Dirty Harry (2/3)
And this is why I can't have nice things.
Ish gets too real.
tbh, this is my first time writing Juugo, so please bear with any obvious lapses in characterisation. He turned out a little more otherworldly than he was supposed to be, but the words Gentle Giant and Old Soul and Buddhist Monk repeatedly kept flashing in my head, and I just let myself run with the cliché. He just ended up channelling Bruce Banner.
I always fail to keep Sasuke IC, so no apologies for his poorly developed-ed-ness. His plethora of issues aside, it’s hard for me not to see him as a demanding, spoiled brat. Albeit sometimes a kind-hearted spoiled brat, but still a brat nonetheless. Sasuke must have been a pretty emotionally sensitive child to turn out as messed up as he did in canon, his problem being he felt things too much, which made the mask of indifference veiling so much anger a logical default, however ineffective the coping mechanism; it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
At least that's my excuse for the empathy angle that came way, way out of left field.
Oh, and ever since the whole Akatsuki cloak thing, I'm positively smitten with the idea of Sasuke wearing his big brother’s clothes, so there's that, too.
...idek. My mind and any semblance of sanity done did left me at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
***
Characters: Naruto/Sasuke, Itachi, Juugo
Rating: PG-15
Words: 15,222
Summary: After making an emergency landing on an unknown planet, Naruto and Itachi find themselves on one side of the storm, while Sasuke meets a peculiar stranger on the other.
“I was told it wasn’t devised to be released.”
“If it was put on you, I don’t see why it can’t be taken off.” Sasuke’s mouth curves into a near frown, fingers of his left hand methodically searching the metal collar for any potential weak points. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, though. I wonder if-”
Flinching from a short burst of pain, he recoils from the unexpected impulse of magic, landing on his backside hard against the floor. “The hell kind of collar is this?”
“Are you-”
“It’s nothing,” Sasuke grits out, fingers holding the wrist of his left hand nursed against his chest as he forces himself to sit up. Instinctively, he allows a trickle of magic to flow to his hands, not too much, but just enough that he’s able to ignore the lingering sting prickling the tips of his fingers.
“Please be careful, Shiva.”
“Don’t call me that.” With a grunt, Sasuke narrows his eyes. He breathes in and places both hands on the collar this time, gently laying his fingers over the heavily bruised skin beneath it as he breathes out. “I’m no different than you. Being able to use magic doesn’t make me any more important.”
“It’s an acknowledgement of respect. Those who could be called Shiva were rare in my village. To wield magic is a precious gift. But to be in the presence of an Amala-”
“They’re just words, Juugo,” Sasuke says, holding back his irritation, lips pursed at the near veneration in Juugo’s voice. Whatever the nuances behind Shiva and Amala are supposed to be, he doesn’t mean to take offense, not when Juugo makes the words seem like such an innocuous gesture, but he’s tired of people constantly reducing him to his ability to use magic and revering him for something more trouble than it’s worth. “Useless titles like that don’t mean a damn thing.”
“If removing the collar is of no use, I’ve learned to endure it.” There’s a subtle panic in Juugo’s eyes, underlying an unease already there that makes him look torn between letting Sasuke help him and grabbing Sasuke’s arm to haul him away from the collar. “I’m able to live despite this curse.”
“I already told you. Everything’s fine. It’s fine, just...just hold still for me a little longer, all right.” Sasuke doesn’t really know how to disengage the collar, but he does have an idea that, in theory, seemed like it should work.
Crafting a loophole of sorts, he’s going to try to redirect Juugo’s life force to prevent it from reaching collar, creating a blockade using the metal of the collar itself. This based on the assumption it was Juugo’s life force powering whatever internal mechanism that was keeping the collar intact, since trying to remove it without magic only resulted in the collar becoming tighter. His only stipulation is being able to pull the whole thing off while keeping Juugo from suspecting he was a life user. Unless they were users themselves, most people weren’t sensitive to the majority of the magic surrounding them, yet even the most insensate person would be aware of someone tampering with their life force.
Passing as a metal elemental he could get away with. At least he didn’t deny it when Juugo asked if he was one, which is he is, in a roundabout way. As a life user, simply drawing from his own energy or the energy around him, he has the ability to manipulate any kind of magic. He doesn’t exactly go around parading that particular ability, taught to intrinsically refrain from using it; the pervading spread of misinformation about life magic convinced most to assume life users could only focus on the energies of the people within immediate distance, and his family-even Kushina and Minato to a noteworthy extent-could never stress enough how important it was to allow that obsolete school of thought to prevail.
But Juugo had taken him in last night, found him unconscious after being swept away from the storm that had separated him from his brother and Naruto, humbly offered this poor excuse for shelter and what little food he had when he could’ve simply left him to die instead. The least he could do is try to repay Juugo with a chance at freedom from the collar keeping him bound to this makeshift prison in the middle of the desert.
“It may hurt at first,” he says, remembering vividly the eager, hopeful light in Juugo’s eyes when he proposed getting rid of the collar, “probably feel like you won’t be able to breathe, so be ready for that, but give me a few, uh, give me a few more seconds.”
Quiet, Juugo does as he’s told, sitting on his knees, hunched forward and head lowered, eerily still with the exception of the measured rise and fall of his shoulders.
Much stronger than before, a sharp pain assaults him between his eyes, the strain from the collar trying to deflect his magic, and Sasuke sucks in a harsh breath, determined to push through despite the pounding in his head and his vision bleary continuing to darken.
An unpleasant feeling begins to crawl over him. While he’s never encountered this kind of magic before, the initial sensation isn’t too dissimilar from his brother’s shadow magic, the balm of magic that’s run in their family for generations, yet this magic is a cruel perversion of Itachi’s enveloping warmth that had always swathed him comforting and familiar, becomes a decaying sensation that seeps through his skin, coursing through his veins, festering inside his body an invisible, almost sentient mass that threatens to take him under, threatens to submerge him in absolute darkness, and it bodes within him an overwhelming trepidation he can’t immediately shake off.
After a moment, following what couldn’t possibly be more or three or four seconds stretched far too long, the collar unlocks with a sharp hiss, and he lets out a soft gasp. He feels his body pitch forward into Juugo, head fallen against Juugo’s chest, eyes shut tight against the inadvertent absorption of the residual backlash from the magic used to forge the collar.
Shallow breaths come in succession too fast. His mind feels too dull to move his body, but he can feel Juugo snatch the collar clutched in his hands, a single heave to wrench it from his grasp almost against his will unable to let go.
The decaying sensation finally begins to recede, but when Sasuke’s eyes open they grow too wide, the white clouding his vision nearly blinding, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to muffle a silent scream at the unfamiliar magic searing his palms, an unmitigated pulsation piercing through his skull.
Chest heaving, he watches the collar shatter, Juugo easily crushing it into tiny little pieces of metal scattered among dust and tossing the remains in the corner of the diminutive cell.
Eyesight hazy, body heavy and numb, vaguely, he registers the far away litany of SasukeSasukeSasuke. The gentle tone of Juugo’s voice snaps him out of his stupor. It takes a moment for awareness to set in, and he blinks, giving himself a little more time to get a hold of his bearings.
Knees taking the brunt of his weight, abrupt, he pushes himself away from Juugo. He staggers a little, nearly stumbles over, but regains his balance before he can fall, overly cautious taking a seat on the uneven surface of the floor that doesn’t cushion his wobbly landing.
“...Sasuke?”
“I...”
“Are you unharmed?”
“Y-yeah. I’m fine.”
“Your eyes, they’re still glow-”
“I’m fine.” Swallowing hard, Sasuke closes his eyes then forces them to stay open, willing away the fog in his mind still making it difficult to see. Following a slow inhale, he exhales, pauses and repeats, giving his lungs a chance to adjust to the steady supply of air. He almost starts at the feel of large fingers gently wrapped around his arm, and only then does he realise he’s actually shaking. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be...I’m fine.”
Juugo studies him carefully, the disbelief evident beneath the concern marring his face, an obvious worry reflected in the depths of red eyes that seem to stare right through him, but he seems content to accept Sasuke’s word for now, not making an attempt to press further as he releases Sasuke’s arm. “I...thank you, Sasuke.” He releases a heavy sigh, long and drawn-out, as if a literal weight’s been taken off his shoulders. “Thank you.”
Trying to appear nonchalant, Sasuke shrugs off the gratitude. Freeing Juugo from the collar took more out of him than he’d anticipated. Using his magic had exerted him more than he’s willing to admit. However, he’d never come across magic like that before, nothing so...sinister, which is especially disconcerting considering the nature of magic itself has nothing do with how a person chooses to use it.
Magic isn’t innately good or bad. It just is.
Yet there was something off about the magic lining the collar. Almost primitive, it felt inherently disturbing, noisome in the way it tried to latch onto his own magic in an attempt to consume him.
Although it’d probably be a good idea to examine the collar, to learn just how it affected his magic in the event he had to deal with something similar in the future, he’s in no hurry to complain about Juugo destroying it.
“As much as I appreciate the hospitality, staying here isn’t going to cut it much longer. Our best bet is to try to rendezvous with the people who came with me,” he says, unable to suppress a violent shudder as he picks up his communicator lying idle on the floor. The inside teeming with sand, dark screen cracked, the visible wires shorted out or torn, a missing transmitter the one piece he really did need, there’s no point in trying to make use of a communicator beyond repair, so he doesn’t, setting it back on the floor.
He has no reason not to believe Itachi and Naruto managed to escape the storm together, won’t even let himself entertain the very possibility of that thought, but with no way to contact either of them, it was probably more favourable to wait for them to find him, in order not to hazard running circles around each other in a backdrop of seemingly endless sand. At least until it was a little cooler outside.
Not to mention, he still needs some time to decide what to do with Juugo. Leaving him here is out of the question. It isn’t even an option, but it’s a given he was going to have one hell of a time trying to convince his brother to allow Juugo to come with them.
“Hopefully the storm didn’t pit us too far away from each other. It’s already morning now, so...” He looks around the place Juugo calls home, surveying the small cell only one in an extensive network of cells composing the prison.
The area horrendously cramped for someone of Juugo’s size, he makes note of the clear lack of supplies barely enough to last Juugo for another day, much less the two of them, the stark absence of any personal belongings or true comforts, save for the battered old quilt wrought with holes Juugo took care to bundle him in last night-busying himself with any minute detail to help take his mind off how much the collar had affected him.
“Tell me more about Barrah.”
“What would you like to hear?”
“Anything. I’ve never heard of it before.” And Sasuke hadn’t. Until now, as far as he knew, this place didn’t even exist. Trying to shake off the ship pursuing them, looking for somewhere to land, he, Itachi, and Naruto stumbled upon the small planet by chance. Yet Barrah wasn’t charted on any of their ship’s maps equipped from the navigation libraries, which are pretty extensive considering the fact they traced back all known explorations held within the last millennia. “Discovering it now, it’s...strange.”
Amused, Juugo tilts his head a little, wearing an unassuming smile, with a crinkling around the outside of his eyes that makes him look older than Sasuke initially pegged him to be. Much older. Maybe even more so than his parents. “What remains unseen doesn’t become untrue.”
Sasuke snorts, pulling Itachi’s jacket closer around his body. Answering with that kind of ambiguity, it sounded like something his brother would probably say. “I take it you’ve never left, then. Being so isolated from the rest of this Sector.”
Juugo gives an absent nod, almost wistful. “Barrah has always been what I’ve called home. Yet my home has not always been how you see it before you now.” He looks up, eyebrows knit together in thought, a slight frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. “The sand covering Barrah stretches for days upon end, but my home was once a paradise. My people were once free.”
He looks down, broad shoulders bunched, doing the impossible of making his nearly three-metre frame look smaller. His voice begins to trail off, gaze distant tinged with an almost palpable nostalgia. “...though memory tends to escape me, there was a time when I was not the last of my kind.”
Propped against the wall, Sasuke folds his legs, ignoring the marked sensation of cold from the sterile tile smooth beneath his back despite his jacket. “What changed?”
“One night, I was awoken by dreadful screams. The sounds of painful cries were heralds of death as flames engulfed my village. Men who hid behind masks dragged me from my bed as they continued to raze my village to the ground. My people and I were marched across the desert for three days and four nights, taken beneath the sand and held inside a labyrinth of metallic stone chambers where we waited to be either enslaved for labour or placed at the mercy of the Snake Charmer and his experiments.”
Following a shuddering breath, Juugo pauses, raising his gaze to stare at the thick metal bars straight ahead. Fingers flexed, his hands clench into fists held still over his lap. There’s a glimmer of yellow in his eyes, merely a trace of the other side of him Sasuke only caught a brief glimpse of earlier this morning.
Softly, he breathes out, fingers unfurling as the tension immediately leaves his body, the transitory spell of anger gone just as quickly as it had come.
“When they’d no longer found use of us,” he says, “the Masked Men left us little food and water. Left us alone to die shackled to stone walls, confined by their magic in the collars that didn’t allow us to leave. Over time, I became the sole survivor of my village. Of my people. But for me, the Barrah I’d always known had been forsaken.”
Sasuke shifts, arms wrapped around his torso, fingers gripping the sides of his jacket for warmth. “...why didn’t you fight back?”
“Apart from the elders in my village, I was often shunned by those who did not understand my turmoil.” Juugo manages a disparaging smile. “But despite the anger that rages inside me, the teachings of my people advocate against violence. And never before had there been a reason to fear anyone who came to Barrah.”
“But people like that...”
“They had powerful weapons where we could offer no physical defence. Their technology was more advanced than anything we’d ever been introduced to and vastly overwhelmed the few magic users who attempted to liberate our people. In this prison beneath the sand is where I’ve been held captive for years too many to remember. Too many years I’ve remained here forgotten.”
Head turned away, Sasuke stares at the white wall bleak beyond the cell’s gate wide open. He licks chapped lips and swallows, then raises his head to meet Juugo’s calm gaze. “I’m sorry.”
He knows it won’t give any real comfort, knows all too well such a vacant sentiment won’t do anything to change what’s already been done, but regardless of how meagre, it’s the only thing he has to offer.
Juugo gives a slight shake of his head, mouth slowly curving into a smile. “Please don’t be. I’ve made peace with my past.”
“Even with the ones who did this to you?”
“Yes. The people of Barrah have always been of a peaceful nature. It’s not our way to harbour ill will towards others, and we hold immense pride over the strength in our beliefs. Despite such misfortune, revenge won’t bring my people back. Revenge won’t return to me the life I once lived. Yet while the Snake Charmer continues to roam the Unreachable Sky, my only hope is that he forces no one else to suffer the fate I have.”
“When you say Snake Charmer, did he go by another name?”
“He called himself Orochimaru.”
On some level, hearing the name surprises Sasuke. At the same time, though, it doesn’t. Few people he knows don’t have lingering suspicions about him. Unctuous, his mom once called Orochimaru, the first time Sasuke met him three years ago, when he and Naruto travelled with their parents to that failed peace summit held on Nublar III.
It was supposed to be a show of good faith at the time, proposed by some of the Federation’s higher-ups, this idea of inviting Naruto and him to the first attempt at a peace treaty between the Federation and the Alliance in over two decades.
His dad being Commander-in-Chief and his mom, who’d, at the time, just won re-election for a seat in the Enterprise Chamber of Commerce; then Minato being Head of State and Kushina serving as an unofficial Sector ambassador, coinciding with her position in the Cabinet’s Foreign Affairs Ministry for the oversight of trade policy-with their parents’ staunch political ambit and how close their families actually are to one another, by all outward appearances, the Federation’s proposal didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch.
However, since that first summit, he’s been far from appreciative of the less than subtle glances Orochimaru’s occasionally sent his way, the disturbing interest in his life magic, how many times Orochimaru tried to corner him during the recesses of those first few summits, the number of times he tried to initiate conversation with him outside the summits, and he hated the unremitting feeling of being exposed, of feeling susceptible to the blatant intent behind those eyes that always seemed to be watching him.
It was because of Orochimaru, or rather the notion of people like him, that his parents decided to impose on him Neji and Sai, to keep a closer eye on his wellbeing, they claimed, whenever neither of them nor Itachi couldn’t; it didn’t help that his brother handpicked them himself and then tried to convince him that being given his own security detail was a perfectly suitable birthday present for a thirteen year old.
Loud and annoying like he seldom isn’t, never mind him being the one who’s always insisted on staying close together at the summits, of course Naruto laughed about the whole thing.
Until he was effectively put out of his misery by a solid smack upside the head.
“You’ve heard of the Snake Charmer?” Juugo says, more of a statement than a question.
“Unfortunately.” Hands disappearing beneath the cuffs of jacket sleeves too long for his arms, Sasuke does all but curb a slight grimace.
Still, despite how unnerving it is to be the subject of Orochimaru’s overt fascination, if this Snake Charmer is the same Orochimaru he knows, scientist or not, being such a high ranking commissioner in the Federation, for Orochimaru to be capable of committing what basically amounts to the genocide of Juugo’s people, it’s not a crime he’d immediately associate with him.
Genocide’s practically unheard of now, even with the ongoing feud between the Alliance and the Federation. The last known record of genocide occurred after the First Great War, eight hundred- some odd years ago during the Second Great War. For the most part, the causalities were magic users; save for the pocket number who were lucky enough to find refuge, as a whole, people like him were nearly driven to extinction. Following the aftermath of the Second Great War, however, intergalactic protocols were established to prevent it from happening again.
“I believe he wished to study my people’s sensitivity to different forms of magic,” Juugo says, abruptly breaking Sasuke out of his thoughts. “Despite the measures taken, his true goal was to understand our ability to see magical auras.”
Dark eyebrows rise in surprise. While Sasuke will readily admit he’s been sheltered for the majority of his life, whatever magic doctrine he’s been permitted to study restricted to what he’s learned through classes and read about from the Principal Data Hub, or what he’s been able to learn from other magic users, determining another person’s magic affinity, the technology for it exists, of course, but doing so with magic, he can’t honestly say he’s heard of anything like it.
His own magic gives him a sort of sixth sense. He’s always highly perceptive of people’s emotions, making him a kind of empath, like Neji’s cousin Hinata more or less, but he usually attributes his empathy to being a life user and his indiscriminate tendency to Influence people. Although the latter’s never been intentional, mostly a side effect of simply having life magic, because there really isn’t that much information about life magic to suggest otherwise, inducing feelings of euphoria does make it easier to accidentally sway people when he’s not paying too close attention.
Or, as one of the Academy students he met through Kiba, Ino, so eloquently once put it, if he wasn’t more careful, that part of his magic could end up making someone delirious enough to jump off the Tomosada Bridge wearing the stupidest, most ridiculously inane looking smile on their face even after they hit the ground.
“Being able to see auras,” he says, leaning forward a little closer, “is that an ability all magic users have, or is it specific to your people?”
“I’m not certain, but the earliest tales of my people, long before even the time of my birth, the old stories passed along to Mahatma say that when the Faceless first came many eons ago, he created a magical barrier around Barrah. It served to protect those on Barrah from the Outside. Yet as a consequence, the barrier greatly diminished the magic of the Faceless. This held true for the magic of my ancestors, as well.”
“So the atmosphere here, is that why it feels...” Sasuke almost frowns, trying to find the right word. He noticed it the moment he woke up this morning. Oppressive, he wants to say, but it isn’t that being here has taken away his ability to use magic. It’s only somewhat hindered the natural ease of access he’s accustomed that he’s been told fairly often he takes for granted.
Although if there has been some kind containment shield protecting Barrah for however long, it lends more credence to the anomaly of how Barrah’s existence had managed to slip under the radar, especially since it lies in the outer rim of highly disputed territory that’s been fought over by the Alliance and the Federation for the last twenty years.
It still doesn’t explain how Orochimaru managed to get through, though.
“Since the time of my ancestors,” Juugo says, “we’ve learned to adapt more passive forms of magic. Very few of my people were blessed with magic beyond the gift of this sight. We called them Shiva. Our inability to use higher forms of magic was the sacrifice my ancestors offered to the Faceless in return for the barrier protecting Barrah, but your life magic-”
“I never said I wasn’t a metal elemental.” The air around him stills, and Sasuke narrows his eyes, covered knuckles of his left hand pressing hard into the floor, fingers itching to grab the sword he doesn’t have.
Putting himself on the defensive, it’s a reflex. For as long as he can remember, countless times he’s been told not to tell, until this throat felt parched and his tongue dry made to promise over and over again to keep his life magic a secret no one else could ever know.
Even though there’s nothing to say Juugo has any adverse intentions towards him, in hindsight, he also realises it was still a risk to free from Juugo from the collar that, for all intents and purposes, may have been there for a pretty damn good reason.
And it was a stupid risk. A stupidly irresponsible risk because he knows he’s not home. He’s alone. Stranded in some abandoned prison buried beneath the desert of a planet he’s never even heard of until today. He’s not back at the base that became his haven, where the knowledge of him being able to use life magic is something the minority who do know are decidedly those who’d never attempt to take advantage of him.
“What makes you think I’m a life user?”
“Your natural affinity for magic is already exceedingly strong,” Juugo says, soothing, almost as he’s attempting to appease the fears of a child. “But as a wielder of life magic, you have a distinctive aura. There is a clear light that surrounds you. It’s an extraordinary light that hasn’t been heard of among my people for a hundred years.”
“You already knew what I was.”
“Not what you are, Sasuke.” At this, Juugo gives him a modest smile, earnest and not unkind, but Sasuke levels him with a wary gaze. “Who you are.”
His magic’s always been a touchy subject, but if Juugo’s known all this time, there’s nothing Sasuke can really do about it now. Juugo hasn’t done anything about it, and the sincerity bleeding through red eyes makes him highly doubt Juugo will.
With a sigh, he flexes his fingers, relaxing his hand, letting the oversized cuff trapped against his palm fall to his wrist. Sparing a quick glance to Juugo’s neck, he lets out a derisive snort, for the first time noticing the fading bruise where the collar had been, the severe contusion no longer a darkened ring circling Juugo’s neck. The damaged skin isn’t fully healed, but the difference is apparent enough.
The upshot of a subconscious pull, he hadn’t even realised what he was doing, not while he was wrestling with the backlash from the collar’s magic, but he should’ve known. The next time he finds himself in this kind of situation, he can’t afford not to know.
“Did you read my aura before or after I started to heal you?”
“Even within the recesses of these stone walls, I was drawn to the bright light surrounding you. During the calm of the storm, it led me outside, where I discovered you lying in the sand.”
“...oh.” Sasuke falters, again picking up the broken communicator lying beside him, the insubstantial weight lingering in his hand, teetering on the edge of his palm before he sets it down. “So it’s not something I’ve could have hid from you. Whether I wanted to or not.”
“As you are now, no, but I’m glad to have found you. Meeting you has granted me an opportunity towards inner peace I’d once resigned myself to believe would always be out of reach. Your mere presence calms the fury that burns within me.”
Pursing his lips, Sasuke shifts against the wall, gripping the cuff of his sleeve to quell a growing discomfort. Juugo’s been trapped down here wearing that collar for who knows how long. After experiencing that kind of physical and psychological trauma, it’s understandable that he’d develop a rapid attachment to the first person he’s presumably met in years.
But it’s the repeat display of that same kind of veneration from earlier, the esteem mistaking him for something he’s not that makes him uneasy and eager to dismiss Juugo’s expression. “There’s nothing special about me to warrant having that kind of effect on you.”
“My anger made me unusual among my kind. Though I was not always feared, from a young age I realised the worth of neither being seen nor heard. But for the love of my father, I was a pariah in our village, through the eyes of my people eternally damned to a rage that nearly consumed me as a child. Yet you’re one of the few who...”
Waking up in a cold cell disoriented and sore, opening his eyes to be met with Juugo’s face hovering too close looming over him, Sasuke can admit the circumstances weren’t encouraging.
The last thing he could pull from memory was Itachi taking over the controls, the harness too tight across his chest securing him to his seat, bracing himself in that one terse moment of complete and utter silence right before the impact, the acrid wail from the metal buckling around them, the sand lashing at his face, echoes of Naruto’s screams cutting through the harsh winds a constant ringing in his ears, being tossed in the air and nearly trampled by the second dunemite while Itachi hauled an unconscious Naruto from the ship.
Immediately, he tried to sit up. Movement slightly mired by the tattered quilt covering him, he looked for signs of either his brother or Naruto, but he only found concern from the red-haired stranger who’d laid a large hand on his shoulder.
Despite his imposing figure, even at first glance, there was something serene about Juugo, something that’d put him a little more at ease and helped assuage much of his initial apprehension due to being separated from his brother and Naruto. That, or knowing Naruto for so long really has been detrimental to the self-preservation skills Itachi had so painstakingly tried to instil in him.
“The freedom you’ve given me, Sasuke, it’s a gift I will never be able to fully return in kind.”
“You’re the one who found me. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Please allow me the opportunity to try.”
Fingers rubbing at his temple, Sasuke sighs, dropping his arm to rest over his knee. “I won’t leave you here, Juugo. If we-when we find a way off Barrah, we’ll take you to the nearest port with a refuge terminal, fill out some papers, and then get you situated somewhere safe, where you can start a new life.”
“I would consider it a privilege to join you on your pilgrimage.”
“Pilgrimage to where? As soon as I leave here, I’m going home, and I doubt you’d want to stay hosed up in some training base for the rest of your life.”
“Wherever you wish to go, if you’ll have me, I will gladly follow.”
“Listen, I only took the collar off.” The words bring a slight quirk to Sasuke’s lips a near frown, but he doesn’t let it turn into anything more. “Don’t make yourself feel obligated for that. You shouldn’t-”
He pauses, narrowing his eyes, body taut at the obscure presence a delicate brush at the corner of his mind, the tendrils faint of an acute sensation not quite strange but neither wholly unrecognisable.
So far, he’s come across very few people who’ve been able to mask their presence from him, namely his brother and his parents, alongside Minato and Kushina, which doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there, but met with an intentionally muddled energy signature, in this situation, it’s worth noting that Itachi is one of those people who have the ability to completely elude him.
Unfolding his legs, he begins to push himself up from the floor, gritting his teeth at the haggard noise from his own laboured breathing. An unexpected vertigo causes him to lurch sideways, but he breaks his would be fall with a hand against the wall that feels too cool beneath his fingers, standing himself upright when he hears Juugo shift behind him.
He placates Juugo with an arm outstretched, motioning for Juugo to stay behind him. “Wait here.”
Footfalls resonate through the long corridor, settling in the cell.
Beside him, Juugo stiffens. “I should come with you.”
Only vaguely does it register in his mind the arrant difference in height as Juugo towers over him, reminded of the yellow-eyed Juugo who effortlessly tore apart a massive dunemite twice his size with no more than his bare hands that brought him witness to the undercurrents of a tumultuous rage reeling beneath the surface of a docile personality.
He still doesn’t move his arm. “It’s better if I go.”
Not without reluctance, Juugo yields. Sasuke gives a slight nod, a brief flare of shadow magic augmenting already light steps as he makes his way out of the cell.
A bellowed hello is a loud echo in the corridor, louder still the cry of is anyone in here that follows, and the obnoxious voice that reaches his ears causes him to release the magic shrouding him.
The heavy sense of dread that’s been gradually accumulating in his chest begins to ebb. Simply knowing that Naruto’s okay, knowing that he wasn’t powerless to do something. Unlike the time he wasn’t able to save...
Jaw tight, he continues walking, forcing himself to bury the rehashed memories of Shisui’s drowning.
If Naruto’s here, Itachi can’t be too far behind. He wasn’t expecting them to find him so soon, prepared to go searching for them once he figured out where he and Juugo were in relation to the crash site. Most likely, Itachi and Naruto would have gone there first to retrieve any supplies from the ship; locating the ship was his best chance of running into them, with the least risk of getting lost in the desert, assuming the ship itself wasn’t too far away from where they’d landed.
Halfway through the corridor, he stops.
Thick jacket draped over his head, peeking into one of the adjoining cells, Naruto steps back with a frustrated sigh, immediately still when he notices him.
From what he can tell, Naruto looks fine, a little worse for wear, some kind of tourniquet fastened around his left arm, face smudged with grime, weary from lack of sleep, but Sasuke suspects he doesn’t look that much better.
“You bastard.” Naruto takes long strides, the jacket over his head forgotten, falling to the wayside as he all but runs to close the distance between them. His hands start to shake, arms forcibly held at his sides, eyes revealing the restraint from an obvious desire to hit him. “I can’t believe you-”
Suddenly, he deflates, glare disappearing with the too pronounced slump of his shoulders. “Sasuke, you...”
He swallows hard, reaching out with a hand that doesn’t reach lingers, hesitant before he lets it fall back to his side. “But you’re...”
Lowering his head, he looks back up, the corners of his mouth pulled into a self-effacing smile that makes him lost, uncharacteristically unsure, as if he’s trying to convince himself that Sasuke’s really there, arms still held against his sides, fingers against his palms curtail an itch to run his hands all over Sasuke in order to mollify the need to simply touch if only to keep from throwing himself forward and bringing them both crashing to the ground.
“...you’re okay.” He takes a deep breath, releasing an exhale drawn long. “You’re...okay.”
“Still doesn’t excuse the fact you look like shit,” Sasuke says, allowing a small smile to slip through.
“Oh, yeah?” Naruto grins back, broad and unwavering, quickly falling into an ease overlaying the relief in his eyes as he gives Sasuke a light punch on the shoulder. “You try being stuck in a cave with your brother all night and see if you don’t look like shit the next day.”
With a low hum, Sasuke nods, blinking when he sees his sword at the weapon holster worn around Naruto’s hip. “You found it.”
“Yeah, Itachi had it.” Naruto’s upper teeth press down on the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t use it or anything. I just...”
Eyebrows scrunched, he moves closer, two steps forward, resting his chin on Sasuke’s shoulder. His voice lowers to a whisper, breath tickling the shell of Sasuke’s ear as the hand reaching behind Sasuke’s back fiddles with the hem of Sasuke’s jacket dusted with a light layer of sand. “You don’t look so hot. You sure you’re okay?”
“Are you?” Sasuke murmurs, absently reaching with his left hand to pull on the outdated dog tags at the end of the ball chain hanging from around Naruto’s neck.
Though he personally thinks them more practical, the tags themselves don’t circulate much use anymore. Most people who wear them do so out of sentiment for the old ways, using the tags as a kind of rebellious statement against society’s overdependence on technology, but Naruto claims wearing dog tags makes him look cool.
Closing his eyes, slowly, he breathes in then breathes out, unconsciously leaning into the weight solid against him. If Naruto notices him shifting a little closer, he doesn’t say anything about it.
“Yeah, I’m good. My arm’s still a little achy, but it’s like it didn’t even happen.” Naruto pauses, quiet for a moment held too long, embrace uncomfortable too stiff, seemingly caught in some kind of stupor until his hold around Sasuke becomes tighter.
“I was mad at you at first, you know,” he says. “Really mad. For acting so stupid, risking your life for me like that, but then Itachi knocked some sense into me, so, I, um...thanks. Not that I won’t kick the crap out of you myself if you ever try that again, but I owe you. Big time.”
Sasuke lets out a light scoff. “I’d like to see you try anything. Keep this up, and I’m going to lose track of how many times I’ve had bail your sorry ass out of trouble.”
Naruto ducks his head, nuzzling Sasuke’s neck, trying to leave an imprint of a grin against his skin. “That’s kind of what I’m hoping for.”
“Idiot,” Sasuke mutters softly, giving the dog tags a sharp tug that only earns from Naruto a soft laugh. Rolling his eyes, he lets the dog tags fall from his fingers.
“What sort of place is this, anyway?”
“A prison. Obviously.”
“Smartass.” Squeezing Sasuke’s side, Naruto snorts, raising his head. “Somehow, though,” he says, a quick glance to the emptied cells on either side of them, “I’m starting to get the feeling it’s a little more than that.”
“Probably was. It’s more of a crypt now.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” Naruto says, backing away and bending down to pick up his jacket, “this place’s a little too creepy for me.” He ties the sleeves around his waist. “I know I’ll feel a lot better when we get out of here. Should probably find Itachi first, though.”
“You lost him.”
“Not really.”
Sasuke gives him an expectant look.
“Kind of. Sort of. Maybe. Well, I think he’s up ahead,” Naruto says, hand scratching the back of his head a clutter of blond strands blotched with spots of blood and dirt. Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Somewhere.”
“Yeah. That’s really helpful.”
“I try.” Naruto shrugs. “But you know how it is. Even you have a hard time sensing him when he starts doing the whole shadow technique thing.”
“You two split up?”
“Only to cover more ground, though. Once you get down to it, this place is actually pretty big. Especially for something under the desert. The whole thing’s like some kind of tunnel system, but we found two ways to get in. The way I came, there’s this really old, rickety looking outcrop, part of this huge rock that was completely covered in sand, I went through that door.
“The other entrance is all the way on the other side. Itachi said he’d take that one, and then we’d work our way down to meet in the middle.”
“...damn it.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s go.”
“Hey, where’re you-”
“Come on.” Pulling away from the hand gripping his wrist, Sasuke runs back down the corridor. He doesn’t bother to check to see if Naruto’s following him, instead quickening his pace to reach Juugo before his brother did.
Continued
Ish gets too real.
tbh, this is my first time writing Juugo, so please bear with any obvious lapses in characterisation. He turned out a little more otherworldly than he was supposed to be, but the words Gentle Giant and Old Soul and Buddhist Monk repeatedly kept flashing in my head, and I just let myself run with the cliché. He just ended up channelling Bruce Banner.
I always fail to keep Sasuke IC, so no apologies for his poorly developed-ed-ness. His plethora of issues aside, it’s hard for me not to see him as a demanding, spoiled brat. Albeit sometimes a kind-hearted spoiled brat, but still a brat nonetheless. Sasuke must have been a pretty emotionally sensitive child to turn out as messed up as he did in canon, his problem being he felt things too much, which made the mask of indifference veiling so much anger a logical default, however ineffective the coping mechanism; it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
At least that's my excuse for the empathy angle that came way, way out of left field.
Oh, and ever since the whole Akatsuki cloak thing, I'm positively smitten with the idea of Sasuke wearing his big brother’s clothes, so there's that, too.
...idek. My mind and any semblance of sanity done did left me at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
***
Characters: Naruto/Sasuke, Itachi, Juugo
Rating: PG-15
Words: 15,222
Summary: After making an emergency landing on an unknown planet, Naruto and Itachi find themselves on one side of the storm, while Sasuke meets a peculiar stranger on the other.
“I was told it wasn’t devised to be released.”
“If it was put on you, I don’t see why it can’t be taken off.” Sasuke’s mouth curves into a near frown, fingers of his left hand methodically searching the metal collar for any potential weak points. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, though. I wonder if-”
Flinching from a short burst of pain, he recoils from the unexpected impulse of magic, landing on his backside hard against the floor. “The hell kind of collar is this?”
“Are you-”
“It’s nothing,” Sasuke grits out, fingers holding the wrist of his left hand nursed against his chest as he forces himself to sit up. Instinctively, he allows a trickle of magic to flow to his hands, not too much, but just enough that he’s able to ignore the lingering sting prickling the tips of his fingers.
“Please be careful, Shiva.”
“Don’t call me that.” With a grunt, Sasuke narrows his eyes. He breathes in and places both hands on the collar this time, gently laying his fingers over the heavily bruised skin beneath it as he breathes out. “I’m no different than you. Being able to use magic doesn’t make me any more important.”
“It’s an acknowledgement of respect. Those who could be called Shiva were rare in my village. To wield magic is a precious gift. But to be in the presence of an Amala-”
“They’re just words, Juugo,” Sasuke says, holding back his irritation, lips pursed at the near veneration in Juugo’s voice. Whatever the nuances behind Shiva and Amala are supposed to be, he doesn’t mean to take offense, not when Juugo makes the words seem like such an innocuous gesture, but he’s tired of people constantly reducing him to his ability to use magic and revering him for something more trouble than it’s worth. “Useless titles like that don’t mean a damn thing.”
“If removing the collar is of no use, I’ve learned to endure it.” There’s a subtle panic in Juugo’s eyes, underlying an unease already there that makes him look torn between letting Sasuke help him and grabbing Sasuke’s arm to haul him away from the collar. “I’m able to live despite this curse.”
“I already told you. Everything’s fine. It’s fine, just...just hold still for me a little longer, all right.” Sasuke doesn’t really know how to disengage the collar, but he does have an idea that, in theory, seemed like it should work.
Crafting a loophole of sorts, he’s going to try to redirect Juugo’s life force to prevent it from reaching collar, creating a blockade using the metal of the collar itself. This based on the assumption it was Juugo’s life force powering whatever internal mechanism that was keeping the collar intact, since trying to remove it without magic only resulted in the collar becoming tighter. His only stipulation is being able to pull the whole thing off while keeping Juugo from suspecting he was a life user. Unless they were users themselves, most people weren’t sensitive to the majority of the magic surrounding them, yet even the most insensate person would be aware of someone tampering with their life force.
Passing as a metal elemental he could get away with. At least he didn’t deny it when Juugo asked if he was one, which is he is, in a roundabout way. As a life user, simply drawing from his own energy or the energy around him, he has the ability to manipulate any kind of magic. He doesn’t exactly go around parading that particular ability, taught to intrinsically refrain from using it; the pervading spread of misinformation about life magic convinced most to assume life users could only focus on the energies of the people within immediate distance, and his family-even Kushina and Minato to a noteworthy extent-could never stress enough how important it was to allow that obsolete school of thought to prevail.
But Juugo had taken him in last night, found him unconscious after being swept away from the storm that had separated him from his brother and Naruto, humbly offered this poor excuse for shelter and what little food he had when he could’ve simply left him to die instead. The least he could do is try to repay Juugo with a chance at freedom from the collar keeping him bound to this makeshift prison in the middle of the desert.
“It may hurt at first,” he says, remembering vividly the eager, hopeful light in Juugo’s eyes when he proposed getting rid of the collar, “probably feel like you won’t be able to breathe, so be ready for that, but give me a few, uh, give me a few more seconds.”
Quiet, Juugo does as he’s told, sitting on his knees, hunched forward and head lowered, eerily still with the exception of the measured rise and fall of his shoulders.
Much stronger than before, a sharp pain assaults him between his eyes, the strain from the collar trying to deflect his magic, and Sasuke sucks in a harsh breath, determined to push through despite the pounding in his head and his vision bleary continuing to darken.
An unpleasant feeling begins to crawl over him. While he’s never encountered this kind of magic before, the initial sensation isn’t too dissimilar from his brother’s shadow magic, the balm of magic that’s run in their family for generations, yet this magic is a cruel perversion of Itachi’s enveloping warmth that had always swathed him comforting and familiar, becomes a decaying sensation that seeps through his skin, coursing through his veins, festering inside his body an invisible, almost sentient mass that threatens to take him under, threatens to submerge him in absolute darkness, and it bodes within him an overwhelming trepidation he can’t immediately shake off.
After a moment, following what couldn’t possibly be more or three or four seconds stretched far too long, the collar unlocks with a sharp hiss, and he lets out a soft gasp. He feels his body pitch forward into Juugo, head fallen against Juugo’s chest, eyes shut tight against the inadvertent absorption of the residual backlash from the magic used to forge the collar.
Shallow breaths come in succession too fast. His mind feels too dull to move his body, but he can feel Juugo snatch the collar clutched in his hands, a single heave to wrench it from his grasp almost against his will unable to let go.
The decaying sensation finally begins to recede, but when Sasuke’s eyes open they grow too wide, the white clouding his vision nearly blinding, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to muffle a silent scream at the unfamiliar magic searing his palms, an unmitigated pulsation piercing through his skull.
Chest heaving, he watches the collar shatter, Juugo easily crushing it into tiny little pieces of metal scattered among dust and tossing the remains in the corner of the diminutive cell.
Eyesight hazy, body heavy and numb, vaguely, he registers the far away litany of SasukeSasukeSasuke. The gentle tone of Juugo’s voice snaps him out of his stupor. It takes a moment for awareness to set in, and he blinks, giving himself a little more time to get a hold of his bearings.
Knees taking the brunt of his weight, abrupt, he pushes himself away from Juugo. He staggers a little, nearly stumbles over, but regains his balance before he can fall, overly cautious taking a seat on the uneven surface of the floor that doesn’t cushion his wobbly landing.
“...Sasuke?”
“I...”
“Are you unharmed?”
“Y-yeah. I’m fine.”
“Your eyes, they’re still glow-”
“I’m fine.” Swallowing hard, Sasuke closes his eyes then forces them to stay open, willing away the fog in his mind still making it difficult to see. Following a slow inhale, he exhales, pauses and repeats, giving his lungs a chance to adjust to the steady supply of air. He almost starts at the feel of large fingers gently wrapped around his arm, and only then does he realise he’s actually shaking. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be...I’m fine.”
Juugo studies him carefully, the disbelief evident beneath the concern marring his face, an obvious worry reflected in the depths of red eyes that seem to stare right through him, but he seems content to accept Sasuke’s word for now, not making an attempt to press further as he releases Sasuke’s arm. “I...thank you, Sasuke.” He releases a heavy sigh, long and drawn-out, as if a literal weight’s been taken off his shoulders. “Thank you.”
Trying to appear nonchalant, Sasuke shrugs off the gratitude. Freeing Juugo from the collar took more out of him than he’d anticipated. Using his magic had exerted him more than he’s willing to admit. However, he’d never come across magic like that before, nothing so...sinister, which is especially disconcerting considering the nature of magic itself has nothing do with how a person chooses to use it.
Magic isn’t innately good or bad. It just is.
Yet there was something off about the magic lining the collar. Almost primitive, it felt inherently disturbing, noisome in the way it tried to latch onto his own magic in an attempt to consume him.
Although it’d probably be a good idea to examine the collar, to learn just how it affected his magic in the event he had to deal with something similar in the future, he’s in no hurry to complain about Juugo destroying it.
“As much as I appreciate the hospitality, staying here isn’t going to cut it much longer. Our best bet is to try to rendezvous with the people who came with me,” he says, unable to suppress a violent shudder as he picks up his communicator lying idle on the floor. The inside teeming with sand, dark screen cracked, the visible wires shorted out or torn, a missing transmitter the one piece he really did need, there’s no point in trying to make use of a communicator beyond repair, so he doesn’t, setting it back on the floor.
He has no reason not to believe Itachi and Naruto managed to escape the storm together, won’t even let himself entertain the very possibility of that thought, but with no way to contact either of them, it was probably more favourable to wait for them to find him, in order not to hazard running circles around each other in a backdrop of seemingly endless sand. At least until it was a little cooler outside.
Not to mention, he still needs some time to decide what to do with Juugo. Leaving him here is out of the question. It isn’t even an option, but it’s a given he was going to have one hell of a time trying to convince his brother to allow Juugo to come with them.
“Hopefully the storm didn’t pit us too far away from each other. It’s already morning now, so...” He looks around the place Juugo calls home, surveying the small cell only one in an extensive network of cells composing the prison.
The area horrendously cramped for someone of Juugo’s size, he makes note of the clear lack of supplies barely enough to last Juugo for another day, much less the two of them, the stark absence of any personal belongings or true comforts, save for the battered old quilt wrought with holes Juugo took care to bundle him in last night-busying himself with any minute detail to help take his mind off how much the collar had affected him.
“Tell me more about Barrah.”
“What would you like to hear?”
“Anything. I’ve never heard of it before.” And Sasuke hadn’t. Until now, as far as he knew, this place didn’t even exist. Trying to shake off the ship pursuing them, looking for somewhere to land, he, Itachi, and Naruto stumbled upon the small planet by chance. Yet Barrah wasn’t charted on any of their ship’s maps equipped from the navigation libraries, which are pretty extensive considering the fact they traced back all known explorations held within the last millennia. “Discovering it now, it’s...strange.”
Amused, Juugo tilts his head a little, wearing an unassuming smile, with a crinkling around the outside of his eyes that makes him look older than Sasuke initially pegged him to be. Much older. Maybe even more so than his parents. “What remains unseen doesn’t become untrue.”
Sasuke snorts, pulling Itachi’s jacket closer around his body. Answering with that kind of ambiguity, it sounded like something his brother would probably say. “I take it you’ve never left, then. Being so isolated from the rest of this Sector.”
Juugo gives an absent nod, almost wistful. “Barrah has always been what I’ve called home. Yet my home has not always been how you see it before you now.” He looks up, eyebrows knit together in thought, a slight frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. “The sand covering Barrah stretches for days upon end, but my home was once a paradise. My people were once free.”
He looks down, broad shoulders bunched, doing the impossible of making his nearly three-metre frame look smaller. His voice begins to trail off, gaze distant tinged with an almost palpable nostalgia. “...though memory tends to escape me, there was a time when I was not the last of my kind.”
Propped against the wall, Sasuke folds his legs, ignoring the marked sensation of cold from the sterile tile smooth beneath his back despite his jacket. “What changed?”
“One night, I was awoken by dreadful screams. The sounds of painful cries were heralds of death as flames engulfed my village. Men who hid behind masks dragged me from my bed as they continued to raze my village to the ground. My people and I were marched across the desert for three days and four nights, taken beneath the sand and held inside a labyrinth of metallic stone chambers where we waited to be either enslaved for labour or placed at the mercy of the Snake Charmer and his experiments.”
Following a shuddering breath, Juugo pauses, raising his gaze to stare at the thick metal bars straight ahead. Fingers flexed, his hands clench into fists held still over his lap. There’s a glimmer of yellow in his eyes, merely a trace of the other side of him Sasuke only caught a brief glimpse of earlier this morning.
Softly, he breathes out, fingers unfurling as the tension immediately leaves his body, the transitory spell of anger gone just as quickly as it had come.
“When they’d no longer found use of us,” he says, “the Masked Men left us little food and water. Left us alone to die shackled to stone walls, confined by their magic in the collars that didn’t allow us to leave. Over time, I became the sole survivor of my village. Of my people. But for me, the Barrah I’d always known had been forsaken.”
Sasuke shifts, arms wrapped around his torso, fingers gripping the sides of his jacket for warmth. “...why didn’t you fight back?”
“Apart from the elders in my village, I was often shunned by those who did not understand my turmoil.” Juugo manages a disparaging smile. “But despite the anger that rages inside me, the teachings of my people advocate against violence. And never before had there been a reason to fear anyone who came to Barrah.”
“But people like that...”
“They had powerful weapons where we could offer no physical defence. Their technology was more advanced than anything we’d ever been introduced to and vastly overwhelmed the few magic users who attempted to liberate our people. In this prison beneath the sand is where I’ve been held captive for years too many to remember. Too many years I’ve remained here forgotten.”
Head turned away, Sasuke stares at the white wall bleak beyond the cell’s gate wide open. He licks chapped lips and swallows, then raises his head to meet Juugo’s calm gaze. “I’m sorry.”
He knows it won’t give any real comfort, knows all too well such a vacant sentiment won’t do anything to change what’s already been done, but regardless of how meagre, it’s the only thing he has to offer.
Juugo gives a slight shake of his head, mouth slowly curving into a smile. “Please don’t be. I’ve made peace with my past.”
“Even with the ones who did this to you?”
“Yes. The people of Barrah have always been of a peaceful nature. It’s not our way to harbour ill will towards others, and we hold immense pride over the strength in our beliefs. Despite such misfortune, revenge won’t bring my people back. Revenge won’t return to me the life I once lived. Yet while the Snake Charmer continues to roam the Unreachable Sky, my only hope is that he forces no one else to suffer the fate I have.”
“When you say Snake Charmer, did he go by another name?”
“He called himself Orochimaru.”
On some level, hearing the name surprises Sasuke. At the same time, though, it doesn’t. Few people he knows don’t have lingering suspicions about him. Unctuous, his mom once called Orochimaru, the first time Sasuke met him three years ago, when he and Naruto travelled with their parents to that failed peace summit held on Nublar III.
It was supposed to be a show of good faith at the time, proposed by some of the Federation’s higher-ups, this idea of inviting Naruto and him to the first attempt at a peace treaty between the Federation and the Alliance in over two decades.
His dad being Commander-in-Chief and his mom, who’d, at the time, just won re-election for a seat in the Enterprise Chamber of Commerce; then Minato being Head of State and Kushina serving as an unofficial Sector ambassador, coinciding with her position in the Cabinet’s Foreign Affairs Ministry for the oversight of trade policy-with their parents’ staunch political ambit and how close their families actually are to one another, by all outward appearances, the Federation’s proposal didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch.
However, since that first summit, he’s been far from appreciative of the less than subtle glances Orochimaru’s occasionally sent his way, the disturbing interest in his life magic, how many times Orochimaru tried to corner him during the recesses of those first few summits, the number of times he tried to initiate conversation with him outside the summits, and he hated the unremitting feeling of being exposed, of feeling susceptible to the blatant intent behind those eyes that always seemed to be watching him.
It was because of Orochimaru, or rather the notion of people like him, that his parents decided to impose on him Neji and Sai, to keep a closer eye on his wellbeing, they claimed, whenever neither of them nor Itachi couldn’t; it didn’t help that his brother handpicked them himself and then tried to convince him that being given his own security detail was a perfectly suitable birthday present for a thirteen year old.
Loud and annoying like he seldom isn’t, never mind him being the one who’s always insisted on staying close together at the summits, of course Naruto laughed about the whole thing.
Until he was effectively put out of his misery by a solid smack upside the head.
“You’ve heard of the Snake Charmer?” Juugo says, more of a statement than a question.
“Unfortunately.” Hands disappearing beneath the cuffs of jacket sleeves too long for his arms, Sasuke does all but curb a slight grimace.
Still, despite how unnerving it is to be the subject of Orochimaru’s overt fascination, if this Snake Charmer is the same Orochimaru he knows, scientist or not, being such a high ranking commissioner in the Federation, for Orochimaru to be capable of committing what basically amounts to the genocide of Juugo’s people, it’s not a crime he’d immediately associate with him.
Genocide’s practically unheard of now, even with the ongoing feud between the Alliance and the Federation. The last known record of genocide occurred after the First Great War, eight hundred- some odd years ago during the Second Great War. For the most part, the causalities were magic users; save for the pocket number who were lucky enough to find refuge, as a whole, people like him were nearly driven to extinction. Following the aftermath of the Second Great War, however, intergalactic protocols were established to prevent it from happening again.
“I believe he wished to study my people’s sensitivity to different forms of magic,” Juugo says, abruptly breaking Sasuke out of his thoughts. “Despite the measures taken, his true goal was to understand our ability to see magical auras.”
Dark eyebrows rise in surprise. While Sasuke will readily admit he’s been sheltered for the majority of his life, whatever magic doctrine he’s been permitted to study restricted to what he’s learned through classes and read about from the Principal Data Hub, or what he’s been able to learn from other magic users, determining another person’s magic affinity, the technology for it exists, of course, but doing so with magic, he can’t honestly say he’s heard of anything like it.
His own magic gives him a sort of sixth sense. He’s always highly perceptive of people’s emotions, making him a kind of empath, like Neji’s cousin Hinata more or less, but he usually attributes his empathy to being a life user and his indiscriminate tendency to Influence people. Although the latter’s never been intentional, mostly a side effect of simply having life magic, because there really isn’t that much information about life magic to suggest otherwise, inducing feelings of euphoria does make it easier to accidentally sway people when he’s not paying too close attention.
Or, as one of the Academy students he met through Kiba, Ino, so eloquently once put it, if he wasn’t more careful, that part of his magic could end up making someone delirious enough to jump off the Tomosada Bridge wearing the stupidest, most ridiculously inane looking smile on their face even after they hit the ground.
“Being able to see auras,” he says, leaning forward a little closer, “is that an ability all magic users have, or is it specific to your people?”
“I’m not certain, but the earliest tales of my people, long before even the time of my birth, the old stories passed along to Mahatma say that when the Faceless first came many eons ago, he created a magical barrier around Barrah. It served to protect those on Barrah from the Outside. Yet as a consequence, the barrier greatly diminished the magic of the Faceless. This held true for the magic of my ancestors, as well.”
“So the atmosphere here, is that why it feels...” Sasuke almost frowns, trying to find the right word. He noticed it the moment he woke up this morning. Oppressive, he wants to say, but it isn’t that being here has taken away his ability to use magic. It’s only somewhat hindered the natural ease of access he’s accustomed that he’s been told fairly often he takes for granted.
Although if there has been some kind containment shield protecting Barrah for however long, it lends more credence to the anomaly of how Barrah’s existence had managed to slip under the radar, especially since it lies in the outer rim of highly disputed territory that’s been fought over by the Alliance and the Federation for the last twenty years.
It still doesn’t explain how Orochimaru managed to get through, though.
“Since the time of my ancestors,” Juugo says, “we’ve learned to adapt more passive forms of magic. Very few of my people were blessed with magic beyond the gift of this sight. We called them Shiva. Our inability to use higher forms of magic was the sacrifice my ancestors offered to the Faceless in return for the barrier protecting Barrah, but your life magic-”
“I never said I wasn’t a metal elemental.” The air around him stills, and Sasuke narrows his eyes, covered knuckles of his left hand pressing hard into the floor, fingers itching to grab the sword he doesn’t have.
Putting himself on the defensive, it’s a reflex. For as long as he can remember, countless times he’s been told not to tell, until this throat felt parched and his tongue dry made to promise over and over again to keep his life magic a secret no one else could ever know.
Even though there’s nothing to say Juugo has any adverse intentions towards him, in hindsight, he also realises it was still a risk to free from Juugo from the collar that, for all intents and purposes, may have been there for a pretty damn good reason.
And it was a stupid risk. A stupidly irresponsible risk because he knows he’s not home. He’s alone. Stranded in some abandoned prison buried beneath the desert of a planet he’s never even heard of until today. He’s not back at the base that became his haven, where the knowledge of him being able to use life magic is something the minority who do know are decidedly those who’d never attempt to take advantage of him.
“What makes you think I’m a life user?”
“Your natural affinity for magic is already exceedingly strong,” Juugo says, soothing, almost as he’s attempting to appease the fears of a child. “But as a wielder of life magic, you have a distinctive aura. There is a clear light that surrounds you. It’s an extraordinary light that hasn’t been heard of among my people for a hundred years.”
“You already knew what I was.”
“Not what you are, Sasuke.” At this, Juugo gives him a modest smile, earnest and not unkind, but Sasuke levels him with a wary gaze. “Who you are.”
His magic’s always been a touchy subject, but if Juugo’s known all this time, there’s nothing Sasuke can really do about it now. Juugo hasn’t done anything about it, and the sincerity bleeding through red eyes makes him highly doubt Juugo will.
With a sigh, he flexes his fingers, relaxing his hand, letting the oversized cuff trapped against his palm fall to his wrist. Sparing a quick glance to Juugo’s neck, he lets out a derisive snort, for the first time noticing the fading bruise where the collar had been, the severe contusion no longer a darkened ring circling Juugo’s neck. The damaged skin isn’t fully healed, but the difference is apparent enough.
The upshot of a subconscious pull, he hadn’t even realised what he was doing, not while he was wrestling with the backlash from the collar’s magic, but he should’ve known. The next time he finds himself in this kind of situation, he can’t afford not to know.
“Did you read my aura before or after I started to heal you?”
“Even within the recesses of these stone walls, I was drawn to the bright light surrounding you. During the calm of the storm, it led me outside, where I discovered you lying in the sand.”
“...oh.” Sasuke falters, again picking up the broken communicator lying beside him, the insubstantial weight lingering in his hand, teetering on the edge of his palm before he sets it down. “So it’s not something I’ve could have hid from you. Whether I wanted to or not.”
“As you are now, no, but I’m glad to have found you. Meeting you has granted me an opportunity towards inner peace I’d once resigned myself to believe would always be out of reach. Your mere presence calms the fury that burns within me.”
Pursing his lips, Sasuke shifts against the wall, gripping the cuff of his sleeve to quell a growing discomfort. Juugo’s been trapped down here wearing that collar for who knows how long. After experiencing that kind of physical and psychological trauma, it’s understandable that he’d develop a rapid attachment to the first person he’s presumably met in years.
But it’s the repeat display of that same kind of veneration from earlier, the esteem mistaking him for something he’s not that makes him uneasy and eager to dismiss Juugo’s expression. “There’s nothing special about me to warrant having that kind of effect on you.”
“My anger made me unusual among my kind. Though I was not always feared, from a young age I realised the worth of neither being seen nor heard. But for the love of my father, I was a pariah in our village, through the eyes of my people eternally damned to a rage that nearly consumed me as a child. Yet you’re one of the few who...”
Waking up in a cold cell disoriented and sore, opening his eyes to be met with Juugo’s face hovering too close looming over him, Sasuke can admit the circumstances weren’t encouraging.
The last thing he could pull from memory was Itachi taking over the controls, the harness too tight across his chest securing him to his seat, bracing himself in that one terse moment of complete and utter silence right before the impact, the acrid wail from the metal buckling around them, the sand lashing at his face, echoes of Naruto’s screams cutting through the harsh winds a constant ringing in his ears, being tossed in the air and nearly trampled by the second dunemite while Itachi hauled an unconscious Naruto from the ship.
Immediately, he tried to sit up. Movement slightly mired by the tattered quilt covering him, he looked for signs of either his brother or Naruto, but he only found concern from the red-haired stranger who’d laid a large hand on his shoulder.
Despite his imposing figure, even at first glance, there was something serene about Juugo, something that’d put him a little more at ease and helped assuage much of his initial apprehension due to being separated from his brother and Naruto. That, or knowing Naruto for so long really has been detrimental to the self-preservation skills Itachi had so painstakingly tried to instil in him.
“The freedom you’ve given me, Sasuke, it’s a gift I will never be able to fully return in kind.”
“You’re the one who found me. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Please allow me the opportunity to try.”
Fingers rubbing at his temple, Sasuke sighs, dropping his arm to rest over his knee. “I won’t leave you here, Juugo. If we-when we find a way off Barrah, we’ll take you to the nearest port with a refuge terminal, fill out some papers, and then get you situated somewhere safe, where you can start a new life.”
“I would consider it a privilege to join you on your pilgrimage.”
“Pilgrimage to where? As soon as I leave here, I’m going home, and I doubt you’d want to stay hosed up in some training base for the rest of your life.”
“Wherever you wish to go, if you’ll have me, I will gladly follow.”
“Listen, I only took the collar off.” The words bring a slight quirk to Sasuke’s lips a near frown, but he doesn’t let it turn into anything more. “Don’t make yourself feel obligated for that. You shouldn’t-”
He pauses, narrowing his eyes, body taut at the obscure presence a delicate brush at the corner of his mind, the tendrils faint of an acute sensation not quite strange but neither wholly unrecognisable.
So far, he’s come across very few people who’ve been able to mask their presence from him, namely his brother and his parents, alongside Minato and Kushina, which doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there, but met with an intentionally muddled energy signature, in this situation, it’s worth noting that Itachi is one of those people who have the ability to completely elude him.
Unfolding his legs, he begins to push himself up from the floor, gritting his teeth at the haggard noise from his own laboured breathing. An unexpected vertigo causes him to lurch sideways, but he breaks his would be fall with a hand against the wall that feels too cool beneath his fingers, standing himself upright when he hears Juugo shift behind him.
He placates Juugo with an arm outstretched, motioning for Juugo to stay behind him. “Wait here.”
Footfalls resonate through the long corridor, settling in the cell.
Beside him, Juugo stiffens. “I should come with you.”
Only vaguely does it register in his mind the arrant difference in height as Juugo towers over him, reminded of the yellow-eyed Juugo who effortlessly tore apart a massive dunemite twice his size with no more than his bare hands that brought him witness to the undercurrents of a tumultuous rage reeling beneath the surface of a docile personality.
He still doesn’t move his arm. “It’s better if I go.”
Not without reluctance, Juugo yields. Sasuke gives a slight nod, a brief flare of shadow magic augmenting already light steps as he makes his way out of the cell.
A bellowed hello is a loud echo in the corridor, louder still the cry of is anyone in here that follows, and the obnoxious voice that reaches his ears causes him to release the magic shrouding him.
The heavy sense of dread that’s been gradually accumulating in his chest begins to ebb. Simply knowing that Naruto’s okay, knowing that he wasn’t powerless to do something. Unlike the time he wasn’t able to save...
Jaw tight, he continues walking, forcing himself to bury the rehashed memories of Shisui’s drowning.
If Naruto’s here, Itachi can’t be too far behind. He wasn’t expecting them to find him so soon, prepared to go searching for them once he figured out where he and Juugo were in relation to the crash site. Most likely, Itachi and Naruto would have gone there first to retrieve any supplies from the ship; locating the ship was his best chance of running into them, with the least risk of getting lost in the desert, assuming the ship itself wasn’t too far away from where they’d landed.
Halfway through the corridor, he stops.
Thick jacket draped over his head, peeking into one of the adjoining cells, Naruto steps back with a frustrated sigh, immediately still when he notices him.
From what he can tell, Naruto looks fine, a little worse for wear, some kind of tourniquet fastened around his left arm, face smudged with grime, weary from lack of sleep, but Sasuke suspects he doesn’t look that much better.
“You bastard.” Naruto takes long strides, the jacket over his head forgotten, falling to the wayside as he all but runs to close the distance between them. His hands start to shake, arms forcibly held at his sides, eyes revealing the restraint from an obvious desire to hit him. “I can’t believe you-”
Suddenly, he deflates, glare disappearing with the too pronounced slump of his shoulders. “Sasuke, you...”
He swallows hard, reaching out with a hand that doesn’t reach lingers, hesitant before he lets it fall back to his side. “But you’re...”
Lowering his head, he looks back up, the corners of his mouth pulled into a self-effacing smile that makes him lost, uncharacteristically unsure, as if he’s trying to convince himself that Sasuke’s really there, arms still held against his sides, fingers against his palms curtail an itch to run his hands all over Sasuke in order to mollify the need to simply touch if only to keep from throwing himself forward and bringing them both crashing to the ground.
“...you’re okay.” He takes a deep breath, releasing an exhale drawn long. “You’re...okay.”
“Still doesn’t excuse the fact you look like shit,” Sasuke says, allowing a small smile to slip through.
“Oh, yeah?” Naruto grins back, broad and unwavering, quickly falling into an ease overlaying the relief in his eyes as he gives Sasuke a light punch on the shoulder. “You try being stuck in a cave with your brother all night and see if you don’t look like shit the next day.”
With a low hum, Sasuke nods, blinking when he sees his sword at the weapon holster worn around Naruto’s hip. “You found it.”
“Yeah, Itachi had it.” Naruto’s upper teeth press down on the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t use it or anything. I just...”
Eyebrows scrunched, he moves closer, two steps forward, resting his chin on Sasuke’s shoulder. His voice lowers to a whisper, breath tickling the shell of Sasuke’s ear as the hand reaching behind Sasuke’s back fiddles with the hem of Sasuke’s jacket dusted with a light layer of sand. “You don’t look so hot. You sure you’re okay?”
“Are you?” Sasuke murmurs, absently reaching with his left hand to pull on the outdated dog tags at the end of the ball chain hanging from around Naruto’s neck.
Though he personally thinks them more practical, the tags themselves don’t circulate much use anymore. Most people who wear them do so out of sentiment for the old ways, using the tags as a kind of rebellious statement against society’s overdependence on technology, but Naruto claims wearing dog tags makes him look cool.
Closing his eyes, slowly, he breathes in then breathes out, unconsciously leaning into the weight solid against him. If Naruto notices him shifting a little closer, he doesn’t say anything about it.
“Yeah, I’m good. My arm’s still a little achy, but it’s like it didn’t even happen.” Naruto pauses, quiet for a moment held too long, embrace uncomfortable too stiff, seemingly caught in some kind of stupor until his hold around Sasuke becomes tighter.
“I was mad at you at first, you know,” he says. “Really mad. For acting so stupid, risking your life for me like that, but then Itachi knocked some sense into me, so, I, um...thanks. Not that I won’t kick the crap out of you myself if you ever try that again, but I owe you. Big time.”
Sasuke lets out a light scoff. “I’d like to see you try anything. Keep this up, and I’m going to lose track of how many times I’ve had bail your sorry ass out of trouble.”
Naruto ducks his head, nuzzling Sasuke’s neck, trying to leave an imprint of a grin against his skin. “That’s kind of what I’m hoping for.”
“Idiot,” Sasuke mutters softly, giving the dog tags a sharp tug that only earns from Naruto a soft laugh. Rolling his eyes, he lets the dog tags fall from his fingers.
“What sort of place is this, anyway?”
“A prison. Obviously.”
“Smartass.” Squeezing Sasuke’s side, Naruto snorts, raising his head. “Somehow, though,” he says, a quick glance to the emptied cells on either side of them, “I’m starting to get the feeling it’s a little more than that.”
“Probably was. It’s more of a crypt now.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” Naruto says, backing away and bending down to pick up his jacket, “this place’s a little too creepy for me.” He ties the sleeves around his waist. “I know I’ll feel a lot better when we get out of here. Should probably find Itachi first, though.”
“You lost him.”
“Not really.”
Sasuke gives him an expectant look.
“Kind of. Sort of. Maybe. Well, I think he’s up ahead,” Naruto says, hand scratching the back of his head a clutter of blond strands blotched with spots of blood and dirt. Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Somewhere.”
“Yeah. That’s really helpful.”
“I try.” Naruto shrugs. “But you know how it is. Even you have a hard time sensing him when he starts doing the whole shadow technique thing.”
“You two split up?”
“Only to cover more ground, though. Once you get down to it, this place is actually pretty big. Especially for something under the desert. The whole thing’s like some kind of tunnel system, but we found two ways to get in. The way I came, there’s this really old, rickety looking outcrop, part of this huge rock that was completely covered in sand, I went through that door.
“The other entrance is all the way on the other side. Itachi said he’d take that one, and then we’d work our way down to meet in the middle.”
“...damn it.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s go.”
“Hey, where’re you-”
“Come on.” Pulling away from the hand gripping his wrist, Sasuke runs back down the corridor. He doesn’t bother to check to see if Naruto’s following him, instead quickening his pace to reach Juugo before his brother did.
Continued