writing, writing, writing ^^
No one mentions Uchiha Fugaku’s name in the same sentence as a donton-jutsu. Almost taboo, almost dangerous, because shameful things can become motivation for homicide, and the wars bring too much of that for Konoha fighters to openly invite it. They watch what they say around him, and about him, if there’s even a slight chance it could come back to the teenage Uchiha.
Fugaku is proud, and young. Too young for the things he does, and his eyes are too damn hard to justify his age. A violent combination, made more dangerous by his time spent fighting when he was too young, when most civilian children were still learning how to read and understand their world. Uchiha Fugaku was raised on violence, and deals in death far more than he does in life. A partially trained field-medic, he’s never saved anyone, let alone smiled when he did it. His knowledge is put to use in assassinations and infiltration. Maybe someday he’ll save a life, but more likely he’ll die before that comes.
Maybe it won’t hurt him so much. Maybe he can find a way to pass on without screaming. No one tries to predict their deaths; too often they’re accurate enough to cause some nervousness. War kills indiscriminately. Survival is all the Konoha shinobi desire now. That is their own motivation, and it keeps them going, trudging through the heavy mud and wiping the blood off their faces with weary hands. Being and Uchiha doesn’t change that about Fugaku. If anything, it probably makes him more aware of it.
I don’t remember the day he accepted that mission. I remember the day after, when I found him. The others who were with me have died. Their names were Natsume Renji and Ashikaga Momo. Renji was a friend of mine; I didn’t know Momo, other than the fact that she was a tracker, and rude. They died together during the battle of Render’s Pass. I was in the hospital at the time. Fugaku was still doped up then. I doubt he remembers them, and I never asked.
It was cold, that morning. Heavy wind, and it made a low, haunting sound when it blew over the rocks. We were looking for Fugaku’s body. Higher Ups had given him six hours to get back; it had been over fourteen. When a mission sent you into enemy territory, being late meant you weren’t coming back. If someone was feeling suicidal enough to accept, Higher Ups would send a team to retrieve the body. Of course, “retrieve” meant destroy as quickly as possible so the enemy can’t learn any secrets from it.
Momo found the area where Fugaku had gotten sidetracked. Renji found the body of his opponent. An Iwa-jounin with his face burned off and a kunai sticking out of his shoulder, leaning against a dead tree. His demise had been a hard one, drawn-out and painful. Being an elite shinobi doesn’t mean you can escape something like a hit to the face from a katon attack. There are things that are an automatic death-sentence if you don’t dodge fast enough. Fugaku’s opponent had discovered that first hand.
None of us spared him any sympathy; the enemy never got any. Even when they were dead, they were still from Iwagakure.
The ground was hard and pale, raked with scorch marks and loose shuriken and kunai, glinting weakly in the dull light. There wasn’t a great deal of contrast between the ground and the sky; they were both too pale and gray. Blood splattered on more than a few surfaces; the fight between Fugaku and the dead Iwa-nin had been a big one. I was surprised no one had heard them, that the enemy hadn’t come to investigate and send in reinforcements.
Of course, this was out of the main combat-zone. Not much fighting took place here, in this area populated by nothing but dead trees and deserters who’d had enough of the conflict and didn’t give a damn who won and who died. Sometimes I blamed them; most of the time I could sympathize. War was kind to none, save those it refrained from touching. As shinobi, we were intimate with war. For those like Fugaku, too young to know anything else, it was the only way they were taught to live.
Sometimes I wondered what the younger fighters would do, once it was over. If it would ever be over.
I was the one who found him. Renji was the one who realized he wasn’t dead. It wasn’t an immediate thing, though. When you see a pile of boulders, and realize its from a donton jutsu, and that there’s someone under them, you don’t think they’re still breathing; you think that they’ve been crushed, and wonder how long it’ll take to dig them out, and if you’ll be able to recognize them once you do.
Iwagakure is famous for their namesake attacks, and they always deliver as promised. My jounin-sensei’s arm was crushed from one. He had to have it removed, and was kicked down off active-duty to a desk job. I don’t think he protested; no one wants to stay out on the frontlines. We three jounin, with nothing better to than retrieve the body of an Uchiha Chuunin who’d been too proud to refuse a mission he wasn’t experienced enough to complete, had a very healthy respect of donton attacks.
“That was painful,” Momo said. Always blunt, that one was. She carried a sword on her back and a kunai in her hand at all times. Her face would be shattered beyond recognition three weeks later. The tattoo of a phoenix on her shoulder would be what identified her corpse, since the chain holding her dogtags would snap. We didn’t know it then. “Poor kid.”
I didn’t know if she meant it. See enough death, and eventually you became damn cold to the victims. Most shinobi I knew didn’t give a damn one way or another. I’d like to think that I did, but sometimes I wondered.
Renji had placed his hands on the stone, eyes closed. His hair, too long to bee loose, but too short to be tied back, flopped over his eyes and the scar cutting through his right eyebrow. Then he started, and opened his eyes suddenly, looking frightened, if only for a second.
“What?” Momo, sounding annoyed, looking at the pile of rocks, and then back to Renji, as if scanning for threats. For traps someone had left behind. It had happened before, but I saw nothing of that sort here. Nether did Momo, hence her agitation. We all just wanted to get it over with, and get out of hostile territory.
“He’s alive.” Renji looked surprised when he said it, blinking strands of light hair out of his eyes. They were a pale blue that clashed with his light skin. He showed too much emotion for a medic, too much kindness for the frontlines. When he died, it would be from trying to save a comrade, and taking a cheap shot from behind. The comrade he attempted to save avenged him, and then died from the kunai she’d taken in the chest. Some might call it ironic; I called it sad. Of course, we didn’t know it then.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Momo’s jaw had dropped. She closed it tightly, and if I hadn’t known she’d killed so many people, I would have said she was embarrassed by her display of shock.
“How come he’s not crushed?” I wanted to know.
Renji didn’t have an answer for that one.
“I can feel his chakra. He’s alive,” was all he said on the matter, and got to work moving the rocks. Momo and I shared a look of mutual astonishment, though it was toned to down enough that, should someone happen upon us and see, it might have been called “slight surprise”. As kunoichi, we were trained to be cold. Emotionless. It never did quite work out that way, but we always put on a show of it.
It took us a painfully long time to find Uchiha Fugaku under all the stone. Through it all, only Renji seemed to believe that the Uchiha was still alive. Momo and I didn’t. If the kid was, why didn’t he make any noise? Why didn’t we hear him? Why wasn’t he fighting to get free?
Eventually Momo shoved a pile of smaller rocks aside, went to grab another, and stopped. Her eyes were wide.
A wave of dark hair obscured his face, but twin Sharingan eyes stared back at us. They were dull, almost lifeless, but there was something that told me Fugaku was still alive. I believed Renji now.
“Fugaku-kun? Can your hear me?” Renji spoke in his calm, friendly voice. The hardness was gone, and the tone was softer. It was his medic’s voice, which said, “hey, easy, I’m here to help you, and it’s going to be alright now, you can trust me”. He was damn good at it, too. I trust Renji to patch me up, and I don’t trust much of anyone.
Sharingan eyes blinked once, slowly. There was blood trickling down his forehead. He looked dazed. Probably a concussion. I would have been surprised if he avoided one. As it was, I was still trying to figure out how he wasn’t dead.
“He’s out of it,” Momo observed, pulling another rock off, and wincing slightly as it uncovered Fugaku’s right arm, bent at an angle nature didn’t intend. There was dried blood on his hand, soaked into the sleeves of his torn shirt. His fingers twitch slightly. “Probably shock.”
“Get the rest off him,” was all Renji said, forming seals for a healing technique. Momo and I complied.
Through it all, Fugaku stared at nothing, red and black eyes occasionally blinking slowly. I didn’t think he saw us, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe he did. Maybe he saw nothing. Maybe he was blind. That was a scary thought. I wouldn’t want to be blind; for an Uchiha, who relied so heavily on their special eyes, it would be worse than dying.
I prayed his eyesight wasn’t gone.
We realized he was shaking once we pulled him away from the boulders, and Renji started working on his ribs, looking for the most pressing injuries. The Uchiha had a good amount of them; it was hard for me to decide what needed to be healed first. I was no medic, though. Renji looked like he knew what he was doing, eyes cool and laid-back, unfazed by the blood, nor the obviously broken bones. My hands would have shook; his were as smooth and steady as ice.
“He’s got four broke ribs, though nothing’s crushed,” Renji said finally, hands still gleaming with chakra. “I need you to help me set his legs, and his arm.”
I hadn’t noticed Fugaku’s broken legs. I’d been watching the parameter, the expansion of large, gray boulders and dead trees, looking for enemies. None had shown themselves. I wasn’t disappointed.
There had been a time when I had loved fighting. Now I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to sleep for a long time, but it just never happened. Wartime called us in early and didn’t send us back until late. Some days, we were lucky to get any sleep at all. No rest for the soldiers of Konoha. How had I ever seen glory in this? I can’t figure it out, no matter how hard I try.
“Why’s he shaking?” That was the first thing I had noticed. First I thought it was pain; there had been no easy way to lift him out of the rocks, and we couldn’t avoid jarring his arm, nor his legs. I thought I would have screamed, had it been me, but Fugaku just lay there, shaking and staring at something we couldn’t see.
Renji didn’t look up, only shifting his hands up to his patient’s face. Fugaku flinched, and tried to turn away. Renji held him down easily with one hand on his shoulder; he was a medic, but also a combat veteran, and therefore possessed of a good amount of strength. One comatose shinobi, Uchiha or otherwise, didn’t present a problem. “He’s scared, and out of chakra. He’s had the eyes out too long.”
“Oh,” I said.
Momo and I set Fugaku’s legs; he flinched and tried to pull away, but Renji held him down, as he had before. I had expected to hear a cry, a scream, but there was nothing, just Fugaku’s shallow breaths, coming faster now. I wondered if he was going to start hyperventilating, and then wondered what we would do if he did. I didn’t have a clue, but Renji would know what to do. I was placing my faith in the medic, in my friend of several years and occasional lover, because he was the only one here besides Momo, and I didn’t know her at all.
Renji somehow figured out how to get Fugaku to deactivate his Sharingan without snapping him out of whatever he was stuck in, and then promptly knocked him out. I wasn’t sad to see the Chuunin truly out of it; his shivering and blank eyes had a disturbing quality about them that I didn’t like any. It was too much like looking at a corpse who stared back at you, and then blinked.
Renji and I carried Fugaku between us; Momo walked before us, sword out and eyes hard, scanning for anything that could be considered hostile. Sometimes she ran ahead or doubled back, vanishing from sight only to reappear again several meters away from where she had previously stood. Tactics meant to confuse and flush out an enemy. Momo was good at it, though nothing showed itself.
It was a good thing Fugaku was unconscious. I shiver whenever I think about it now, but Renji and I carried him with his arms slung over our shoulders. His right arm was broken in two places, and he’d sprained both wrists badly. If he’d been awake, he wouldn’t have stayed that way for very long, and, or at least I would have, screamed the whole while.
Broken bones hurt. Sprains ache, and they can make a strong man cry, if he gets one in a bad place, like on a joint. In a way, a break is better. That, at least, you can splint. Not much you can do for just a sprain, except suck it up and hope it heals quickly.
Really, it was only a matter of time before he’d wake up. Give someone enough pain, and it’ll jolt them out of anywhere. We just didn’t think it would be so fast.
I don’t remember how long we’d been walking, but we were back in Konoha. Just barely, we could still see hostile territory about two hundred meters behind us, and it was still a danger zone, and only an idiot whose soon to be dead lets their guard down in a danger zone. None of us were stupid; we were jounin, and damned if that didn’t mean anything. Still, Fugaku caught us off-guard.
He gasped once, inhaling shakily, and that was our little warning. We just didn’t act fast enough. He opened his eyes then, and they were black, just plain black, not his Sharingan that the Uchihas are so famous for, and he looked confused. Then he screamed, and closed his eyes tightly, like he saw something terrible, and didn’t want to. He didn’t stop either, but the second one was quieter. Goddamn, he was trying to shove the pain aside, and I remember thinking right then, kami, this kid’s strong, but he was hurting too bad.
I acted faster then Renji, and slapped a hand over his mouth. If someone heard him screaming, a month’s paycheck said it would be the enemy. With a wounded comrade, maybe Momo could hold them off. Maybe we could handle two. If more than that showed up, we were dead. Nothing to say about it, we’d die.
Fugaku was looking at me, really looking this time, and I realized then how young he really was. I had though twenty at first, somehow. He’d looked older, lying under the rocks, with his high cheekbones and dark tan. The eyes helped with that, too. Gave off an air of power, even when he was out of chakra and halfway dead. No wonder people called them special.
Now those eyes were black, and terrified. A sixteen-year-old boy stared back at me, and I could feel him shaking hard, almost crying from a bad combination of pain and fear. Uchiha he might have been, he was still a kid, and kids shouldn’t be going that far into hostile territory.
What had the Higher Ups been thinking? A pair of special eyes couldn’t make up for a lack of experience. Uchiha blood didn’t promise immunity to attack. Fugaku had almost died, and would have, if we hadn’t come when we had.
“It’s okay, Fugaku. We’re taking you home.” I tried to sound reassuring, or at least calm. My breath was coming out in harsh bursts; I don’t think I managed it.
Momo came running, sword in one hand, kunai in the other, ready to throw. She made a circle around us, and, seeing nothing but the trees, moved towards Renji; ready to ask as a human-shield, if it came down to that.
“What’s wrong?” She didn’t make it sound like a question, more like a demand from a testy kunoichi who was in a danger zone and damn well knew it.
Renji and I lowered Fugaku down to the ground as gently as we could, trying not to hurt his numerous breaks any more than they already were. His eyes were watering up; he was so close to crying, and I wished he had just stayed unconscious until we reached Konoha.
“I’m going to give you something for the pain, Fugaku-kun,” Renji told him softly, reaching into his belt-pouch with slow, decisive moves. So as not to frighten the already terrified Chuunin. Fast actions would have put him on his guard, and he needed to relax.
Fugaku shook like a leaf, and closed his eyes, tucking his broken arm to his chest, a reflex. Protect what hurts, shield with what doesn’t. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the fact that he was reverting to such an instinctual move showed just how much the pain was invading his mind.
I hoped Renji had something strong on him.
Momo continued circling us while Renji got a syringe out, eyes flickering over the trees, the shadows, checking their length and size for irregularities. That was a telltale sigh that someone was hiding in them. Shinobi were good, but a shadow is hard to mimic, hard to pretend to be a part of. They’re too random, too pattern-less, to be copied with any great success. She didn’t see anything, but didn’t stop looking either.
I felt him screaming under my hand, and I could see him trying to force the tears out of his eyes, and see him failing. The poor kid was in more pain than anyone should have to feel. It made me queasy to see it. “What the hell’s taking you so long, Renji? Hurry the fuck up!”
I could hear the shakiness in my own voice, the tone that toed the line between calm and hysterical, and tried to slow my heart rate down. It was better than looking at the teenage Uchiha, who was shaking and thrashing under my hold.
“Right here,” Renji murmured, calm and unshaken as always. I could bring myself to hate him then, hate his control, but only for a moment. Whatever was in the needle made Fugaku slow in his screams, until he stopped completely and lay still. His eyes rolled back into his head, and then he went limp.
I removed my hand from his mouth, and exhaled shakily. Renji simply removed the needle from Fugaku’s neck and placed it back in his belt-pouch, tranquil as he always was. Sometimes I wondered if he even felt any fear, or sense of panic at all. Was his control that absolute?
We ran to Konoha, then, and didn’t stop once, for anything. The medics at the hospital took Fugaku from us, and said they would help him, and did any of us need medical attention? No, we were fine. Shaken, but fine. We’d live to fight another day, and so would Uchiha Fugaku.
We’d been sent to get rid of his body, but instead we brought him back alive. The Higher Ups gave us all a bonus. I almost refused it, and told them what I thought of them, sending a Chuunin, and a kid at that, to do the work of a jounin, but didn’t. I took my paycheck and went to the nearest bar and got very, very drunk.
Fugaku stayed in the hospital for three and a half weeks. I was brought in three days after he was admitted, with a fractured skull and a bad concussion. Momo and Renji died three weeks after we brought Fugaku back. The battle of Render’s Pass was a victory for Konoha, but only six of the forty-seven fighters who had been deployed there came back alive.
I learned afterwards, from listening to a conversation between two medics, that Fugaku had more injuries than just cuts and broken bones.
Now he was terrified of tight spaces. Claustrophobia. I can’t say I was surprised, though the medics certainly were. An Uchiha, afraid of something so trivial?
I almost went up to them and hit them, made them understand that they didn’t know shit about it. I didn’t.
That was a year ago. No one mentions the incident now. Fugaku thanked me, but I don’t think he remembers that; he was pretty doped up at the time. He believes there is shame in his fear, and I wish I could show him that there is not, but I doubt he’d listen.
Renji and Momo died soon after than mission. Uchiha Fugaku continued to be sent to the frontlines. I continued to fight for something I no longer believed in. Life went on.