"If It Will Feed Nothing Else" - Sasuke + Yuugao (Naruto)
~
"The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
...Written because a while back, I happened to mention that I rather liked Yuugao, minor character as she is, and the person I was talking with said she was "kinda plain", always SO SRS, and prettymuch thoroughly unremarkable. This is true...and yet, in a way, I still think these two have the potential to be very much alike...
[Sasuke, Yuugao. ‘If It Will Feed Nothing Else.’]
--
The first thing Uchiha Sasuke notices about her is that she is thoroughly unremarkable.
The second, that she is wearing an ANBU uniform-unmistakably Konoha’s.
And third, she is at that moment using her standard-issue tanto to cut the ANBU tattoo from her right arm.
She is surprisingly silent as she does it, her jaw clenched but her eyes hard and her hand steady as she peels the skin and a layer of flesh from her own arm. Blood wells, covering the short blade and obscuring the site well before she’s finished, but she doesn’t pause; she just keeps cutting until she’s sure the whole tattoo is gone. Then, with an almost contemptuous flick of her wrist, she sends blood and tissue splattering to the ground.
“For you, Hayate,” she murmurs, staring at the blood-streaked blade for a moment before wiping it clean and resheathing it. Unhurriedly, she falls to bandaging her arm--but pauses before she is halfway through, finding the tip of another blade at her throat quite unexpectedly.
Equally unexpected is the owner of this blade. On looking up (without moving her head an inch, raising only her eyes), she recognises him as Uchiha Sasuke, age eighteen, missing-nin for five years, listed in the Bingo Book as ‘kill on sight’ for two years. Known associates: Orochimaru, Yakushi Kabuto, Uchiha Madara, Hōzuki Suigetsu-but no, none of that matters to her, not anymore.
He doesn’t recognise her at all, even after a closer look, and again he can only think thoroughly unremarkable. Muddy brown eyes; long, dull-looking and half-wild purple-black hair; medium height, normal figure, high B- or low A-class chakra levels; not ugly but not beautiful.
“Who are you and what are you doing here.”
It’s more a demand for information than a question, and though she briefly presses her red-painted lips together like a good soldier refusing to talk, a moment later they quirk into a slight, crooked smile.
“Uzuki Yuugao,” she says, her voice husky, steady, and coolly unconcerned. “And I was supposed to be hunting down missing-nin.”
Sasuke knows he should stab her through the throat--she’d just admitted to being an assassin sent to kill him after all--but she’d said it almost like she thought it was funny somehow, and for that reason, among others, he stays his hand.
But he doesn’t lower his sword just yet.
Yuugao seems to realise that he’s waiting for her to continue-or explain-and she can’t keep a wry chuckle from escaping as she does so. “I simply find it ironic, since I have no intention of ever returning to Konoha myself, much less carrying out any more of their orders. That makes me a missing-nin, too, doesn’t it?”
The Uchiha’s dark eyes narrow almost imperceptibly; if she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she doesn’t doubt that she would have missed it entirely.
“Why are you running away from Konoha.” He sounds suspicious, and understandably so, for no sooner have the words left his mouth than the woman before him disappears in a cloud of smoke. On reflex, he pivots on his heel, bringing his sword around in a sweeping sideways slash, and the sound of steel meeting steel rings out as he catches the blade thrusting straight towards the small of his back, forcing it aside.
She takes the parry in stride, briefly reversing the motion of her not-so-standard-issue katana, then whipping the blade just beneath his own as she lunges a few rapid steps forward. But he’s already twisted to the side, smoothly and easily avoiding her attack, using her own momentum against her and aiming a slanting blow at her half-exposed back. She speeds up to avoid the blow, then flips sideways to put her just out of reach, gathering herself before lunging at him again, though this time her attack is restrained enough that he can’t simply step aside to avoid it. This time, he has to meet her sword with his own, blow for blow, both blades moving so quickly, they almost seem fluid, like liquid curves of mercury whistling through the air, becoming solid and steel only long enough to glance off of each other.
Her assault is not entirely unsuccessful; there’s a minor cut on his left shoulder and another on his right forearm, his formerly pristine white shirt now stained faintly scarlet, and at one point, she actually gets inside his guard long enough to jam her elbow into his solar plexus and snap his head around with a sharp right straight to his jaw.
But those eyes are black, not red, and she knows that ultimately, he isn’t even trying.
She also knows that he’s dangerous enough that she doesn’t want him to try. So the next time she sees an opening, instead of pressing the attack, she retreats, a swift series of flips and backwards leaps that takes her to a tree a fair distance away. But just because she’s proven herself to be at least marginally intelligent by choosing to disengage in a timely manner doesn’t mean she’s going to act like she’s running. She does still have her pride, and while it makes Sasuke snort inwardly, that someone as comparably talentless as this woman is would presume to have pride, it still kindles the faintest spark of interest in him.
“Why should I have to answer personal questions issued by a stranger?” She stands boldly on a thick branch, hip cocked, her stance easy and aloof; in contrast, her voice has gone hard, stern and all-solider. “I have no intention of interfering with you, so it is none of your concern.”
And with that, she vanishes in a whirl of leaves, her chakra signature moving away quickly, but not too quickly.
Sasuke doesn’t care enough to give chase. He isn’t all that interested, and so long as she’s not a threat (and she’s not, because impressive as her swordsmanship had been, very few things can beat the Sharingan, and impressive swordsmanship is not one of them), he doesn’t care where she is or why she’s decided to leave Konoha.
But he doesn’t really trust her words either, and he puts several miles between himself and the place they’d met before night falls. When he settles in for the night, he is careful to choose a spot with a good view of the surrounding area, and where his back is protected. Just in case. Because as he’s learned, being a missing-nin means taking no chances and trusting no one except yourself.
--
Despite his efforts, less than a week passes before he encounters her a second time.
A group of very unfortunate bandits had decided that he looked like an easy kill, being both young and alone, entirely failing to take into account the fact that anyone with his appearance would likely have to be several times stronger than he looked, or he wouldn’t have made it this far out into the middle of nowhere, much less remained altogether unscathed. Of course, the bandits soon find that they’re the ones who are easy to kill, but those that aren’t outright cowardly are too stupid to know that retreat is their only real option aside from death, and continue to all but throw themselves on Sasuke’s sword. They do so with such fervor that they might very well have overwhelmed him with sheer numbers, but a well-aimed kunai here and an impeccably-thrown pair of shuriken there, hurled by an unseen attacker, take out any that look like they might have a clean shot at the Uchiha.
The fight is over in a matter of minutes. Sasuke hardly spares the bodies a second glance, save to retrieve the shuriken and kunai left behind by the mystery assailant. On inspection, he finds them to be utterly nondescript…but a Konoha shinobi (or former Konoha shinobi) knows precisely where to look and what to look for when it comes to the weapons of their own home Village. Though subtle, these all have the markings of Konoha’s chief weaponsmith, leaving no doubt in his mind as to just who had helped him.
He turns a flat glare up at the surrounding trees, but he can’t see or sense her chakra, not that he’d expected to; she’d left well before the fight was over, evidently (wisely) not wanting to take any chances with another run-in with the last Uchiha, and by now she’s miles away and still making good time.
…But this time, Sasuke does care enough to hunt her down.
--
After five days of tracking and almost constant running, he finally corners her when she stops to rest at a small freshwater spring, though somehow he gets the feeling that she’d let him catch up. She’s bathing, completely naked and only half-submerged when he steps into the clearing and again asks a question like providing him with the information is an order.
“You were following me. Why.”
“Reflex, mostly.”
She doesn’t pause, working shampoo and her fingers through her long, thick hair, and her voice is serious, almost biting in its straightforwardness. She is utterly unashamed of her body, unflinching despite being so exposed to the eyes of a male. It’s purely tactical, a ploy to put him off his guard or to make him uncomfortable, inexperienced teenager that he is, and they both know it. Sasuke stares at her steadily, seemingly equally unashamed and unruffled, and though his eyes do linger, once more all he can think is thoroughly unremarkable.
“I spent years taking out lowlifes like that,” she goes on after leaning over backwards in an eye-catching arch to rinse the soap from her hair. “I was attacking them almost before I knew it.”
Somehow, a quirked eyebrow speaks worlds of skepticism; he clearly isn’t buying it, and the way his chin lowers just slightly tells her to try again.
“Okay then,” she says, slicking her wet hair back, wringing it out and pinning it up before she starts washing her body. “What if I was following you?”
“Then stop, or I’ll kill you.”
It’s a matter-of-fact answer, given without any deliberation necessary, and that in and of itself tells her that he means it. She just smiles faintly in response, staring at the reflection of the crescent moon on the water, her hands still moving in steady, hypnotic little circles as she scrubs at her skin.
“…I can’t,” she says, and pauses long enough that he wonders what exactly she means (can’t let him kill her?--can’t die?--can’t stop following him?). “Not until I ask you something,” she clarifies, though it still doesn’t tell him what she means by can’t.
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t leave either, which she (more or less correctly) takes as grudging permission. She stops bathing altogether, turning to face him straight-on, looking tired and strangely brittle and deeply sorrowful.
“Do you regret leaving Konoha?” And as if she couldn’t decide which question she really wanted to ask more, she tags another on close after. “Was getting revenge worth it?”
Truthfully, it’s more than tempting to simply turn on his heel and walk away. Sasuke doesn’t have to answer to anyone for his actions--he’d made his choices, and he doesn’t want lectures or pity or anything from anyone really, other than to be left alone and not bothered with it all anymore. He doesn’t want to play Twenty Questions concerning his past. He doesn’t know--doesn’t care--what this utterly unexceptional woman is going through that would make her choose a path even vaguely similar to his own, and he has no interest in advising her, or informing her decision, or having anything at all to do with her. The fact that she, a complete stranger, would be so audacious as to bring up something so personal as his family has his hackles raised as well, and he can feel himself boring holes in her with a red-eyed glare.
“There’s no point in regretting the past,” he says, and it’s more of a struggle to keep his tone flat and unaffected than he’d expected, what with the sudden anger and deep-seated annoyance coiling tightly inside him, a spring straining to be released, a snake drawing back to strike. “And revenge is never ‘worth it.’ It will leave you empty, and hollow, and unsatisfied…but it isn’t something you choose for your own sake.” He blinks, his eyes dark once more, and though there’s still an edge to his words, they come more easily. “I’m not at all sorry I walked that path. But it’s not a path that someone like you could ever hope to follow.”
He does nothing to hide either his pride or his condescension, and now he does turn to go, adding without looking back, “Don’t follow me again if you want to live.”
The rush of air and whirling leaves is all but anticipated, and Sasuke doesn’t betray the barest flicker of surprise to find her standing in front of him, cutting him off. She’s still naked, and still absolutely unfazed by it, though her hair has come undone and covers her chest. Part of him almost respects her a little for that, for viewing her body not as something private or personal but solely as a weapon, solely a vessel. His almost-respect increases again minutely when she proves that she really isn’t entirely stupid, because she has her sword in hand, unsheathed but not pointed at him, not issuing any sort of direct challenge. He notes with a casual, passing interest that she refuses to meet his gaze any longer, that her eyes have settled firmly on his feet.
“Maybe it isn’t a path that I can walk alone…but what if I had help?”
Sasuke snorts, any faint traces of regard rapidly dwindling, giving way to undisguised contempt. “Revenge is a path that you walk on your own, or not at all. Anyone who ‘helps’ you is just someone you’re using to achieve your own ends.” His eyes spin red, and it’s entirely unconscious, and his voice is little more than a deadly hiss, hardly to be heard over the gurgle of the spring behind him. “And I’m done with being used for anyone else’s benefit. So why should I help you?”
He hadn’t meant to include that question, and it had been rhetorical anyway, but Yuugao’s hand tightens on the grip of her sword, and despite the fact that he’s warned her numerous times, despite the fact that she knows his eyes must be full of crimson and killing intent and that he is a killer and that it’s nothing but pure foolishness to do so, she slowly, deliberately raises her own eyes to meet his. There’s a faint sparkle of tears there that almost makes Sasuke falter inwardly for an instant, but she doesn’t cry; instead, her painted mouth curves with the ghost of sad smile.
“…Because you understand what it’s like to want power, and yet feel powerless.”
(…She’s read his files, she must have read his files, there’s no other way she could know any of that, and he’s wondering again if maybe this isn’t some sort of elaborate trap after all.)
He betrays nothing as he stares at her, eyes still slowly spinning and scarlet; then he snorts again, plainly disgusted, and turns his head away. Yuugao tenses, ready to fight for her life, but though his voice is cold and unmoved as always, the words formed by it are not what she’s expecting.
“Fine. I’ll hear you out.” He turns, moving towards the spring, throwing one last condition at her over his shoulder. “But get dressed first, or I’m leaving.”
--
She’s quick to do as he says, and though it takes her only a little more than minute, he already has a fire going by the time she rejoins him. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look up, doesn’t react at all as she lets habit take over, putting water on to boil and making tea as a backdrop to her story. It helps to have something to do with her hands, she’s found, and she falls to cleaning her sword as she waits for the water to boil, only half-listening, half-aware that she’s speaking, telling him everything about Hayate and how she’d lost him, how she'd learned what little she could about his killer, and how impossible revenge is now that Konoha and Suna are allies again.
“The peace is too tenuous, too important to all the higher-ups…and I understand why that is.” She sets her sword aside to finish preparing the tea, her movements quick and mechanical with little to no thought involved. “But I’m not asking for a war. I asked for a name and a duel, and even that was denied…and I swore on Hayate’s grave that I would get revenge for him.”
Sasuke doesn’t move to accept the tea she offers him, just lets it sit on the ground beside his foot, not even glancing at it. He’s immune to most poisons, but that doesn’t mean he takes unnecessary risks, and despite everything she’s said, he still doesn’t trust her. He isn’t outright suspicious any longer, but that isn’t nearly the same as trusting someone.
“Losing a lover…isn’t the same as losing your whole family all at once. There can be no comparison. But Hayate…” Something in her face, her whole bearing, solidifies, and for that moment, she doesn’t look quite so entirely unremarkable--at least in Sasuke’s eyes. “Hayate was my world. I was an orphan…to me, he was my whole family.
“That is why I will journey to Suna, not as a shinobi of the Leaf, but as an avenger. I will seek out and challenge Hayate’s murderer, and in an honourable duel-”
“Revenge is not about honour,” Sasuke cuts in before she can finish. “It’s about blood, and death, and satisfying your own selfishness. You should want to kill him even if it turns out that it won’t be personally gratifying, that you’ll have to settle for whatever way is quickest and easiest, be that a knife in his back or poison in his tea.”
“No,” she starts to protest, her voice going hard, “that’s not what I want-”
“Yes,” Sasuke cuts in again, his own voice every bit as hard and twice as unyielding. “Yes, it is, if you really want revenge.” He meets her eyes grimly, and her objections wither and crumble in her throat at his expression. “You have to want him dead more than you want your honour-more than you want anything. You have be willing to do whatever it takes, to lie and cheat and steal, to sell your soul to the devil for the power you need and your body to the highest bidder for the information, the necessary funds, or even the slightest possible opportunity to take his life. You have to be willing to kill half the population of Suna and start all those wars all over again just to be absolutely certain he’s dead.” Impossibly, his eyes go colder, harder. “That is what it means to be an avenger.”
Yuugao is silent for the space of perhaps half a dozen heartbeats, her eyes averted, her face pinched in consideration as she weighs what she has and what she’ll have to give up against what she’d promised to do and what she thinks she desires. “Yes,” she murmurs at last, though her gaze is slow to return to the Uchiha’s face. “Then yes, that’s what I want.”
Sasuke looks at her in steady, unblinking silence for an almost unnerving length of time. Just when she’s half-convinced herself that perhaps being Uchiha means they don’t have to blink like regular people, as well as started to wonder if he’s gone into some strange sort of trance or jutsu or if maybe he’s just stuck, he closes his eyes with a faint sigh, bowing his head ever so slightly.
“Fine,” he says simply, and with that, the deal is struck.
--
After that night, they are almost always together. They fight together, train together, live together, always working towards her ultimate goal, that moment of revenge. But although he’s right there, though she can feel the heat coming off his skin as he crouches beside her, watching and waiting to ambush a patrol of Suna-nin who might possibly have useful information, he still feels so very far away somehow. They are partners, they work together, but he holds her at a distance, and for some reason, she can’t convince herself that he really feels anything for her. That he really cares if she lives or dies or gets her revenge. That he really trusts her.
Still, they work together, fight together, and once, right after the rush of one of those fights, when the blood on her skin is still every bit as hot as the blood pounding beneath it, she reaches for him, taking double fistfuls of his shirt and dragging him against her, impulsively pressing her mouth to his. It’s rough and messy and her teeth tear at his lower lip without even the pretense of tenderness, her every movement desperate in more ways than one: a hunger and a curiosity that goes unfulfilled.
Sasuke doesn’t pull away, doesn’t resist, but his guard doesn’t lower even a fraction; and though his mouth opens beneath her assault, and possibly even moves against hers once or twice, he doesn’t close his eyes, he doesn’t embrace her, and he doesn’t really kiss her back.
After a moment she seems to remember herself and steps back, breathless and vaguely unsatisfied and perhaps a little ashamed of what she’s just done. But she doesn’t apologise, and neither does he, though she doesn’t kiss him again, even if her eyes do linger, dark with desire, on his mouth, smeared red with blood from his lips and paint from her own.
--
“What do you do,” she dares to ask late one night when the lingering heat of the day is still intense enough to make her restless. They’ve taken to sharing a room recently whenever they stay the night at an inn, attempting to be less conspicuous and more guarded and to conserve what’s left of their money; as she stares at her reflection in the grimy glass of the window, Yuugao brushes sweat-dampened hair out of her face and wonders if she’ll ever really feel clean or whole again after all this is over. “What do you do after you’ve kept your promise and gotten your revenge?”
Sasuke doesn’t look over at her from across the room where he’s stretched out on top of the blankets, pale skin blue and perfect in the moonlight. He doesn’t respond right away either, though he’s not asleep; she looks over her shoulder in time to see him close his eyes. When he speaks, his answer is flat and bored, emotionless, uncaring, but somehow still a bit softer than usual.
“I don’t know.”
--
Finally, finally she manages to find him. He’s alone on a quick scouting mission not all that far from Suna, close enough to home that his guard is down, and she’s standing in front of him, blade drawn, long before he realises that he’s not alone.
It’s been nearly a year since she left Konoha, and the scar on her arm still burns some nights, a year full of grueling training and subtle intelligence work and blood and moonlight and dark eyes that see everything and tell her nothing. She’s never felt so filthy, so immoral, so very like a criminal--which she is now, she still has to remind herself.
But it’s all paid off.
Because now she knows who killed Hayate. Now she can keep her promise and get her revenge.
And because she knows that now, she’s strong enough to take that revenge.
She’s not at all the same person she once was; she’s lost one world and gained another, lost one love and gained another-but no, he’s too young for her, and yet what does age mean in their world anyway? But really she knows he’s not interested (he never makes the first move, or the second or third moves either, though he still doesn’t turn her away entirely most of the time) and yet, empty as she is, she finds that doesn’t particularly matter to her. She knows he won’t feel a thing if she dies or if she doesn’t make it through this fight, and if she loses and lives, he won’t try to save her; only if she wins, only then will she have proven herself somewhat, and only then will he let her stay with him.
But this fight isn’t about proving herself, it’s about revenge, and if she tries to make it into anything else, she’ll be lying to herself and failing Hayate and she can’t stand to do either, not anymore, not for one moment longer.
(Baki. His name is Baki, he’s a member of Suna’s advisory council, he was the jounin leader of the current Kazekage’s genin team-but no, none of this matters anymore and thinking of him as a person, as anything other than a target and the killer of her lover might make her pause, might cause her hand to waver, and after all this time and her promise and everything she’s done to reach this point, she cannot allow that.)
He comes to a stop when she appears before him, his visible eye settling on her katana, his brow furrowing in thought, as though he vaguely remembers the sword even though it’s not too terribly memorable, save for its wholly scarlet tsuba; but he doesn’t tense even slightly as she speaks.
“…Five years ago, a Konoha jounin named Gekkou Hayate was killed inside his own village. Five years ago, his lover swore revenge on the one who killed him. And now, after all this time, you will pay for the life you took that night.”
“Uzuki Yuugao,” the Suna nin says, without any real surprise, and her grip on her katana’s hilt tightens as he speaks her name, detesting how it sounds coming out of his mouth. “Suna was informed of your defection, and you are listed in the latest edition of the Bingo Book.” Her eyes narrow, because his words are cool, his voice measured and steady and so, so patronising and it sets her teeth on edge and she loathes him for it. She can feel all those years of hatred welling up in her gut, rising hot and thick in the back of her throat, so much that she almost thinks she’ll choke or be sick with it. “I remember your Hayate-”
“Don’t you dare speak his name-” she hisses through barred teeth, but he continues on just as if she hadn’t said a word, as if she isn’t even there.
“He was very skilled, and showed great promise, though he was poorly matched against one with my abilities.” He raises a hand, as if that simple, worthless motion will placate her now, after all she’s willingly put herself through just to capture this very moment, to stand here right now and grasp at the chance to see him dead; to have his blood on her hands and her conscience wiped clean and for it to all finally be worth it. “I understand why you are angry, why you wish to take my life, and I understand what you must have given up to stand here before me as you are; but emotion and retribution have no place in a shinobi’s life.”
“You don’t understand anything,” she all but whispers, and she’s surprised how utterly calm she sounds, how loudly and clearly her words carry through the rapidly-cooling desert air. “And I’m not a shinobi any more; I’m an avenger.”
Less than half a second later, she’s lunging forward, her blade sweeping back as a voice that she scarcely recognises as her own cries out, “Revenge! For Hayate!”
The distance between them closes in an instant--too quickly for Baki to do anything other than look startled and attempt a last-second defense.
And Yuugao knows in some cold, distant, wholly satisfied part of her mind that it won’t be enough.
That knowledge does nothing to slow her blade. If anything, it only adds to the force behind the blow as she brings her katana slashing down.
--
Sasuke, Yuugao - "…And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" We know where our loyalties lie.
"The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
...Written because a while back, I happened to mention that I rather liked Yuugao, minor character as she is, and the person I was talking with said she was "kinda plain", always SO SRS, and prettymuch thoroughly unremarkable. This is true...and yet, in a way, I still think these two have the potential to be very much alike...
[Sasuke, Yuugao. ‘If It Will Feed Nothing Else.’]
--
The first thing Uchiha Sasuke notices about her is that she is thoroughly unremarkable.
The second, that she is wearing an ANBU uniform-unmistakably Konoha’s.
And third, she is at that moment using her standard-issue tanto to cut the ANBU tattoo from her right arm.
She is surprisingly silent as she does it, her jaw clenched but her eyes hard and her hand steady as she peels the skin and a layer of flesh from her own arm. Blood wells, covering the short blade and obscuring the site well before she’s finished, but she doesn’t pause; she just keeps cutting until she’s sure the whole tattoo is gone. Then, with an almost contemptuous flick of her wrist, she sends blood and tissue splattering to the ground.
“For you, Hayate,” she murmurs, staring at the blood-streaked blade for a moment before wiping it clean and resheathing it. Unhurriedly, she falls to bandaging her arm--but pauses before she is halfway through, finding the tip of another blade at her throat quite unexpectedly.
Equally unexpected is the owner of this blade. On looking up (without moving her head an inch, raising only her eyes), she recognises him as Uchiha Sasuke, age eighteen, missing-nin for five years, listed in the Bingo Book as ‘kill on sight’ for two years. Known associates: Orochimaru, Yakushi Kabuto, Uchiha Madara, Hōzuki Suigetsu-but no, none of that matters to her, not anymore.
He doesn’t recognise her at all, even after a closer look, and again he can only think thoroughly unremarkable. Muddy brown eyes; long, dull-looking and half-wild purple-black hair; medium height, normal figure, high B- or low A-class chakra levels; not ugly but not beautiful.
“Who are you and what are you doing here.”
It’s more a demand for information than a question, and though she briefly presses her red-painted lips together like a good soldier refusing to talk, a moment later they quirk into a slight, crooked smile.
“Uzuki Yuugao,” she says, her voice husky, steady, and coolly unconcerned. “And I was supposed to be hunting down missing-nin.”
Sasuke knows he should stab her through the throat--she’d just admitted to being an assassin sent to kill him after all--but she’d said it almost like she thought it was funny somehow, and for that reason, among others, he stays his hand.
But he doesn’t lower his sword just yet.
Yuugao seems to realise that he’s waiting for her to continue-or explain-and she can’t keep a wry chuckle from escaping as she does so. “I simply find it ironic, since I have no intention of ever returning to Konoha myself, much less carrying out any more of their orders. That makes me a missing-nin, too, doesn’t it?”
The Uchiha’s dark eyes narrow almost imperceptibly; if she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she doesn’t doubt that she would have missed it entirely.
“Why are you running away from Konoha.” He sounds suspicious, and understandably so, for no sooner have the words left his mouth than the woman before him disappears in a cloud of smoke. On reflex, he pivots on his heel, bringing his sword around in a sweeping sideways slash, and the sound of steel meeting steel rings out as he catches the blade thrusting straight towards the small of his back, forcing it aside.
She takes the parry in stride, briefly reversing the motion of her not-so-standard-issue katana, then whipping the blade just beneath his own as she lunges a few rapid steps forward. But he’s already twisted to the side, smoothly and easily avoiding her attack, using her own momentum against her and aiming a slanting blow at her half-exposed back. She speeds up to avoid the blow, then flips sideways to put her just out of reach, gathering herself before lunging at him again, though this time her attack is restrained enough that he can’t simply step aside to avoid it. This time, he has to meet her sword with his own, blow for blow, both blades moving so quickly, they almost seem fluid, like liquid curves of mercury whistling through the air, becoming solid and steel only long enough to glance off of each other.
Her assault is not entirely unsuccessful; there’s a minor cut on his left shoulder and another on his right forearm, his formerly pristine white shirt now stained faintly scarlet, and at one point, she actually gets inside his guard long enough to jam her elbow into his solar plexus and snap his head around with a sharp right straight to his jaw.
But those eyes are black, not red, and she knows that ultimately, he isn’t even trying.
She also knows that he’s dangerous enough that she doesn’t want him to try. So the next time she sees an opening, instead of pressing the attack, she retreats, a swift series of flips and backwards leaps that takes her to a tree a fair distance away. But just because she’s proven herself to be at least marginally intelligent by choosing to disengage in a timely manner doesn’t mean she’s going to act like she’s running. She does still have her pride, and while it makes Sasuke snort inwardly, that someone as comparably talentless as this woman is would presume to have pride, it still kindles the faintest spark of interest in him.
“Why should I have to answer personal questions issued by a stranger?” She stands boldly on a thick branch, hip cocked, her stance easy and aloof; in contrast, her voice has gone hard, stern and all-solider. “I have no intention of interfering with you, so it is none of your concern.”
And with that, she vanishes in a whirl of leaves, her chakra signature moving away quickly, but not too quickly.
Sasuke doesn’t care enough to give chase. He isn’t all that interested, and so long as she’s not a threat (and she’s not, because impressive as her swordsmanship had been, very few things can beat the Sharingan, and impressive swordsmanship is not one of them), he doesn’t care where she is or why she’s decided to leave Konoha.
But he doesn’t really trust her words either, and he puts several miles between himself and the place they’d met before night falls. When he settles in for the night, he is careful to choose a spot with a good view of the surrounding area, and where his back is protected. Just in case. Because as he’s learned, being a missing-nin means taking no chances and trusting no one except yourself.
--
Despite his efforts, less than a week passes before he encounters her a second time.
A group of very unfortunate bandits had decided that he looked like an easy kill, being both young and alone, entirely failing to take into account the fact that anyone with his appearance would likely have to be several times stronger than he looked, or he wouldn’t have made it this far out into the middle of nowhere, much less remained altogether unscathed. Of course, the bandits soon find that they’re the ones who are easy to kill, but those that aren’t outright cowardly are too stupid to know that retreat is their only real option aside from death, and continue to all but throw themselves on Sasuke’s sword. They do so with such fervor that they might very well have overwhelmed him with sheer numbers, but a well-aimed kunai here and an impeccably-thrown pair of shuriken there, hurled by an unseen attacker, take out any that look like they might have a clean shot at the Uchiha.
The fight is over in a matter of minutes. Sasuke hardly spares the bodies a second glance, save to retrieve the shuriken and kunai left behind by the mystery assailant. On inspection, he finds them to be utterly nondescript…but a Konoha shinobi (or former Konoha shinobi) knows precisely where to look and what to look for when it comes to the weapons of their own home Village. Though subtle, these all have the markings of Konoha’s chief weaponsmith, leaving no doubt in his mind as to just who had helped him.
He turns a flat glare up at the surrounding trees, but he can’t see or sense her chakra, not that he’d expected to; she’d left well before the fight was over, evidently (wisely) not wanting to take any chances with another run-in with the last Uchiha, and by now she’s miles away and still making good time.
…But this time, Sasuke does care enough to hunt her down.
--
After five days of tracking and almost constant running, he finally corners her when she stops to rest at a small freshwater spring, though somehow he gets the feeling that she’d let him catch up. She’s bathing, completely naked and only half-submerged when he steps into the clearing and again asks a question like providing him with the information is an order.
“You were following me. Why.”
“Reflex, mostly.”
She doesn’t pause, working shampoo and her fingers through her long, thick hair, and her voice is serious, almost biting in its straightforwardness. She is utterly unashamed of her body, unflinching despite being so exposed to the eyes of a male. It’s purely tactical, a ploy to put him off his guard or to make him uncomfortable, inexperienced teenager that he is, and they both know it. Sasuke stares at her steadily, seemingly equally unashamed and unruffled, and though his eyes do linger, once more all he can think is thoroughly unremarkable.
“I spent years taking out lowlifes like that,” she goes on after leaning over backwards in an eye-catching arch to rinse the soap from her hair. “I was attacking them almost before I knew it.”
Somehow, a quirked eyebrow speaks worlds of skepticism; he clearly isn’t buying it, and the way his chin lowers just slightly tells her to try again.
“Okay then,” she says, slicking her wet hair back, wringing it out and pinning it up before she starts washing her body. “What if I was following you?”
“Then stop, or I’ll kill you.”
It’s a matter-of-fact answer, given without any deliberation necessary, and that in and of itself tells her that he means it. She just smiles faintly in response, staring at the reflection of the crescent moon on the water, her hands still moving in steady, hypnotic little circles as she scrubs at her skin.
“…I can’t,” she says, and pauses long enough that he wonders what exactly she means (can’t let him kill her?--can’t die?--can’t stop following him?). “Not until I ask you something,” she clarifies, though it still doesn’t tell him what she means by can’t.
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t leave either, which she (more or less correctly) takes as grudging permission. She stops bathing altogether, turning to face him straight-on, looking tired and strangely brittle and deeply sorrowful.
“Do you regret leaving Konoha?” And as if she couldn’t decide which question she really wanted to ask more, she tags another on close after. “Was getting revenge worth it?”
Truthfully, it’s more than tempting to simply turn on his heel and walk away. Sasuke doesn’t have to answer to anyone for his actions--he’d made his choices, and he doesn’t want lectures or pity or anything from anyone really, other than to be left alone and not bothered with it all anymore. He doesn’t want to play Twenty Questions concerning his past. He doesn’t know--doesn’t care--what this utterly unexceptional woman is going through that would make her choose a path even vaguely similar to his own, and he has no interest in advising her, or informing her decision, or having anything at all to do with her. The fact that she, a complete stranger, would be so audacious as to bring up something so personal as his family has his hackles raised as well, and he can feel himself boring holes in her with a red-eyed glare.
“There’s no point in regretting the past,” he says, and it’s more of a struggle to keep his tone flat and unaffected than he’d expected, what with the sudden anger and deep-seated annoyance coiling tightly inside him, a spring straining to be released, a snake drawing back to strike. “And revenge is never ‘worth it.’ It will leave you empty, and hollow, and unsatisfied…but it isn’t something you choose for your own sake.” He blinks, his eyes dark once more, and though there’s still an edge to his words, they come more easily. “I’m not at all sorry I walked that path. But it’s not a path that someone like you could ever hope to follow.”
He does nothing to hide either his pride or his condescension, and now he does turn to go, adding without looking back, “Don’t follow me again if you want to live.”
The rush of air and whirling leaves is all but anticipated, and Sasuke doesn’t betray the barest flicker of surprise to find her standing in front of him, cutting him off. She’s still naked, and still absolutely unfazed by it, though her hair has come undone and covers her chest. Part of him almost respects her a little for that, for viewing her body not as something private or personal but solely as a weapon, solely a vessel. His almost-respect increases again minutely when she proves that she really isn’t entirely stupid, because she has her sword in hand, unsheathed but not pointed at him, not issuing any sort of direct challenge. He notes with a casual, passing interest that she refuses to meet his gaze any longer, that her eyes have settled firmly on his feet.
“Maybe it isn’t a path that I can walk alone…but what if I had help?”
Sasuke snorts, any faint traces of regard rapidly dwindling, giving way to undisguised contempt. “Revenge is a path that you walk on your own, or not at all. Anyone who ‘helps’ you is just someone you’re using to achieve your own ends.” His eyes spin red, and it’s entirely unconscious, and his voice is little more than a deadly hiss, hardly to be heard over the gurgle of the spring behind him. “And I’m done with being used for anyone else’s benefit. So why should I help you?”
He hadn’t meant to include that question, and it had been rhetorical anyway, but Yuugao’s hand tightens on the grip of her sword, and despite the fact that he’s warned her numerous times, despite the fact that she knows his eyes must be full of crimson and killing intent and that he is a killer and that it’s nothing but pure foolishness to do so, she slowly, deliberately raises her own eyes to meet his. There’s a faint sparkle of tears there that almost makes Sasuke falter inwardly for an instant, but she doesn’t cry; instead, her painted mouth curves with the ghost of sad smile.
“…Because you understand what it’s like to want power, and yet feel powerless.”
(…She’s read his files, she must have read his files, there’s no other way she could know any of that, and he’s wondering again if maybe this isn’t some sort of elaborate trap after all.)
He betrays nothing as he stares at her, eyes still slowly spinning and scarlet; then he snorts again, plainly disgusted, and turns his head away. Yuugao tenses, ready to fight for her life, but though his voice is cold and unmoved as always, the words formed by it are not what she’s expecting.
“Fine. I’ll hear you out.” He turns, moving towards the spring, throwing one last condition at her over his shoulder. “But get dressed first, or I’m leaving.”
--
She’s quick to do as he says, and though it takes her only a little more than minute, he already has a fire going by the time she rejoins him. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look up, doesn’t react at all as she lets habit take over, putting water on to boil and making tea as a backdrop to her story. It helps to have something to do with her hands, she’s found, and she falls to cleaning her sword as she waits for the water to boil, only half-listening, half-aware that she’s speaking, telling him everything about Hayate and how she’d lost him, how she'd learned what little she could about his killer, and how impossible revenge is now that Konoha and Suna are allies again.
“The peace is too tenuous, too important to all the higher-ups…and I understand why that is.” She sets her sword aside to finish preparing the tea, her movements quick and mechanical with little to no thought involved. “But I’m not asking for a war. I asked for a name and a duel, and even that was denied…and I swore on Hayate’s grave that I would get revenge for him.”
Sasuke doesn’t move to accept the tea she offers him, just lets it sit on the ground beside his foot, not even glancing at it. He’s immune to most poisons, but that doesn’t mean he takes unnecessary risks, and despite everything she’s said, he still doesn’t trust her. He isn’t outright suspicious any longer, but that isn’t nearly the same as trusting someone.
“Losing a lover…isn’t the same as losing your whole family all at once. There can be no comparison. But Hayate…” Something in her face, her whole bearing, solidifies, and for that moment, she doesn’t look quite so entirely unremarkable--at least in Sasuke’s eyes. “Hayate was my world. I was an orphan…to me, he was my whole family.
“That is why I will journey to Suna, not as a shinobi of the Leaf, but as an avenger. I will seek out and challenge Hayate’s murderer, and in an honourable duel-”
“Revenge is not about honour,” Sasuke cuts in before she can finish. “It’s about blood, and death, and satisfying your own selfishness. You should want to kill him even if it turns out that it won’t be personally gratifying, that you’ll have to settle for whatever way is quickest and easiest, be that a knife in his back or poison in his tea.”
“No,” she starts to protest, her voice going hard, “that’s not what I want-”
“Yes,” Sasuke cuts in again, his own voice every bit as hard and twice as unyielding. “Yes, it is, if you really want revenge.” He meets her eyes grimly, and her objections wither and crumble in her throat at his expression. “You have to want him dead more than you want your honour-more than you want anything. You have be willing to do whatever it takes, to lie and cheat and steal, to sell your soul to the devil for the power you need and your body to the highest bidder for the information, the necessary funds, or even the slightest possible opportunity to take his life. You have to be willing to kill half the population of Suna and start all those wars all over again just to be absolutely certain he’s dead.” Impossibly, his eyes go colder, harder. “That is what it means to be an avenger.”
Yuugao is silent for the space of perhaps half a dozen heartbeats, her eyes averted, her face pinched in consideration as she weighs what she has and what she’ll have to give up against what she’d promised to do and what she thinks she desires. “Yes,” she murmurs at last, though her gaze is slow to return to the Uchiha’s face. “Then yes, that’s what I want.”
Sasuke looks at her in steady, unblinking silence for an almost unnerving length of time. Just when she’s half-convinced herself that perhaps being Uchiha means they don’t have to blink like regular people, as well as started to wonder if he’s gone into some strange sort of trance or jutsu or if maybe he’s just stuck, he closes his eyes with a faint sigh, bowing his head ever so slightly.
“Fine,” he says simply, and with that, the deal is struck.
--
After that night, they are almost always together. They fight together, train together, live together, always working towards her ultimate goal, that moment of revenge. But although he’s right there, though she can feel the heat coming off his skin as he crouches beside her, watching and waiting to ambush a patrol of Suna-nin who might possibly have useful information, he still feels so very far away somehow. They are partners, they work together, but he holds her at a distance, and for some reason, she can’t convince herself that he really feels anything for her. That he really cares if she lives or dies or gets her revenge. That he really trusts her.
Still, they work together, fight together, and once, right after the rush of one of those fights, when the blood on her skin is still every bit as hot as the blood pounding beneath it, she reaches for him, taking double fistfuls of his shirt and dragging him against her, impulsively pressing her mouth to his. It’s rough and messy and her teeth tear at his lower lip without even the pretense of tenderness, her every movement desperate in more ways than one: a hunger and a curiosity that goes unfulfilled.
Sasuke doesn’t pull away, doesn’t resist, but his guard doesn’t lower even a fraction; and though his mouth opens beneath her assault, and possibly even moves against hers once or twice, he doesn’t close his eyes, he doesn’t embrace her, and he doesn’t really kiss her back.
After a moment she seems to remember herself and steps back, breathless and vaguely unsatisfied and perhaps a little ashamed of what she’s just done. But she doesn’t apologise, and neither does he, though she doesn’t kiss him again, even if her eyes do linger, dark with desire, on his mouth, smeared red with blood from his lips and paint from her own.
--
“What do you do,” she dares to ask late one night when the lingering heat of the day is still intense enough to make her restless. They’ve taken to sharing a room recently whenever they stay the night at an inn, attempting to be less conspicuous and more guarded and to conserve what’s left of their money; as she stares at her reflection in the grimy glass of the window, Yuugao brushes sweat-dampened hair out of her face and wonders if she’ll ever really feel clean or whole again after all this is over. “What do you do after you’ve kept your promise and gotten your revenge?”
Sasuke doesn’t look over at her from across the room where he’s stretched out on top of the blankets, pale skin blue and perfect in the moonlight. He doesn’t respond right away either, though he’s not asleep; she looks over her shoulder in time to see him close his eyes. When he speaks, his answer is flat and bored, emotionless, uncaring, but somehow still a bit softer than usual.
“I don’t know.”
--
Finally, finally she manages to find him. He’s alone on a quick scouting mission not all that far from Suna, close enough to home that his guard is down, and she’s standing in front of him, blade drawn, long before he realises that he’s not alone.
It’s been nearly a year since she left Konoha, and the scar on her arm still burns some nights, a year full of grueling training and subtle intelligence work and blood and moonlight and dark eyes that see everything and tell her nothing. She’s never felt so filthy, so immoral, so very like a criminal--which she is now, she still has to remind herself.
But it’s all paid off.
Because now she knows who killed Hayate. Now she can keep her promise and get her revenge.
And because she knows that now, she’s strong enough to take that revenge.
She’s not at all the same person she once was; she’s lost one world and gained another, lost one love and gained another-but no, he’s too young for her, and yet what does age mean in their world anyway? But really she knows he’s not interested (he never makes the first move, or the second or third moves either, though he still doesn’t turn her away entirely most of the time) and yet, empty as she is, she finds that doesn’t particularly matter to her. She knows he won’t feel a thing if she dies or if she doesn’t make it through this fight, and if she loses and lives, he won’t try to save her; only if she wins, only then will she have proven herself somewhat, and only then will he let her stay with him.
But this fight isn’t about proving herself, it’s about revenge, and if she tries to make it into anything else, she’ll be lying to herself and failing Hayate and she can’t stand to do either, not anymore, not for one moment longer.
(Baki. His name is Baki, he’s a member of Suna’s advisory council, he was the jounin leader of the current Kazekage’s genin team-but no, none of this matters anymore and thinking of him as a person, as anything other than a target and the killer of her lover might make her pause, might cause her hand to waver, and after all this time and her promise and everything she’s done to reach this point, she cannot allow that.)
He comes to a stop when she appears before him, his visible eye settling on her katana, his brow furrowing in thought, as though he vaguely remembers the sword even though it’s not too terribly memorable, save for its wholly scarlet tsuba; but he doesn’t tense even slightly as she speaks.
“…Five years ago, a Konoha jounin named Gekkou Hayate was killed inside his own village. Five years ago, his lover swore revenge on the one who killed him. And now, after all this time, you will pay for the life you took that night.”
“Uzuki Yuugao,” the Suna nin says, without any real surprise, and her grip on her katana’s hilt tightens as he speaks her name, detesting how it sounds coming out of his mouth. “Suna was informed of your defection, and you are listed in the latest edition of the Bingo Book.” Her eyes narrow, because his words are cool, his voice measured and steady and so, so patronising and it sets her teeth on edge and she loathes him for it. She can feel all those years of hatred welling up in her gut, rising hot and thick in the back of her throat, so much that she almost thinks she’ll choke or be sick with it. “I remember your Hayate-”
“Don’t you dare speak his name-” she hisses through barred teeth, but he continues on just as if she hadn’t said a word, as if she isn’t even there.
“He was very skilled, and showed great promise, though he was poorly matched against one with my abilities.” He raises a hand, as if that simple, worthless motion will placate her now, after all she’s willingly put herself through just to capture this very moment, to stand here right now and grasp at the chance to see him dead; to have his blood on her hands and her conscience wiped clean and for it to all finally be worth it. “I understand why you are angry, why you wish to take my life, and I understand what you must have given up to stand here before me as you are; but emotion and retribution have no place in a shinobi’s life.”
“You don’t understand anything,” she all but whispers, and she’s surprised how utterly calm she sounds, how loudly and clearly her words carry through the rapidly-cooling desert air. “And I’m not a shinobi any more; I’m an avenger.”
Less than half a second later, she’s lunging forward, her blade sweeping back as a voice that she scarcely recognises as her own cries out, “Revenge! For Hayate!”
The distance between them closes in an instant--too quickly for Baki to do anything other than look startled and attempt a last-second defense.
And Yuugao knows in some cold, distant, wholly satisfied part of her mind that it won’t be enough.
That knowledge does nothing to slow her blade. If anything, it only adds to the force behind the blow as she brings her katana slashing down.
--
Sasuke, Yuugao - "…And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" We know where our loyalties lie.