tell him to stay, she thought to herself. They might think there are people who know to stop them from leaving; perhaps Sakura’ll be the voice of caution for Naruto. Something to slow them down, so by the time they’re running out things might be over.
Kakashi was the one who taught Sasuke during the chuunin exams, wasn’t he? I’m going to give that lazy dog a piece of my mind for letting the boy brood like that.
(She pointedly tried not to think about her own brooding for more than a decade.)
More importantly… Suppressing the urge to check the hospital, Tsunade spread out a map of the village. Considering that Oto nin had managed to get into the village without anyone the wiser, it meant that Konoha’s security was currently about as competent as a monkey fishing for apples in the sky.
It would be hard to set up more checkpoints; more checkpoints automatically meant more ninja, more nonexistent Konoha ninja who were distinctly unavailable. She contemplated making the guards’ sweeps of the village more frequent-but then that meant they would move more quickly and maybe miss something in their haste.
Then she briefly entertained the thought of assigning Konohamaru and the rest of the Academy students to guard duty. They would learn something about the drudgery in ninja work. However, their lack of experience would probably increase the probability of her having a headache. No, not worth it at all. They’d spend the time goofing off anyway-
The door opened.
-like him, for instance. “Kakashi,” she said, looking up to see rumpled gray hair, a slanted hitai-ate. Kakashi, however, didn't look at all like he was in the mood for goofing off. “I assume you heard the news?”
“I just finished the last assigned mission and came back,” he said tersely. The line of his mouth under the black mask was thin and straight. “Yes, I did.”
The silence stretched out as he shifted his weight; Tsunade watched his face carefully. “I went to the hospital,” he finally added. “I heard that Naruto and Sakura were injured, but they’re not there anyway.”
What. Tsunade twitched and tried hard not to follow her first instinct of smashing the sake jug. No point in getting angry now, she reminded herself. You expected it. (That expectation was probably what had saved the sake jug from an unfortunate demise.) “They’ve gone after Sasuke too,” she said simply. “They wanted to. Nara Shikamaru’s leading the team-the others are Hyuuga Neji, Akimichi Chouji, and Inuzuka Kiba.”
“… What kind of a team is that?”
Kakashi’s tone of surprise irked her more than she thought it would. “It’s the kind of team we have when I can’t spare anyone else,” she snapped. “You want to complain, then go after them and back them up. You’re done with your last mission, this is your new one. We’ve got six genin chasing the Uchiha boy down, we’ve got some Oto nin running around-one specializes in genjutsu, one manipulates chakra into different shapes-and possibly Orochimaru in the picture. We don’t know for sure if Uchiha Sasuke left of his own will, but frankly the evidence points to the fact that he did.”
Kakashi creased his forehead at the last piece of information, but nodded; the expression on his face showed quiet resolve--Konoha's will of fire, like you said, old Sarutobi, Tsunade thought. “Thank you, Tsunade-sama,” he said, starting to turn. “I don’t like to fail missions-“
“Er, Tsunade-sama?” One of the medic nin poked his head round the door. “We thought it’d be best to inform you-Rock Lee’s missing.”
“What?” Tsunade felt a headache coming on. “Why do I have to deal with insubordination everywhere?”
Kakashi showed a flash of his usual irrepressible humor as his one visible eye curved up ever so slightly. “… Sorry?”
Tsunade scowled. “Don’t mess around,” she snapped, then looked back at the medic nin. “When did you last see him?” she asked impatiently.
“Well, he went to visit Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura, and-“
She didn’t try to stop herself this time as she grabbed the sake jug and threw it at the floor, watching it shatter with a rising frustration. Damn damn damn it!
“Tsunade-sama!” The medic nin stared at the pieces of the jug on the floor, eyes wide.
Tsunade swung around and glared at Kakashi, who seemed startled by her vehemence. Oh, Rock Lee wouldn’t-but no, of course, he would.
“Excuse me,” she said harshly. “It appears I’ve given you incorrect mission information by mistake, Kakashi. Seven genin chasing the Uchiha down now.”
-----
-and he screams.
The pain blossoms up along his spine, spikes driving relentlessly into his eyes, and the Mangekyou Sharingan blazes and whirls in his sight, a maelstrom for the blind. Maybe he planned this, he thinks, Naruto would be the kind of person who would drag Sasuke with him, even after death, but god-
The Kyuubi has the reputation for leveling mountains and upending seas; and above all, the Kyuubi will not be obliterated, will not become nothingness, will not be an absent bogeyman to terrify the insubordinate youth. For the Kyuubi is only the here and now, moving with the indiscriminate persecution of its own place and time--would it have mattered, if the others were not dead?-and its chakra digs deep into Sasuke's face, spinning into the veins and burning, burning, burning-
Then there is just the red and the black, the shadows creeping across his vision inexorably. The Sharingan, his Mangekyou Sharingan shrinks and reels from the pain, the relentless biting pain-
-"Your reflexes are awful," Naruto had said, and smiled that awful, stupid smile with the clear light of his eyes slipping away like dribbling water-
This isn't happening, this isn't happening-
(Sasuke has always been a genius of denial.)
-and he screams.
The smoke of the curse seal billows around him like a thundercloud; the wood of the barrel goes to splinters in a blast blown out by pressure and webbed wings.
A muttered exclamation: "He's out early!" and then, urgent and wary: "Sasuke-sama!"
I'm-here. And where, when-a savaged, littered plain or a battered copse of trees, chakra violently red bleeding to purple bleeding to black-where is the when but the when is-
And his eyes open.
-now.
-----
The chapter title is from:
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
-W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium"
IT IS SO HARD TO WRITE LEE. D: I sincerely hope I didn't turn him into a caricature.
As far as my experience goes, people don’t really acknowledge that Karin used to run a PRISON and probably had some really nasty, effective ways of dealing with prisoners. (Although I just realized there are different ways to interpret her saying, “I can make anyone scream…” Um. o_O)
Tsunade might sound extreme on her views of Sasuke and just getting rid of him :P, but keep in mind she’s also stressed and frustrated and in a bad temper. Also, her impression of Sasuke would start off being negative after the rooftop fight and so forth; after all, she’s got a soft spot for Naruto. :) And haha, I had a lot of fun writing her POV; she allowed me to vent my own grumbling about the situation. XD
I love writing present tense, and for the next several chapters Sasuke’s POV will be in present tense. It’s just to highlight the sense of everything-at-the-moment warped time mentality Sasuke has, in contrast to everyone else’s past tense.
And finally: late chapter is late? ^^; I am terribly, terribly sorry about the long wait. AP tests + Quiz Bowl tournaments + job + random short summer trips and all that. However, in the end I recognize that I could've written more anyway, if I'd only just pushed myself to do so. I apologize for my laziness. D: My writing style may have regressed in the three months since my last chapter; please feel free to tell me if you think so. :)
Comments are always appreciated. ♥ :)
next: 11 - mere anarchy