Naruto - 27. overflow
Sakura and Sasuke, an excessive amount of imagery. It's all about Naruto, even the parts that look like they aren't.
Most of Ripple Effect is dialogue or action, not character-introspective stuff, so this scene will be much shorter and undescriptive within it. But I wanted to flesh out Sakura and Sasuke's thoughts somewhere, and when I realized that they fit one of 30_kisses's themes really well, I figured I might as well kill two birds with one fic. So.
27. overflow
The morning after Sakura silently throw shim out of her and Lee's apartment, Sasuke wakes up before dawn and begins packing. The unobvious things go first, paper money lining his weapons pouch and folded into the double-hemmed waist of his pants, coins separated by tissues packed flat into small bags that can be strapped around his legs with bandages--impractical, but the metal coins are uncommon in normal villages, so he'll need to spend the paper ryo first anyway.
There isn't much money; he plans to visit the bank in the afternoon, and withdraw more than he needs to buy a pair of fingerless gloves. There are no spare clothes to pack, not until he does the laundry. The weapons will be on him even indoors.
He has a light breakfast, getting rid of some of the vegetables, and then moves everything in the apartment out of his way. Dishes and cooking utensils are packed into the cabinets, and he stows the bedding, table, and chest that stores his clothing and weapons in the bathroom. The curtains are already pulled closed, and the sunlight is too weak to force itself through the dark fabric--he likes sunlight, his old apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows and a large balcony, but it is possible to see into his room from the opposite roof and when Sakura asked him to store those scrolls for her he couldn't take the risk of flimsy curtains--when Sasuke begins practicing his sword work.
The first movements are spoiled--his muscles are tense, and it affects his swing. Sasuke makes himself resheath the katana and begin over again and again until he has returned to the graceful state he had mastered by the time he left Oto. By the time he is able to draw the katana, make three sweeping cuts, and sheath it again fluidly five times in a row, he begins adding the shake, footwork and additional motions.
The apartment is too small for him to move properly--the bathroom intrudes offensively into the rectangular room, cutting away almost a fourth of his space. It interferes when he attempts to practice taijutsu, too, as does the kitchenette. The main room of his apartment at Oto had been larger, had been intended for him to be able to practice in it. He'd spent most winter mornings training in there--though Orochimaru chose the location of Oto to guarantee mild winters, the man had always hated the cold, and the rare snowfalls and frosts in the Sound generally signaled complete if temporary freedom. The children ditched their classes en masse and had snowball fights; Sasuke trained through the mornings and then spent the afternoons hunting down students with Kazuo if it was a frost, or training through the afternoons and evenings if it was snow.
There was something quiet in opening the curtains there and knowing that the snow was falling outside his window, even if he couldn't always see it in the course of his movements. He doesn't know if the snow that was threatening last night is falling now--he hasn't opened the curtains.
Sasuke decides that if he draws one more parallel, he's going to drag the table back in and hack at it with the sword until one or the other breaks; and he needs the sword. He drops the footwork and returns to the basic pattern of draw, cut, shake, sheath until the tension is gone again.
After half an hour, the work has made him hot enough that he removes his long-sleeved shirt and just keeps the short-sleeved one beneath, despite the fact that the room is as cold as he can stand to cut down his heating bill. He throws it into the bathroom as if lifting the sword in an upper cut, and the necklace--now hanging loose without the heavy shirt to cover it--shifts as he moves.
As he draws the sword once more, Sasuke reflects that the items he's collected from his teachers don't match their natures. Orochimaru's katana is a weapon, it almost fits, but Itachi's necklace is nothing but a frivolous piece of jewelry, something that weighs Sasuke down while having no good purpose and that could give him away from the faint whisper of its links as he moves. Kakashi's indecipherable patience is tattooed on his skin, negating the first gift Orochimaru gave him and making the katana that much more valuable.
He has nothing from Naruto. Kabuto healed the burn marks of the rasengan without his permission.
His next cut is tense, the tip wobbles and he doesn't remember to push his hips forward with the motion. Sasuke stops, sheaths the sword, and breathes.
When he draws it again, he's stripped away his emotions like layers until there's nothing beneath his skin but muscle and organs and chakra and bones, a body that is a tool, the weapon that he works best with because it has been his since birth.
He doesn't keep track of time after that; when Sakura knocks on his door, his back and shoulders are beginning to ache.
Sasuke sheaths the sword but carries it with him to the door, tucking the necklace beneath his shirt. Sakura never met Itachi, wouldn't recognize it--but the fact that it still has scorch marks on it would be enough of a clue for her.
Sakura doesn't speak when she first comes in, and doesn't remove her shoes--Sasuke's in his. The room was always barren, but now it's empty in a way that doesn't just reflect the sword in Sasuke's hand and the sweat on his forehead. She's as aware of the danger as him--they have no idea when the news of the snakes' attack will reach the village, when Tsunade and Jiraiya will be coming for him. They're supposed to have a few more days, but that means nothing, really, in the long run--she doesn't trust the Soundnins enough to believe that they wouldn't lie to get Sasuke killed.
"Any news?" he asks, when she doesn't speak for several long seconds.
She shakes her head. "No . . . no, nothing yet. . . ."
She trails off, wrapping her hands around her arms and rubbing slightly. The room is freezing--it's almost as bad as outside, though at least there isn't any snow to cling and melt and make her uncomfortably damp.
"When's the snow supposed to stop?" Sasuke asks, eying her clothing.
"This afternoon--the radio said the storm went south of us, so it won't last long. . . ."
He nods, and sets the katana against the wall. It doesn't stay properly, listing to the side, but Sasuke doesn't notice; he's standing hands in pockets, waiting for her to say whatever she came over for.
Sasuke is still a mixture of new and old, Sakura thinks. The old Sasuke would also have waited silently like this, but he would have been glaring. The Sasuke that Sasuke is becoming may be watching her emotionlessly, but it's not in an 'I'm waiting for you to leave' kind of way.
The changes were so gradual that she missed most of them, Sasuke still looking the same on the surface but with his actions occasionally showing that there were major shifts beneath; but that might not be all of it. He came back to them from the Sound a different person, and he's finally starting to reveal the changes more and more. He's finally starting to trust them with more than just his back and life, as more than just teammates.
But it's not getting his trust that's the hard part, Sakura knows. The hardest part is going to be something that none of them are going to be able to help with, except maybe to show by example. Sasuke has to learn that it's not a sign of weakness, of neediness, to want to be around people he cares about. She and Naruto could make it clearer than daylight that they care for him and will be there, but until he's able to reconcile being strong with being happy, he'll still keep himself removed from them.
But he's starting to. In actions if not words and in who knows what kind of changes he went through that he's kept secret, Sasuke is starting to show that he wants power not to kill, but to keep safe. Sakura hasn't asked what happened between him and Itachi during the battle and she never will, but she believes that Naruto was more important to him that night than revenge. She believes that he's making an effort to meet them halfway on the road of normal human emotions. All they really need is time.
But, being shinobi, time is the one thing they never, ever have. If they just could've managed to be okay for a little longer, just could've had another year, another five months. . . .
Though it shouldn't be 'had,' Sakura realizes, it should be 'were granted,' because now, finally, when the frantic tense adrenaline is no longer enough to keep her running against her exhaustion, she's starting to see what she missed before, what she was too angry and too tired and too busy looking at the obvious to see the underneath: Tsunade gave them time.
Tsunade trusted them with Sasuke's rehabilitation, disregarded and maneuvered her way around decades of laws concerning traitors to keep Sasuke alive and in their relatively secluded care. She seen Orochimaru when she looked at Sasuke, but the opposite: she'd seen that there was a chance they could really bring him back to, not the person that he had been when he was eight, but the person that eight-year-old might have become, with obvious differences.
Tsunade, Sakura realizes, with infinite fucking kindness that would never have been possible in any village but the Leaf, gave them all time. In any other ninja village, they all would be executed by now: Sakura for espionage, Sasuke for treason, Naruto for being a badly designed weapon. It's only because they are members of the Leaf. . . .
. . . The Leaf that they are going to be leaving behind.
The urge to cry startles her with its suddenness, and Sakura coughs to cover a sob and presses the heel of her hand hard against her left eye.
"Quit that," Sasuke says, making her blink and look at him.
She gives him a look with nothing in it, and rubs her eye once before letting her hand drop. The sweat on Sasuke has dried, and he's starting to look as though he's feeling the cold again; Sakura wonders how long she wasted with thinking.
"I hate crying," she mutters.
"Naruto cries all the time," Sasuke replies. "So does Lee. Do you think they aren't strong?"
Old or new, Sasuke has a way of being logical that makes him sound like an asshole. "It's not the same thing."
"It was three years ago," Sasuke tells her. She closes her eyes.
Sakura would have given a lot once for this ability the two of them have gained, to be able to understand the meanings of silences--not even half the time, maybe a third, it's still hit-and-miss, but it's there--but that was also three years ago. "I'm sorry."
Now Sasuke actually looks confused, because he can't remember the last time she apologized to him and he can tell by her tone that she's not referring to anything previously said. Then the expression fades and he shrugs a shoulder.
"Not about--" She pauses, and then explains, "I'm sorry for what I sa--assumed last night."
He frowns when she changes her choice of words. "It doesn't--"
"No," she interrupts, "you're not heartless, Sasuke, even if you keep trying to act like you are. I'm sorry I forgot that."
He looks to the side, finally noticing that the katana fell to the floor. Sakura waits as he sets it against the wall again and straightens, folding his arms. ". . . It's fine," he says. He doesn't add anything else.
Sasuke doesn't apologize, because he understands that sometimes words are meaningless, and consequentially doesn't use them. The first person to die because of their plans to leave wasn't a hunternin, wasn't an adult, was just a genin in the wrong place at the wrong time. An apology would be meaningless, even if it was to Mitate's parents and not her.
It took Sakura a while to understand this, but once she did, it made so much sense that she wasn't sure why she didn't figure it out sooner.
She nods, once, twice, and then flounders silently for something else to say to fill in this awkwardness.
She finally settles on "Why is it so cold?" because, really, she's starting to think it's better outside because at least outside she expects this kind of chill.
"Heat's expensive," he replies, and Sakura gives him a long look. She almost asks how long he's been living like this, and then decides that it wouldn't do any good to know, anyway.
"Come back to our house after work," she says instead. "Do you need me to take over anything now?"
"It'll be more trouble for you if they come for me there," Sasuke warns.
Sakura leans against the kitchen cabinet and shrugs with a casualness she doesn't really feel, folding her arms. "We're already gambling everything," she says, looking at the floorboards. "One more won't really make things worse."
Sasuke doesn't argue, like she half-expects; he's quiet for a while, and then tells her it would be useful to take the laundry.
As he's packing the laundry tightly into the box they brought the rice steamer over in, Sakura raids his small fridge and removes the perishable items.
"We're trying to finish off all the stuff that'll spoil," she explains as she stores it in an old grocery bag. "If the news comes in before Naruto wakes up, take some of our nonperishables."
Sasuke nods, and Sakura takes the bag and box with her when she goes.
As he's pulling the table and bedding and chest back out of the bathroom, Sasuke realizes that he doesn't have anything from Sakura, either, except for the mystery of her strength; something in the gloves blocks his ability to read the chakra of her hands. He wonders briefly why he didn't think of that earlier, and then understands: she hasn't taught him anything. She just at some point moved so she was standing beside him.
It was Sakura's plan to save Naruto; Sasuke accepted his death with a sense of inevitability that would have festered in him every time he used the sharingan until he allowed himself to slip up on a mission and be killed. He let the hollowness that had begun upon realizing that Itachi was really dead now and he had nothing more to chase after bleed over to color Naruto's fate as well. He would have let it happen.
Sakura didn't.
So when she brought up the possibility he had abandoned, Sasuke slid into the aspect of their team that he was, and began working out the details and the necessary tactics and weapons they would need to succeed. It was easy, because it was common--she came up with a plan, he fine-tuned it and determined the weapons needed, and Naruto--if it were a normal mission and not what it was--would have supplied the extra firepower. Naruto attacked from the front while Sakura destroyed the flank and Sasuke slit throats in the rear.
They all have the roles that fit them best. Sasuke has the position he has because he is the one who was able to cut his heart off first of the three of them, and thus the one who learned best how to disregard guilt when possible. He wishes that the body Ichiro chose hadn't belonged to someone Sakura knew, even indirectly; but he doesn't let it take any further hold than that.
Because Sakura's eyes are green like the spring leaves of Konoha and Naruto's eyes are blue like a sky so wide and open that the sheer space of it threatens those raised in forests and Sasuke's eyes are dark like the shadows of the underground dungeons in Oto, and he has already accepted that he is going to have to be the one to attack the hunternins from their village first. Of the three, or four, or five of them--whatever the number is in the end--he is the one who will be able to make his first strike have the intent to kill.
Even if the hunternin is Kakashi.
Or Anko.
Or Shizune.
Or Gai. Or any of the other people they have known their whole lives, teachers and friends and family. Someone will have to make the first attack lethal, or he and Naruto and Sakura and Lee will be killed.
Sasuke secretes more than a normal amount of weapons along his clothing after Sakura leaves, grateful not for the first time that they are oversized enough to hide shuriken and the smaller kunai well. He rearranges the room and opens the curtains before he heads to work.
Lee chides him from the opposite roof for being late. Sasuke glances upward after the eighth run-on sentence involving responsibility, but remains focused on the boards he's nailing and doesn't interrupt.
Most of Ripple Effect is dialogue or action, not character-introspective stuff, so this scene will be much shorter and undescriptive within it. But I wanted to flesh out Sakura and Sasuke's thoughts somewhere, and when I realized that they fit one of 30_kisses's themes really well, I figured I might as well kill two birds with one fic. So.
27. overflow
The morning after Sakura silently throw shim out of her and Lee's apartment, Sasuke wakes up before dawn and begins packing. The unobvious things go first, paper money lining his weapons pouch and folded into the double-hemmed waist of his pants, coins separated by tissues packed flat into small bags that can be strapped around his legs with bandages--impractical, but the metal coins are uncommon in normal villages, so he'll need to spend the paper ryo first anyway.
There isn't much money; he plans to visit the bank in the afternoon, and withdraw more than he needs to buy a pair of fingerless gloves. There are no spare clothes to pack, not until he does the laundry. The weapons will be on him even indoors.
He has a light breakfast, getting rid of some of the vegetables, and then moves everything in the apartment out of his way. Dishes and cooking utensils are packed into the cabinets, and he stows the bedding, table, and chest that stores his clothing and weapons in the bathroom. The curtains are already pulled closed, and the sunlight is too weak to force itself through the dark fabric--he likes sunlight, his old apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows and a large balcony, but it is possible to see into his room from the opposite roof and when Sakura asked him to store those scrolls for her he couldn't take the risk of flimsy curtains--when Sasuke begins practicing his sword work.
The first movements are spoiled--his muscles are tense, and it affects his swing. Sasuke makes himself resheath the katana and begin over again and again until he has returned to the graceful state he had mastered by the time he left Oto. By the time he is able to draw the katana, make three sweeping cuts, and sheath it again fluidly five times in a row, he begins adding the shake, footwork and additional motions.
The apartment is too small for him to move properly--the bathroom intrudes offensively into the rectangular room, cutting away almost a fourth of his space. It interferes when he attempts to practice taijutsu, too, as does the kitchenette. The main room of his apartment at Oto had been larger, had been intended for him to be able to practice in it. He'd spent most winter mornings training in there--though Orochimaru chose the location of Oto to guarantee mild winters, the man had always hated the cold, and the rare snowfalls and frosts in the Sound generally signaled complete if temporary freedom. The children ditched their classes en masse and had snowball fights; Sasuke trained through the mornings and then spent the afternoons hunting down students with Kazuo if it was a frost, or training through the afternoons and evenings if it was snow.
There was something quiet in opening the curtains there and knowing that the snow was falling outside his window, even if he couldn't always see it in the course of his movements. He doesn't know if the snow that was threatening last night is falling now--he hasn't opened the curtains.
Sasuke decides that if he draws one more parallel, he's going to drag the table back in and hack at it with the sword until one or the other breaks; and he needs the sword. He drops the footwork and returns to the basic pattern of draw, cut, shake, sheath until the tension is gone again.
After half an hour, the work has made him hot enough that he removes his long-sleeved shirt and just keeps the short-sleeved one beneath, despite the fact that the room is as cold as he can stand to cut down his heating bill. He throws it into the bathroom as if lifting the sword in an upper cut, and the necklace--now hanging loose without the heavy shirt to cover it--shifts as he moves.
As he draws the sword once more, Sasuke reflects that the items he's collected from his teachers don't match their natures. Orochimaru's katana is a weapon, it almost fits, but Itachi's necklace is nothing but a frivolous piece of jewelry, something that weighs Sasuke down while having no good purpose and that could give him away from the faint whisper of its links as he moves. Kakashi's indecipherable patience is tattooed on his skin, negating the first gift Orochimaru gave him and making the katana that much more valuable.
He has nothing from Naruto. Kabuto healed the burn marks of the rasengan without his permission.
His next cut is tense, the tip wobbles and he doesn't remember to push his hips forward with the motion. Sasuke stops, sheaths the sword, and breathes.
When he draws it again, he's stripped away his emotions like layers until there's nothing beneath his skin but muscle and organs and chakra and bones, a body that is a tool, the weapon that he works best with because it has been his since birth.
He doesn't keep track of time after that; when Sakura knocks on his door, his back and shoulders are beginning to ache.
Sasuke sheaths the sword but carries it with him to the door, tucking the necklace beneath his shirt. Sakura never met Itachi, wouldn't recognize it--but the fact that it still has scorch marks on it would be enough of a clue for her.
Sakura doesn't speak when she first comes in, and doesn't remove her shoes--Sasuke's in his. The room was always barren, but now it's empty in a way that doesn't just reflect the sword in Sasuke's hand and the sweat on his forehead. She's as aware of the danger as him--they have no idea when the news of the snakes' attack will reach the village, when Tsunade and Jiraiya will be coming for him. They're supposed to have a few more days, but that means nothing, really, in the long run--she doesn't trust the Soundnins enough to believe that they wouldn't lie to get Sasuke killed.
"Any news?" he asks, when she doesn't speak for several long seconds.
She shakes her head. "No . . . no, nothing yet. . . ."
She trails off, wrapping her hands around her arms and rubbing slightly. The room is freezing--it's almost as bad as outside, though at least there isn't any snow to cling and melt and make her uncomfortably damp.
"When's the snow supposed to stop?" Sasuke asks, eying her clothing.
"This afternoon--the radio said the storm went south of us, so it won't last long. . . ."
He nods, and sets the katana against the wall. It doesn't stay properly, listing to the side, but Sasuke doesn't notice; he's standing hands in pockets, waiting for her to say whatever she came over for.
Sasuke is still a mixture of new and old, Sakura thinks. The old Sasuke would also have waited silently like this, but he would have been glaring. The Sasuke that Sasuke is becoming may be watching her emotionlessly, but it's not in an 'I'm waiting for you to leave' kind of way.
The changes were so gradual that she missed most of them, Sasuke still looking the same on the surface but with his actions occasionally showing that there were major shifts beneath; but that might not be all of it. He came back to them from the Sound a different person, and he's finally starting to reveal the changes more and more. He's finally starting to trust them with more than just his back and life, as more than just teammates.
But it's not getting his trust that's the hard part, Sakura knows. The hardest part is going to be something that none of them are going to be able to help with, except maybe to show by example. Sasuke has to learn that it's not a sign of weakness, of neediness, to want to be around people he cares about. She and Naruto could make it clearer than daylight that they care for him and will be there, but until he's able to reconcile being strong with being happy, he'll still keep himself removed from them.
But he's starting to. In actions if not words and in who knows what kind of changes he went through that he's kept secret, Sasuke is starting to show that he wants power not to kill, but to keep safe. Sakura hasn't asked what happened between him and Itachi during the battle and she never will, but she believes that Naruto was more important to him that night than revenge. She believes that he's making an effort to meet them halfway on the road of normal human emotions. All they really need is time.
But, being shinobi, time is the one thing they never, ever have. If they just could've managed to be okay for a little longer, just could've had another year, another five months. . . .
Though it shouldn't be 'had,' Sakura realizes, it should be 'were granted,' because now, finally, when the frantic tense adrenaline is no longer enough to keep her running against her exhaustion, she's starting to see what she missed before, what she was too angry and too tired and too busy looking at the obvious to see the underneath: Tsunade gave them time.
Tsunade trusted them with Sasuke's rehabilitation, disregarded and maneuvered her way around decades of laws concerning traitors to keep Sasuke alive and in their relatively secluded care. She seen Orochimaru when she looked at Sasuke, but the opposite: she'd seen that there was a chance they could really bring him back to, not the person that he had been when he was eight, but the person that eight-year-old might have become, with obvious differences.
Tsunade, Sakura realizes, with infinite fucking kindness that would never have been possible in any village but the Leaf, gave them all time. In any other ninja village, they all would be executed by now: Sakura for espionage, Sasuke for treason, Naruto for being a badly designed weapon. It's only because they are members of the Leaf. . . .
. . . The Leaf that they are going to be leaving behind.
The urge to cry startles her with its suddenness, and Sakura coughs to cover a sob and presses the heel of her hand hard against her left eye.
"Quit that," Sasuke says, making her blink and look at him.
She gives him a look with nothing in it, and rubs her eye once before letting her hand drop. The sweat on Sasuke has dried, and he's starting to look as though he's feeling the cold again; Sakura wonders how long she wasted with thinking.
"I hate crying," she mutters.
"Naruto cries all the time," Sasuke replies. "So does Lee. Do you think they aren't strong?"
Old or new, Sasuke has a way of being logical that makes him sound like an asshole. "It's not the same thing."
"It was three years ago," Sasuke tells her. She closes her eyes.
Sakura would have given a lot once for this ability the two of them have gained, to be able to understand the meanings of silences--not even half the time, maybe a third, it's still hit-and-miss, but it's there--but that was also three years ago. "I'm sorry."
Now Sasuke actually looks confused, because he can't remember the last time she apologized to him and he can tell by her tone that she's not referring to anything previously said. Then the expression fades and he shrugs a shoulder.
"Not about--" She pauses, and then explains, "I'm sorry for what I sa--assumed last night."
He frowns when she changes her choice of words. "It doesn't--"
"No," she interrupts, "you're not heartless, Sasuke, even if you keep trying to act like you are. I'm sorry I forgot that."
He looks to the side, finally noticing that the katana fell to the floor. Sakura waits as he sets it against the wall again and straightens, folding his arms. ". . . It's fine," he says. He doesn't add anything else.
Sasuke doesn't apologize, because he understands that sometimes words are meaningless, and consequentially doesn't use them. The first person to die because of their plans to leave wasn't a hunternin, wasn't an adult, was just a genin in the wrong place at the wrong time. An apology would be meaningless, even if it was to Mitate's parents and not her.
It took Sakura a while to understand this, but once she did, it made so much sense that she wasn't sure why she didn't figure it out sooner.
She nods, once, twice, and then flounders silently for something else to say to fill in this awkwardness.
She finally settles on "Why is it so cold?" because, really, she's starting to think it's better outside because at least outside she expects this kind of chill.
"Heat's expensive," he replies, and Sakura gives him a long look. She almost asks how long he's been living like this, and then decides that it wouldn't do any good to know, anyway.
"Come back to our house after work," she says instead. "Do you need me to take over anything now?"
"It'll be more trouble for you if they come for me there," Sasuke warns.
Sakura leans against the kitchen cabinet and shrugs with a casualness she doesn't really feel, folding her arms. "We're already gambling everything," she says, looking at the floorboards. "One more won't really make things worse."
Sasuke doesn't argue, like she half-expects; he's quiet for a while, and then tells her it would be useful to take the laundry.
As he's packing the laundry tightly into the box they brought the rice steamer over in, Sakura raids his small fridge and removes the perishable items.
"We're trying to finish off all the stuff that'll spoil," she explains as she stores it in an old grocery bag. "If the news comes in before Naruto wakes up, take some of our nonperishables."
Sasuke nods, and Sakura takes the bag and box with her when she goes.
As he's pulling the table and bedding and chest back out of the bathroom, Sasuke realizes that he doesn't have anything from Sakura, either, except for the mystery of her strength; something in the gloves blocks his ability to read the chakra of her hands. He wonders briefly why he didn't think of that earlier, and then understands: she hasn't taught him anything. She just at some point moved so she was standing beside him.
It was Sakura's plan to save Naruto; Sasuke accepted his death with a sense of inevitability that would have festered in him every time he used the sharingan until he allowed himself to slip up on a mission and be killed. He let the hollowness that had begun upon realizing that Itachi was really dead now and he had nothing more to chase after bleed over to color Naruto's fate as well. He would have let it happen.
Sakura didn't.
So when she brought up the possibility he had abandoned, Sasuke slid into the aspect of their team that he was, and began working out the details and the necessary tactics and weapons they would need to succeed. It was easy, because it was common--she came up with a plan, he fine-tuned it and determined the weapons needed, and Naruto--if it were a normal mission and not what it was--would have supplied the extra firepower. Naruto attacked from the front while Sakura destroyed the flank and Sasuke slit throats in the rear.
They all have the roles that fit them best. Sasuke has the position he has because he is the one who was able to cut his heart off first of the three of them, and thus the one who learned best how to disregard guilt when possible. He wishes that the body Ichiro chose hadn't belonged to someone Sakura knew, even indirectly; but he doesn't let it take any further hold than that.
Because Sakura's eyes are green like the spring leaves of Konoha and Naruto's eyes are blue like a sky so wide and open that the sheer space of it threatens those raised in forests and Sasuke's eyes are dark like the shadows of the underground dungeons in Oto, and he has already accepted that he is going to have to be the one to attack the hunternins from their village first. Of the three, or four, or five of them--whatever the number is in the end--he is the one who will be able to make his first strike have the intent to kill.
Even if the hunternin is Kakashi.
Or Anko.
Or Shizune.
Or Gai. Or any of the other people they have known their whole lives, teachers and friends and family. Someone will have to make the first attack lethal, or he and Naruto and Sakura and Lee will be killed.
Sasuke secretes more than a normal amount of weapons along his clothing after Sakura leaves, grateful not for the first time that they are oversized enough to hide shuriken and the smaller kunai well. He rearranges the room and opens the curtains before he heads to work.
Lee chides him from the opposite roof for being late. Sasuke glances upward after the eighth run-on sentence involving responsibility, but remains focused on the boards he's nailing and doesn't interrupt.