With more glee than is possibly appropriate Sasuke spends the last hours on the cart from Yokokita to New Uzushio telling Kakashi all the things he doesn't know. He would feel bad but really when is he going to get a chance like this again? He starts with a simple explanation of how they won back the land rights (Karin went as part of an ambassadorial mission to Suna, found out they were holding some of the last full blooded Uzumaki as political prisoners to hopefully one day use their land for farming purposes, wrecked them). Then he dips into Giri's restructuring of the political climate (the areas that belonged to Uzushio on the mainland and the sea territories were returned to their custodians thirty years ago, with the promise of supplies and sovereignty they promised to bar access to and from Fire should it be necessary). And for his finale he details the interplay of criminal factions (numerous, well funded and littered with Orochimaru's rejects). Kakashi looks equal parts weirded out by all the talking, queasy from the topic and angry he's out of the loop. He narrows his eyes. "Why are you telling me this?"
Because I can. "I don't want this to be more troublesome that it has to be. I'm here to do a job."
Kakashi looks about to calling bullshit, but it seems he can accept it if it's framed in Sasuke's obstinacy and goal orientation.
Uzushio comes into view in the mid-afternoon. It springs from the earth between breaths a white stoned speck on the ocean surrounded by fields and huts. One moment Sasuke is on the back of a rickety old cart in a forest, the next he is staring at clear sky and farmland. Seal work, probably. He admires the curves and cradles of the land as they begin their final approach -green on blue, uncut stone waiting to become houses and roads, workers around coffee carts laughing- and misses the rise of the entrance to Uzushio: two great dragons, both with huge crystals in their mouths dance around an archway. Made of metal and studded with semi precious stones the huge arch stands lonely as a cloud in the middle of an otherwise empty road. Sitting cross legged on top of a rock is a red haired woman staring down at a clipboard.
"Sasuke!" Karin leaps off the rock. "It's good to see you!"
Kakashi tenses, a small shift of chakra that might as well have been an explosion in current company. Karin throws him an assessing look but never stops moving toward Sasuke.
At that moment he realises that Kakashi has never met Karin, so to speak.
Karin looks at Kakashi in a terrifying predatory way that makes Sasuke passingly fond. Kakashi looks at her bored and put upon.
"Well," she says after a moment of long deliberation, "it's not as sexy as Sasuke's, but not a lot is."
"Karin," Sasuke places a finger under her chin and drags her attention back to him, he produces the message scroll he was given in Yokokita, "where is this going?"
Karin waves them over to her rock before she opens it, reads it, and makes a note, grumbling under her breath. "Ah I'll take you myself these bozo's never do it right." She rests dramatically on the nearby archway, leaning back so they can fully take her in. She waves herself with the scroll. "Sometimes I think I should run this place."
"You do."
Karin crosses her legs, hitting him with a knowing smile. "I was pretty surprised when we got the confirmation. I thought you'd been back for ages by now."
Sasuke shrugs. Karin accepts that as an answer. "Well, anyway, we've found a lot of the old alliance records and treaties, a few of those are still good, so if you want work from us you'll have to get it soon."
"Excuse me," Kakashi leans between the two of them, "but Uzushio wants to resume its alliances?"
"Not yet," Karin ducks a man carrying a huge pillar of stone under one arm, "we have basically nothing to offer. But I think in five years or so we'll be able to do consistent trade. We have a few people learning the old ways and developing new methods based on what few elders we have left know. It's a good thing this happened now, in another ten years the skills would have been lost completely."
"I see." Kakashi smiles but his body is so still it must hurt. "Do you intend to call on Konoha?"
"That depends," Karin tilts her head just so, "see I don't know Konoha very well, and while they were very kind after the fall of Uzushio you haven't had a great policy toward missing-nin which given out political climate a lot of us are. We're not in the position to resume shinobi services right away so we can't be recognised under the exact conditions of our treaty. Not to mention that the last guy I worked for was one of yours and it didn't end well. A lot of people remember that." Karin sniffs delicately, "Kiri has been very kind to make up for their abominable behaviour and it's important that we rebuild our connection with them. They are physically speaking our closest allies and the most willing to make us comfortable. Unfortunately there are members of your bureaucracy that just weren't interested in reconciling which leaves us with no one in Konoha we feel close too."
Kakashi nods encouragingly. "Not even Sasuke?"
"Well we like Sasuke. His work with Giri is considered a plus. It depends entirely on you now."
Kakashi hums noncommittally. "I have to see a man about a dog. I'll be back in a week. Stay, Sasuke." Then he steps back and in a plume of smoke disappears.
Sasuke rolls his eyes. Like he couldn't see this one coming. "Thank you," Karin's hand finds it's way to his, the way it usually does when they're alone, "that wasn't necessary."
"I think you may have gotten the sentences mixed up there, eh, Sasuke?" she teases.
Sasuke scowls at her but doesn't tug too hard when she takes him off to her favourite restaurant.
--
It takes Kakashi nearly six weeks to return.
Karin has him haul huge stones pulled from the ocean at low tide. They're stacked, cleaned and assessed by a stonemason before they're hauled off to the alpha site to be slotted and sealed into Karin's reborn city. Karin is there from dusk til dawn touching and feeling the rebirth of something lost for too long. Out of respect for Karin and the memories his mother imparted of Uzumaki Kushina, Sasuke keeps his sharingan deactivated. Most days she makes him play strategy games against her the way they used to Oto. When it's overcast or the sea swells are too strong for even the water touched to make it through they huddle together in the makeshift camp and play old games from their childhood. Sasuke's are all about finger dexterity and memory puzzles. Karin teaches him High Tide Over Low a fisherman's game that relies on knowledge of angles, basic math and sheer dumb luck. Away from Orochimaru, focused and unstressed Karin is hot blooded and forward but tempered by an unwavering calm as deep as the ocean she sleeps next to.
"It's the chakra sense," she says shortly one night when they're both strung out on bad memories. "I'm so sensitive that living with all that...rage and pain was like being rubbed raw all the time."
"Sorry." Sasuke replies. Karin kicks him in the shin.
"You feel really nice when you're not hopped up on adrenaline. Your personality is the problem here."
"Not sorry." Sasuke replies and tilts his leg out of the way so she can't kick him again.
"Yeah, I know you, you big lump," she sighs. "And I love you, although I don't want you to do anything with it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I got a city now, I've got...I'm it. The last of the Uzumaki." Her eyes roll once, "future Uzukage once I figure the chakra chains out."
"Hmm," Sasuke looks out at the vast dark blue of the ocean. The Uchiha are fireborn. What are the Uzumaki? "Did you know you have a dual affinity?"
"Do I?"
"Fire and water."
"Huh," she says, "I can't feel myself that way."
Sasuke nods and returns to watching the ocean.
"He's coming back Sasuke."
"Kakashi?"
Karin sips her tea. "Hmm, you are going to go home."
"Hn." He doesn't want to have that conversation. "Why you?"
"For Uzukage? The title is hereditary for one, but also the political climate around here. The people we'll get food from and eventually take missions from are very old school. There are people who are more competent than me but they'll never convince the Uyeda family to follow them because their matriarch is old as hell and remembers the Uzumaki. We need the Uyeda family because the control all grain production. The Matsuhiro family control the water supply and their son is betrothed to the Uyeda families second daughter. So on and so forth."
"Old school," he murmurs.
Karin nods. "Right. So I show up with my red hair and my chakra abilities. I couldn't use my chains then but I could do other stuff. I can be the face, so to speak. Internationally I'm a good choice because Konoha, by their own laws, should automatically accept us as their sister village. That means we get trade and military preference. They were going to use Suna but that bit the dust between Giri and keeping Uzumaki as prisoners. A full blood Uzumaki making peace looks really good on paper. The land went back to the farmers and most of the natural resources have recovered, we have food and certain skills that the Hidden Villages want. Everybody needs us so we're in a good position." Karin looks him head on. "Something to keep in mind."
"Karin-"
"I love you," she says seriously, "and I really mean that. I want you to be happy and safe and I don't think Konoha can do that." Her hands ball into fists. "I'm sorry I just don't. When this goes bad I want you to know you can come here. You don't have to be with me. But I need you to know you can stay with me." Karin tenses in on herself as if protecting from a body blow.
More than once Sasuke has been touched by Karin's ability to perceive what others miss, it is one of the things he values most about her. She knows, or he hopes she does, that he has immense respect for her. Any amount of it is hard won from him.
"Thank you." He needs to stay polite, it's not her fault he doesn't love her. "I'm not in love with you. I don't even know if I can-"
"It's fine." Karin hunches her shoulders, tears sliding down her cheeks. "Really Sasuke."
What would his mother say about him right now? With a wry smile he covers her hand. "Karin. Thank you. I won't forget." That feels a little thin, his thumb stroking against the back of her hand, he needs to tell her the rest of it. Not just keep it inside. "I don't know what I feel, but I respect you."
She sniffs. "Bastard. I'm too pretty to cry."
"Hn." He shrugs, leaning back. Karin wipes her face but he can see her smile.
--
Kakashi seems the most surprised of all to learn that he had stayed.
He's even more surprised by the odd acquaintances he's made, many of whom come to the gates to see him off. "Don't be a stranger," Karin threatens backed by a chorus of well wishers, "or I will send someone to get you."
Her men and women yell back. If pressed Sasuke couldn't tell you half their names, he was a silent worker who kept to himself, but like in all demanding environments you make connections.
A long while from Uzushio, crossing into a civilian settlement known for its charity hospital, Kakashi asks, "Do you have any idea at all how many people want to save you?"
"Yes," he answers honestly. It makes him uncomfortable so he shifts away.
"Why?" Kakashi asks. They aren't looking at each other.
Why ignore it? Why not stay? Why did you pick revenge over love?
"Can't change what you are." Sasuke answers flippantly.
Kakashi lets it lie. This time they both know Sasuke is lying.
--
Naoko has just passed. She leaves behind her three babes and her oldest. Three boys, one girl. Tajima has asked us to take in the girl, her name is Chizuru. She's so tiny! Already she looks more like her brother Izuna than her own father. She'll take after Naoko for sure! I only see her irreguarly, gone as I am training new girls for my job and scouting for civilian families to bind to us. Recently the other clans have started bringing them in under the banner, protecting their crops from other clans and taking some food as payment. We are starving, as always, and I think this may be best for me. Another shinobi will not understand my purpose, he will think that my training makes me duplicitous by nature. He won't ever let down his guard enough to give me the leverage I'll need to kill him if I have to. If, like Madoka or Emiri or Fusae, he thinks I fight with my knives, he will forgive me and let me kill him. A civilian will merely think me a whore. He'll think me stupid. He'll think me ruined. I can be a whore so long as it doesn't stop me from being useful to my people.
Holy fuck. Sasuke scans for more mentions of Izuna, who is presumed to be a distant ancestor and whom there is quite literally no information about, but there is nothing more on this page. Still he looks for other famous names -Setsuna, Hikari, Madara- eyes passing over little schematics of toys and bits of poems. He finds it jammed between two little bits about her chosen husband Tatewaki Souta -he has a sharp wit and a decent way in bed, apparently- but there it is.
There was some fuss today. Little Chizuru and I were looking over marriage offers when Madara came streaking through the tent, desperate to see his sister. There was something about a river and a friend and now he has the sharingan. Clever boy, if a little sad. Very imaginative. Chizuru was excitable and had no time for her brothers poor mood so that was put away very quickly. We talked some after dinner. What is the north like? The west? The valleys? What men are out there and do they live differently? I said 'not so much, very warm and they die as easily so really what does it matter', and that he could rearrange those answers as he pleased. The poor thing still looked troubled. Sometimes I forget how little these children suffer compared to my own youth. We've recently had a whole two years of consistent rations. Still we all have blood on our hands now. Poor boy.
It's said that Uchiha Madara was born evil on a thunderous day in midwinter. His mother fainted from the sight of his already bloody eyes and his father wept for his family.
There are ghosts in Sasuke's blood, spectres that hang across his history. He's taken back to a moment in his childhood. He was five and Itachi was holding him tight to his chest, they were in Sasuke's room which was closer to the kitchen. His parents were arguing about something, about the Yondaime and legacy. His mother rarely argued, simply moved through life with an absolute surety. His father on the other hand was given to a bad temper. His father believed that the past was past and that remembering themselves by the deeds of the dead did more harm than good. His mother was not so sanguine. If they remember then we have to as well , she said, if they remember us as Setsuna and Madara it will never matter how we change.
Sasuke remembers wiggling too much so Itachi pressed a kiss to his head and sang a song. The words are lost but he recalls the tune. It was a popular song at the time and had been adopted into a little tune by the children of the village. Itachi wouldn't have known that, he had never been a child, but Sasuke was reminded of playgrounds with the other Uchiha children in their own separate area. His cousins were playing with a ball and some sticks all with one eye on Sasuke who was by himself trying to remember the signs for the fireball technique. For some reason he remembers the smell of spring grass, the clear sky above and the non-Uchiha children bowling each other over so they could put their hands over each others eyes and sing, Blood Eyes, Blood Eyes, turn three times, Blood Eyes, Blood Eyes, your family dies, Blood Eyes, Blood Eyes, spit on his grave three times. Blood Eyes, Blood Eyes. Bloody, bloody eyes and nooooow you'rrrrrrrre deaaaaaaaaad.
Sasuke puts down the scroll.
--
They roll into the famous Kuebiko Hospital late in the evening. Surrounded by a permanent encampment of refugees taking advantage of the hospitals politically neutral status it's a regular melting pot of scents, sights and sounds.
Recently there's been a huge shift of populations. Civilians are on the move. There's rumors in the air that things are changing. Sasuke doesn't know if that's Giri or Akatsuki or the whispers of an impending Kage Summit.
To go with this shift there's been an increase in civilian crime and shinobi response. Sasuke hasn't been keeping his ear to the ground about it but hearing the big things is unavoidable. Akatsuki helped overthrow the smaller systems of governance in several small city states. Popular theory is that they're throwing a spanner in Giri's works. If that's the case it's not really working. All that's happened in response is escalation. Giri have moved diplomats, resources, medics all over the damn continent to keep things at bay. The Villages are unhappy about all of this. They're coordinating efforts to put a stop to all of this but are hampered by Fire's sudden random interest in a contested area near Uzushio, Uzushio itself and deteriorating relations with Mist, who now back on their feet are spreading themselves thin trying to gain back what they lost. Amidst all this Iwagakure is trying to regain their lost explosions expert who has disappeared from Akatsuki along with Konan, one of the supposed leaders. No one is sure whats going on there but the fact that the desertions and deaths of more than half their members has not stopped them from collecting tailed beasts adds extra tension.
Kuebiko, lucky them, is neutral but staffed primarily by on loan med-nin making it the only place most civilians have a chance in hell of getting specialist treatments. Located in six converted buildings spread across an entire valley the hospital is lushly decorated by trees and greenery. A seventh building is being erected and a path is being cleared for an eighth.
Kakashi walks him to a building with Konoha's symbol on it. Senju Midori is its name. Sasuke, who hasn't lived under a rock all of his life, is staring at the entrance to one of the best medical centers on the planet. Without pause or invitation Kakashi leads them through the hospital, all the way to a break room.
"Wait here." Kakashi murmurs. He slides open the door and then resolutely shuts it.
"Sensei, what the hell?" A recognisable voice says. "I'm on rotation-"
A bloom of chakra rushes out of the room, so strong that Sasuke can taste it. His first impression is the plastic of the hospital. On its tale is a brilliant note of green growing things and the taste of clearwater; medical chakra at its best and most pure. It's all capped off at the end by something warm and hearth like. Redwoods and blooming flowers.
A rustle. Some murmurs, then -"What?! How-" She gasps. "Oh. Oh this is her handwriting. It's not forged-"
The door slams open bouncing in it's slats. "You!"
Sakura is seventeen now and it shows in every line of body, every pretty curl in her hair. Sasuke met his hormones in the dank basement of a man capable of slitting a child or corpse from tip to tail with the same amount of enthusiasm and he is astoundingly glad to know that it had no impact at all on his ability to appreciate beauty. Sakura's green eyes flash. " You. "
He nods at her. "Sakura."
"I-" She shakes her head. "You have so much explaining to do."
Seems fair. "Okay. Where would you like to start?"
"I-" She blinks at him, overwhelmed. "No. Get out of my hospital."
Kakashi holds up his hands placatingly. "Now Sakura-"
Sakura clenches her fist. The plastic of her gloves squeaks threateningly. "Out. Of my. Hospital."
Kakashi folds immediately. "Right you are."
Kakashi turns Sasuke around and all but marches him outside.
"That could have gone worse," Sasuke remarks.
"Could have gone better, too," Kakashi sighs and drags him in a different direction, "I don't think you understand how difficult things are here right now-"
Sasuke is saved from a snide reply by the slap that sends him careening down the gravel path.
Sasuke turns the hit into an advantage by leveraging the force into a spin. His sword is drawn, lightning twining around it like a lover, before his feet even hit the ground. The only thing, the only thing, that stops him from taking his opponent's head off is the sight of tears he remembers too well.
Sakura stands tall and resolute. Her hair is even shorter than it was the last time he saw her, lightly feathered around her face, bringing out the sharpness of the angles. Her eyes are made bigger by anger and a fierce joy he can't even begin to comprehend. Although dressed in the practical clothing of her profession he can see a more casual version of a jounin outfit beneath decorated only at the collar by specialist pins. Even with a filled out figure she's lithe and muscled rather than the knockout her eleven year old self wished she would be. The benefit of that is in the turn of her head, the weight of her obvious tiredness and fatigue sitting gently on her features. She turns her body, palm coming down with an invitation to fight.
Sasuke is far outside of her league, even now, and a mad part of him wants to give her the fight she thinks she deserves.
But this is Sakura, who by the end of their time together earned the right to his kindness. She sits in his chest sometimes; a small light that never goes out.
He waits, dark eyes meeting bright ones, until she backs down. At length she loosens her stand, drops her palm, breathe out a ragged breath that surprises all of them. "You're different."
"So are you."
"Itachi-"
"Dead for over two years. I didn't kill him."
"Who did?" She asks. Immediately she waves her hands, dancing in one spot to show her dismay. "You don't have to answer that. I don't want you to." Her eyes are getting wetter with each moment. "Where did you get that scarf from?"
Struck, entirely out of his depth with only Kakashi of all people to help him, he squeaks out, "This? From a village west of Suna. We had some free time so we ended up helping the locals build a wall out of corpses."
She wipes tears from her eyes, patting her cheeks down with her hands. "What? Why?"
"The dead protect the living," It was a land locked village surrounded on three sides by empty dying farmland and backed by an inexplicably wild forest that still makes him shiver when he thinks about it. The corpses were carried out from the forest at night and had to be buried by morning, always, or the villagers would grow scared and fearsome of what they would see in the light. Hiki, Haru and Yumi dug the graves so Sasuke could stack the bodies. Dosa left on the first day because his homeland had stories too and he didn't want to know if they were real. By the time they'd finished the forest was separated from the village, the feet of the corpses always pointing north. "It was a lot of work."
Sakura looks at him suspiciously, even gaining enough composure to put her hands on her hips, like she couldn't possibly believe him. "Do you have any other stories?"
Sasuke inclines his head, "there's an abandoned city by the sea being rebuilt by people with Naruto's last name. They haven't figured out how to make it float but once they do I expect they'll ask Konoha for help. The best tomato soup is made by a woman in River who incidentally thinks I'm a woman and married to a man who's seven and a half feet tall and refuses to wear shoes. She's very upset he won't give me babies. There's a network of cats that run messages between the daimyo's of every country on the continent and they will happily betray their secrets for salmon roe and a good scratch. Tsunade owes every other S-ranked kunoichi currently alive at least 500,000 ryo because she bet that none of them could earn a higher bounty than hers during the war. As far as I know two currently have significantly more."
He watches Sakura process all that. She bites her lip. "...The Hokage owes how much money?"
"The Hokage probably owes me money and we've only talked twice."
Sakura glances at him with a wry twist to her mouth. She stays silent just long enough to make something awkward grow between them. "That's the most you've ever said to me."
He sighs. "I've never had anything to tell you before."
"And you do now?" Sakura closes the distance between them. Her steps are dancers steps, light, cautious, but she comes anyway until the distance is barely a breath to cross.
Sasuke still doesn't really have much to tell anyone about himself but if it's the world, the places he's seen and the people he's worked beside, that's something that's easy to share. "About some things."
"He doesn't know yet, does he?"
"Hn." His feelings about Naruto are complicated.
"Wow." Sakura snorts. "Some things are still the same, then."
He says nothing.
Sakura looks at him oddly but lets it lie.
Sasuke knows he didn't have to hurt her. There are bits of him that regret it and bits of him that still have issues telling what the problem was. In the years since he left very few of Orochimaru's personal views truly stuck but one of them was the quick kill. Sever the bond as quickly as possible to save yourself the energy of second guessing. When he's thought to interrogate it Sasuke's pretty sure it was Orochimaru's version of genuine kindness. Every great shinobi will kill something they love at some point.
Sakura's eyes are harder now. Maybe she knows that too.
I have no idea what you like, I have no idea what pisses you off, I have no idea what makes you a person.
Like many things that makes him uncomfortable. He turns his face to the sky taking in the failing light. In a moment he'll incline his head goodbye and go.
"You always did that." Sakura clears her throat, voice raspy. His gaze comes away from the stars, back to her eyes. "When you couldn't...figure out what to do you just went away."
"I'm not that different," he says defensively.
"I am." Sakura says shortly. "I'm a lot of things. Most of them are different."
"Is this you telling me you don't want to get married and have six kids?" Sasuke says flatly. "'Cause I have to say Haruno, I have it on good authority that I am excellent marriage material."
"Look at you with that sense of humor. Jokes on you Uchiha," she replies with a shaky voice. " I am in high demand. You're a has been." She turns her head slightly, what he suspects is a tear rolling down one cheek. "I hate you for leaving us but I'm glad that it worked."
Sasuke swallows and nods to give her a way out.
Instead of escaping from the conversation Sakura looks him head on. Eyes bright, flyaway hair turning into frizz on her head, yin seal shining with power even without his sharingan on. Her jounin uniform is crumpled and stained but the small embellishments on the collar mark her as a taijutsu specialist, small blade proficient, adept with explosives and the two entwined Senju clan markings that brand her an accomplished medic. Green eyes in a pale face nearly burn with intensity. Sakura was probably always a pretty girl and Sasuke probably never had any time to notice it.
"I will kill you before I let you leave him again." she says decisively. "Pack him in a bag, leave him a detailed map, I don't care. Sensei and Naruto will do their best to save you but unless you come to me with a life threatening injury I will not be the one to heal you. I won't save you."
There's only one response. "Thank you."
"Go." She smiles thinly. "I think this is as far as we can go tonight."
With a smirk and a sharp incline of his head, he does.
He reads some more of Kazue's memoirs as he lies in his bed. The words don't mean anything, tangled as they are in the emotional wounds of the day, so he doesn't register it when he comes to the end.
I am leaving my son now. He will have these scrolls to understand me by. I hope he can understand what kind of woman his mother was and that he knows I did this not for lack of loving him, but for knowing that I could not stay and be the mother he deserved. I have questioned too much, lived too little and dreamed too wildly to believe in this farce. There will be no peaceful village life for me. I, who slept in every bed, who went down every road and into the darkness too often. I who know where the bodies are buried and where the demons were made. I know who these men are. I leave my son to Chizuru and her husband. If he were older or my husband still alive I would take him with me but a woman alone is danger enough. I hope he can grow in peace (here the writing is smudged and rubbed about) because I can not. I can't stop being what I am. I can't change. And I am so, so sorry, Jinta, that I wasn't stronger.
There is a drawing here of hyacinth, lily and magnolia wrapped with the stems of a bamboo plant. There is blood on the flowers. Sasuke closes the scroll and paces for a while, letting it all go through his body. There are two scrolls left. He could read it now, get it over with, but most of him is tired and jittery. A first hand account of the founding of Konoha, of the entire shinobi system. History literally under his fingertips. He knows what he was taught and with time it all seems to be less true. Less one direction and more starburst. There is history and there is history and Sasuke only knows what he was taught.
Thoroughly annoyed with himself he gets undressed, throws himself into bed and slips into a fitful restless sleep.
--
He registers something coming at him from above while still asleep. It's a testament to how much all this travelling has dulled his skills that he didn't feel it earlier. He does manage to catch the projectile one handed, flipping it in his palm. It's a scroll. When he looks up it's to Sakura's cool green eyes frowning down at him. Sasuke blinks stupidly at her.
Sakura points to the scroll. "Learn this."
"What?" He blinks to try and clear the muck from his eyes. There may be some drool at the corner of his mouth. "It's early Haruno."
Sakura crosses her arms, unimpressed. "Girl's giving birth two and a half months premature. She's fifteen and panicking. There's a low level genjutsu on this scroll that'll keep her calm enough to let me do what I have to. You are the only person around who can learn it."
"Do you know it?" Sakura nods. He sighs. "It would be faster if you showed me."
Sakura nods again and readies her hands in front of her chest. Sasuke activates his sharingan and watches the motions and the pull of chakra in the technique. When he's sure he's got it he turns it off and gets out of the sleeping bag.
Sakura looks him up and down. " Why would you sleep naked?"
Sasuke shrugs. It's not like he spends time with anyone who cares.
Sakura looks again, nods to herself, and then leaves his tent.
Sasuke makes his way to the hospital at a speedier pace then he would usually bother with. He's directed to the room by an irate nurse, right at the end near a courtyard. Inside is a long bed with a very small woman in it. Her petiteness is emphasised by the large belly, frailty by the wires, tubes and lacerations he can see on her body. She has a full head of blonde hair pulled back from startling green eyes.
He frowns. "Name."
Her head turns like a whip, small boned hands with no fat and very little muscle whip to protect her belly. "Wh-what?"
Sasuke moves forward slowly, telegraphing every move he makes. "Your name," Sasuke checks her pulse. It's there, fast and whole, which is about as much information as he can get out of it.
"My name is Momoko."
Extremely girly name. Wind country accent. Provincial. The scars on her wrists suggest long term confinement, probably to a bed. He's certain that if he were to turn her over and look somewhere -her back, her inner thighs, her ankle- there'd be a brand. Sasuke looks her in the eyes, sharingan ready. "This isn't to hurt you Momoko."
"He's helping." Sakura says unnecessarily. "Now, Uchiha."
Sasuke bites down on the urge to scowl at Sakura. He turns back to the girl, eyes spinning, and tries to imagine what would comfort a civilian girl. "Things will be fine Momoko," and then he pushes her under to a place where it's soft and warm and she can already feel her baby in her arms.
Sasuke pointedly does not recall the events of the next few hours. He's seen fetuses in every stage of development, he's seen things come spewing blood and mucus covered out of people before, but the context was Orochimaru's inherent awfulness. Childbirth is a whole different kind of disturbing.
He does remember the wild gasp of Momoko's breath as she comes out of the genjutsu far too hard. Sakura is already there with that soft cooing medics do to convince their patients that everything is alright. Sasuke turns off his sharingan and places one cool hand against a tenketsu near the back of the neck. Kabuto taught him how to suppress the nerves and chakra points along the spine as a form of torture and information extraction. He also taught Sasuke how to release them off to avoid long term damage, especially to civilians who may otherwise suffer from severe after effects. He gently releases and smooths out the three points he damaged with his sharingan. Sakura gives him a brief clinical look but otherwise doesn't acknowledge it.
"Baby?" Momoko asks.
"In a moment," Sakura smiles at her. "The nurses are just cleaning her off."
"It's a girl?" Momoko asks shyly.
"Yes." Sakura presses a kiss to the crown of the girls head. The girl leans into her. Sasuke has to wonder exactly how much of Momoko's pregnancy Sakura has been around for. "I'll see if they're done."
Sakura leaves the two of them alone. Sasuke tilts his body and his attention away from the girl to give her a few moments of peace. Sakura had him keep the genjutsu up through afterbirth and the cleaning process so Momoko is entirely pristine and covered. Still, Sasuke is not a small man and there isn't a lot of reason to frighten her. A lengthy not unpleasant silence builds between them with the early morning light shining through the window. He relaxes and starts a small meditative form, meant to align the chakras up the spine and around the eyes. It was the first thing he was ever taught by his father.
"Thanks." Momoko says into the quiet.
After a beat Sasuke says, "You're welcome," and they return to silence.
Sakura's return is heralded by her screaming match with the head nurse in which many parentages are slandered and verbal knives are drawn. If he hadn't seen her start to grow her teeth Sasuke never would have believed the spineless child he knew grew up to be the sort of woman that stood up to battle hardened war nurses.
"Sorry about that," Sakura says as she comes in. She's got a small bundle of pink flesh wrapped in a green blanket in one arm. She closes the door quietly and pads across the room to gently deposit the baby in her mothers waiting arms.
Sasuke quirks his lips up. "Name?"
Momoko looks at him in confusion. "You know mine."
"Hers."
"Oh," Momoko wets her lips nervously. "I-I was thinking Himiko. After the Last Empress of Wind. Aim big, you know?"
"I do." he confirms. "I had an aunt called Himiko. Her husband was a diplomat. She went to every court and castle from here to Ishigakure to Kiri in her lifetime."
"Really?"
"Every banquet and celebration. She learnt seven languages and could dance with courtiers from every country."
"Thank you."
Aunt Himiko was a Uchiha in name only. Like all women who married outside her clan she was struck from the records and shunned by her family. The only reason Sasuke knew about her is because like his mother she descended from one of the strongest female lines in the clan. His mother never forgot the family she came from, even when everyone else did.
Sasuke places a hand on her head for a brief moment. The girl tilts her head down to run a hand through the thin wisps of blonde on her daughter's head. She's muttering to her baby. Sasuke knows the story of the last Princess of the Sand who became the Empress and Guardian of Wind. It's a huge story for such tiny shoulders, but a warm one. Watching her he tries to line it up with something from his own memory. The birth of a cousin, maybe. Like so much else it's empty space he doesn't know how to fill. Sakura's chakra flashes outside the door. Sasuke steps out into the hallway to join her, the look on her face is placid.
Sakura blows out a tense breath. "You didn't strike me as kind."
"You're lying," he replies. "And I can choose to not be unkind."
"Not quite the same thing."
Sasuke rubs his eyes trying to get even a little of the tiredness out. "Does it have to be?"
Sakura's face struggles for composure. Conflict, passion, grief and anger fight for exposure on her face. Her lips press together once and then it's all smoothed away under the tight fisted control of a kunoichi.
Sasuke rather gets the feeling that this isn't about him.
"Well," she puts a hand on her hip, "see you later, nadeshiko."
Sasuke rolls his eyes. "Fucking Kakashi."
She grins at him. "Didn't hear it from him. Bye Sasuke."
--
Sasuke cracks one eye open. "We have to stop meeting like this."
"You're coming drinking with me." Sakura announces. "I have had a shit of a day and I feel like going out."
Sasuke remembers Sakura being demure and retiring. "No."
"That's nice," she says unfazed, "but you're going to put on pants and come with me."
"Why's that?" Sasuke sits up letting the blankets fall off his chest. Sakura doesn't waver.
"Because," she rolls her eyes when Sasuke stretches his arms, " because it is seven in the evening and I have to ask you some pressing medical questions if a man who's not even twenty is in need of this much beauty sleep."
"Seven is a little early to be drinking." Sasuke taunts. "Not to mention unladylike."
"I seem to have left my give a shit in my other pants. I trained with Tsunade. If I'm awake it's late enough to be drinking."
"That's sad as shit." Sasuke says thoughtlessly. Sakura's eyes snap with genuine anger. "You are coming drinking with me."
He holds his hands up placatingly. "Fine."
He'd forgotten why he's gone to bed so early: there's a carnival on. There is nowhere he's like to be less than this carnival. Sakura insists on walking around before they pick a bar, so he doesn't even have the soft glow of alcohol to get him through it.
Eventually she stops at a tossing game. "How's your aim."
Sasuke glares at her.
"Win a stuffed toy."
"Why that one?"
"That's for me to know."
Sasuke picks up a ball and throws it with deadly accuracy.
They win a huge stuffed bear that Sakura can not possibly want. She makes him carry it around on his back strapped on by chakra strings. It is actually, genuinely, the stupidest thing he's ever used chakra for. He manfully ignores the stares and giggles as they collect food and drink. Sakura packs it away in methodical lethal doses. She never sways, never gives any indication of how drunk she is, but he sees the tense of her jaw, the loss of concentration in her eyes. She's tired and she's hurting from something.
Sasuke ignores it, it's both what she expects and all he can give her.
They're drinking their way through a bottle of 35% proof next to a temporary fountain. Sakura's ditched her shoes and is balancing a plate of dubiously labelled okonomiyaki on her leg. Sasuke undid the section of braids that keeps his hair off his face and took off his overshirt. They'd both abandoned propriety early in.
"That's bullshit," Sakura says archly, "you did not stop a major outbreak of a social disease. You did fucking not."
"Why not?"
"A little thing called the Medical Appropriations Act, Sasuke, that four Hidden Villages signed." Sakura leans forward finally, finally beginning to slur. "No Village or appropriately sized force may stop another from letting the poor die and the unfortunate suffer. How else are we going to keep the edge in medical practice, huh? Let civilians run their hospitals without us? Develop their own medical techniques? Fuck no."
He tips his drink toward her. "We did it."
"No way."
"Matsusaki province. Virus was passed by bodily fluids. Treated six communities and inoculated four more."
"They're going to fucking kill you." she laughs. "I mean it, one day you're going to wake up with some puppet corps asshole jamming sand down your throat because you cost them money they could have gotten from medical malpractice."
"It is a risk someone had to take," he says solemnly.
Sakura laughs harder. She pours herself another draining the last bottle on the table. "To Uchiha Sasuke, who is going to die on pure fucking principle." She raises her glass. Sasuke drinks from his instead. After a moment Sakura shrugs and clinks her glass against the empty bottle. She plops both feet in the nearby fountain. "I can't believe we're doing this. I mean, look at this mood lighting." She gestures towards the star strewn sky and the delicate glow of lights around them.
"Sakura-" he says, mildly alarmed.
"I'm not into you." Sakura demures. "I was twelve. And I still thought...that things were better than they are. And I still- Part of me thinks that things could still turn back and we could be twelve again."
He watches the green glow of her eyes over the table. "But we can't."
"No."
It's not even ten thirty yet, but the way Sakura's been putting it back, and they way they're both staring at the sky suggests the night will be over soon. Sakura looks back over at him, at a point over his shoulder, her eyes blow wide. "Give me the bear."
"What-"
"Fuck, fine, I'll just." She grabs the bear and runs. She's jammed her feet back into her shoes but not done them back up. Got to love ninja reflexes, her walk isn't even shaky. She descends upon a man with long twisted scars running down his face, his leg is twisted and hobbled and he walks with a cane. On his other hip is an equally scarred child. Sakura leans into the man, talks, then hands them the bear. If the man is upset at being accosted by a drunk girl his childs delight at the bear dissipates it. Sakura walks back cool, calm, collected.
"That's kindness Uchiha." Sakura taps the top of the next bottle thoughtfully, she pushes it aside and orders some water. "Going above and beyond for someone, even for a few moments, can change the whole trajectory of someone's life but being there with a soft toy can give someone a moment to hold onto even when their whole life is going to shit. Kindness has no payback. You don't get it back."
The wind kicks up the loose strands of her around her neck. A little bit of him itches to get out a hair tie and fix it for her. "You know they stopped hiring prodigies?" Sakura eyes him distastefully as he pulls out a cigarette, the way someone who's just quit would. "Burn out."
He knows what this is. "How long have you been out here?"
"Since about five this morning."
"Sakura," he chides, "how long have you been stationed out here?"
"Too fucking long." Sakura sighs. "They wanted Tsunade, of course, so they sent me. Now I know why she drinks so much. It was fun the first few months, after that it was just complicated. Everyone wants to be like the sannin, right?"
"Not anyone who's ever fucking met them." Sasuke mutters.
Sakura barks out a laugh at that. "I think that's the most reasonable thing you've ever said to me."
"I've said maybe a few thousand words to you ever, and most of it was instructions."
She giggles, actually giggles, not that creepy shit she did when they were genin. "I can not believe you went and got social skills." She sighs. "After my time here I might be the rustiest."
"No." At her arch look he clarifies, "Kakashi is on Team 7."
"Ah, well, then I can never lose," she replies mildly, "I've got more rounds in the morning. Talk later."
He finally gets to put the cigarette between his lips, light it. "Whatever, Sakura."
She punches him lightly on the arm, bare hesitation in her strength. "That's more like it."
--
When I ask about my mother the first thing people tell me is that she never had the sharingan but the men respected her anyway. As much as men could.
This is the first line of Jinta's record. This is history.
When I ask about why she left me they tell me to ask my real mother, the one that raised me. She says that my mother was the product of a thousand years of fighting and breeding and then refuses to say more. I think I annoy her with my questions but she always answers. Like my birth mother I want to keep a record.
Jinta's record is sparse and haphazard, understandable from a child. He reads small things, things that tighten his chest with memories of his own childhood. Traditions he barely remembers are written in the excited detail of a child experiencing them for the first time. In this way Sasuke can experience them again, too: the Naka shrine priestesses in their robes, the eldest Uchiha woman performing the dance of the sun, the youngest boy performing the dance of the moon. The special spiced cakes on festival days. The first time Jinta carried a war fan. His mother marries below her social position, to a man from the outer branches of the clan, and they move out of the compound to his bakery.
He calls her sister only sometimes, like when we visit the Clan house so I can attend lessons. We're only allowed into this part of the village sometimes because she married one of the outer families who hadn't produced a sharingan in three or four generations. She's happy with her husband though, and he's nice to her in return. Her brother doesn't mind but I think that's just because it's his sister. He cared when it was the cousins with the curly hair. Truth be told sometimes he scares me.
I told my mother that so she told me a secret. Years ago her brother made friends with a boy by the river. He dressed badly, had a horrible personality and was stupidly talented. Her brother loved him dearly and spoke of him often to her. He dressed it up as silly stories, she said, not quite enough detail to make out the identities but she knew. She always knew. He'd come home with river berries and smooth stones and once a small wild strawberry plant. My mother managed to keep it alive all the way through the wars and now it grows all over the backyard, up into the lattice. They're always red and sweet and she makes a pie for every birthday.
Sasuke suspects someone taught him how to write like this, words proper and polite always distant from the subject. Every so often there's a line that sounds more wistful, I hope I sound like her or I hate using fire techniques and a few lines later he'll fall into more childish prose, whining about this or that unfair thing. He always corrects himself.
The recollections change to include all the other founding families, many of whom frequent the bakery. Anti-Uchiha sentiment was around from the very beginning. Most had problems with Madara, who Jinta said had the charisma of a wildfire: totalitarian and beautiful, still best viewed from far away. And those who didn't either supported or opposed one of the Senju brothers. Here Jinta calls them alike in disposition but opposite in countenance which is such a beautiful sentence of nothing that Sasuke records it for future insult applications.
It's an interesting take on a period of history he only knows the official byline on: everything was perfect and went very well.
Senju Tobirama suggests democracy -the idea that we vote for those that lead us. As many like this hate it too. Democracy will be a victory for Hashirama, for he is all but unhateable. I know that my uncle holds him dear, I know his allies do too. But I can't help but think that so many of us follow power -any power- how long until someone who lacks Hashirama's personal strengths is held up above all others? Would it be so bad to continue the tradition of clan leadership in the face of such a worry? History is a better teacher, sometimes.
Hashirama is made Hokage. Sasuke knows this. Jinta writes uncertain about the political climate he lives in. Even knowing the outcome Sasuke is drawn in. The Uzumaki are gaining power, they will align with Senju but not with Uchiha. The Nehu rise and fall before they can join the Uchiha in Fire. Killed, Jinta says, by unkillable demons wearing the faces of the dead.
Mother is ill. I know this is the last days of her life.I know this the last record of her, too. She was erased from the clan when she married. I may even be the last who knows that she is of the same blood as our Clan Leader. We've made concessions with the Senju: we've moved to the far corners of the village, we've taken the worst houses and land. The others fear us too strongly to let us near their children. Reparations for what we all did to survive are being paid in calluses and bones. Blood eyes. We're still blood eyes. My mother will be buried with her husband on the outskirts of our family. I don't even know if her brother will attend.
The Uchiha were protectors and officers of the law in his time. Sasuke's not sure how they got from one point to another.
A Uchiha has killed an emissary from Earth. The man tried to kidnap one of ours in his sleep. A boy. We knew it was for his eyes. The parents killed him for trying. Madara has gone to the Senju to plead our case but the tides are already against us. Many talk about leaving, many talk to Madara about taking over. Many talk about letting it go. After all the fight that lead us all here says that the Uchiha will lose. Some still take it into their own hands.
The damage the Uchiha do is disproportionate to the crime. They take two for one of theirs. The grind their enemies to dust. The loot and scream and destroy. Argue and dissent and cry. It's only one loss , their retractors say. You have no idea what it means to be us , the Uchiha reply. You don't love like we do.
The record stops for awhile. Skips around the creation of schools and shops. Then-
My mother is dead. Her brother lit the pyre. And I. I watched her burn.
Sasuke leaves it there for now.
He wanders the hospital grounds for a few hours. Eating, thinking, rinse and repeat. In the late afternoon sun he settles on a thought It's not fair for a child to burn his family. He lets that go.
On his way back he looks up intending for a snap of the setting sky when he spots a flicker of pink hair on top of a half constructed building. Climbing up to get to her is more of a hassle that he expected but worth if for the view. Sakura doesn't acknowledge him. She's up to her elbows in blood, a purpling bruise covering half her face, split lip still oozing blood. The rest of her is covered in dirt, stinking to high heaven of shit and a chakra laced fist fight. She smells like medicinal herbs and someone's spleen.
He sits next to her taking out his long abused packet of cigarettes. The sun is setting in front of them throwing yellow and pink light around. It would be beautiful if his company was less dangerous. With a deliberately slow motion Sakura plucks it out of his hand. She takes two cigarettes out of the packet and then lobs it -and his lighter- over the edge.
Sasuke carefully takes the menace out of his voice. "Was there a point to that?"
"If I thought you'd come to the same conclusion fast enough I'd let you figure it out yourself." Sakura says. "Before you walk back into Konoha you need to decide who you are and what you can give him."
"Sakura."
"I won't let you hurt him anymore. I won't let myself hurt him either." Sakura mutters. "We have to get our shit together." She lights one with a touch of a finger and butts it up against the second. After a long draw she alternates so both are lit.
Sasuke gingerly takes a cigarette from her fingers. "It's a shit world Sakura. We get hurt."
"Why? Because we have an actual murder economy?" Sakura spits. "It's what the civilians say. That we should all stop and become farmers instead. How are we going to do that, huh? As long as jutsu and dojutsu exists, hell, as long as chakra exists there will be shinobi. Do you have any idea what they're doing out there? Chemical bombs were detonated in a school attended mainly by working shinobi two weeks ago and this is the only hospital rated for that in the country. Kumo sent out there sweepers to get rid of their political loose ends in Masusho, and then again into Fire to clear out an old cache of weapons and chakra boosters because an anarchist group used them to blow up 'shinobi sympathisers'. All of these people end up in my fucking hospital, Uchiha, and I don't know what to do with them. I still feel like shit when they die, even when they hate me. Even when I hate them. I still have to do my fucking job even though half the nurses here look at me like I'm scum and the other half wonder if I'm here to betray them. And that's not even starting on the shinobi posing as nurses that I know are here to kill my patients. I have to let them do it because anything else would affect the neutrality of the hospital and then I wouldn't even be able to save the people I hate."
Sakura blows out a perfect ring of smoke. Her eyeliner is smudged around her eyes. He's only really seen her in pictures but for a moment she looks just like her teacher. Beautiful, tired, ready to do it all again if she has to. After another ring of smoke she grimaces and hands him back his cigarette. "No wonder some of them hate us. I'd hate us."
--
No wonder they hate us, he thinks, and cannot decide who he means.
They're all of them just people, and all of their weapons are just skills, but having never been on the losing side of history how can he say if they're right?
Today is their last day at Kuebiko hospital. He's in the nurse breakroom because Sakura doesn't trust him to not cut and run. Looking out the window with his lukewarm coffee he realises he's been seeing all the same sights for years. This hospital is just like a relief mission, just like Orochimaru's labs. Everywhere he looks things are the same awful washed out colours.
He's just...tired. He's tired of being angry. Of second guessing. Of not knowing. Mostly he's tired of being around. Of looking at things and being impotent about them.
The nurse skids to a stop, a complete halt, as her hands come up to her face. They're balled up, stuck together, and she presses her lips to her knuckles trying to stifle her weeping.
He looks at her, and for a brief moment when she looks at him, it feels like someone struck him to his core. She feels it too, and turns away running down a corridor on squeaky shoes. He's still stuck with it: a perfect moment of someone else's grief ripping through his shields.
The light shutters into the room. Dull with mid-morning sun, ordinary in how it reflects off the floor. There are dust motes in the air, rubbish on the floor. He can see all the way down the hallway, and he sees that it ends shorter than he thought. It's like his vision was tunneled, always pointing from one point to the next, and for the first time he sees everything around him as it is, completely ordinary. Completely without him in it.
In a week he stands before his parents. It's coming faster than a knife, than a bird, than the passing of light through the window. There isn't anything after that point. Nothing to plan. Nothing to fight. Just a short journey home.
In a week it will be over. His hands hurt. His heart feels like it might burst. He feels it distantly, the high point of anxiety warring with the sheer unrelenting nothingness that has been slowly moving over him his whole life. Without something to fight for there's just that white noise he use to find so comforting.
If all his life, all his struggle has lead him to here; a week away from making his last confession, what was it for? His vengeance was had, but not by him. What about the eyes? What about a half dozen generations of sharingan in tubs somewhere? What about Akatsuki and their Tobi? What was meant to give him peace has left him with more questions than answers.
Bile rises in his throat but he forces it down. Nothingness is folding into terror. His hands shake like he's a genin again. The nothing eats the terror. Then terror eats nothing. His stomach drops out of his body like he's falling through the air. He's reminded violently of the only other times he's felt like this: finding his parents bodies, the terror ridden realisation that the only way to complete his goal was to leave his home, killing Naruto.
He takes control and tells himself stories of clean things: the way his sword sounds slicing through air, the pasta that only one stall in the fire capital makes, Sora on his chest late at night, music through his window in New Otogakure under a moonless night. The old Priestess wise and fearless. A perfect chidori landing true. Flowers falling in a night sky: the best purest memories of his parents.
And then he's free. The panic ebbs.
Nudging a bucket out from under the table he gets it into his hands before he throws up. Once, twice, five or six times. It's funny how little survives a change in perspective. All these years and the best proof he has of how they've changed him is a bucket full of puke.
He's still bent over the bucket, breathing like he just ran a marathon, when Kakashi places a cool hand against the back of his neck. Sasuke rubs at his eyes but he can't make the weeping stop. His body feels bent, like he can feel every broken bone he's ever had, like his chakra is eating his body alive. He has too much of it in a body designed for destruction.
It's not an if it's a certainty . This is a body built for no purpose at all.
All of a sudden the map of his life unfolds and he sees mistakes everywhere. His faith in himself is shaken and riddled with questions and doubts. Like a great unveiling he realises two things: it was worth it, still, even with how it ended and he has no idea who it is that's walking into Konoha. Certainty hurts, almost as much as doubt.
Kakashi pats him like he's a small frightened child. Sasuke laughs at that, stuck between humor and horror at himself.
There are words in his chest that feel real, true, something crawling his throat. He looks at the patchwork of his life and feels horror and humor in equal measure. Things feel true, now, instead of possible. "I didn't-" he sucks in his breath. "I know that you don't get it. But there wasn't anything else I could do."
Kakashi places a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I don't get it." Sasuke tenses up. "But I'll try."
Put your words into the fire, the radio sings, then, minutes later, On this warm summer night
Put those words down in the fire.
No more fixed points. Next week he goes home. Tonight he gets on a cart with Sakura and Kakashi. He'll let them learn him and in return he'll try and make up some of the empty air between them. He doesn't owe them that, exactly, but he wants to. If there's only a little more time left he wants to use it.
--
"Well, it wasn't fun," Sakura says dryly from pride of place on top of a break room table. The nurses sitting on the floor laugh. "But I have enjoyed working with you all and I've learnt a lot, even when I've been stubborn about it. So I'll miss you. Except you Mio, you can choke." Mio flips her off. Sakura returns the gesture with interest. "See you guys and gals."
Sasuke helps them load up for the returning journey, even managing to bum a few packets of seasoning and some music off the guys milling around outside. They're going back alongside a holiday tour. Why anyone would choose a hospital as a holiday destination he will never know, but it does mean they get to relax and enjoy the accommodations.
He's sitting in the back of a carriage, legs thrown over a box listening to the radio when he catches Sakura staring at him. "What?"
Sakura glares at him. "You're so much more easy going." The carriage hits a pothole sending everything flying.
"...thank you."
"Jerk."
"Annoying."
" Jerk. "
From his position walking beside the carriage, Kakashi says, "Don't bicker." His nose is buried in his book.
Sakura grins. "Say what ever happened to that nurse you were seeing?"
Kakashi sighs, speeding up. "We stopped seeing each other."
"Was it because she heard about the other nurse?" Sakura asks slyly. "Or the pediatrician?"
Kakashi walks faster.
"Pediatricians can't sign you out of hospital you know! You're a punchline at med-nin conventions!"
They are all adults now, with full opinions and the experience to back them up. Sakura still doesn't believe him when he says anything about medicine. Kakashi thinks his taste in beer is plebeian and over exaggerated. Sasuke is aggrieved to learn that they both prefer their meat well done. They all laugh at the same tired jokes.
"Hey, Sasuke?" Sakura snickers. "Why did the emotionally immobilised copy-nin cross the road?"
Sasuke rolls his eyes, but smiles.
The civilians who decided this was an appropriate vacation mostly leave them alone, but Sasuke has already accepted nothing will keep eligible women of a certain age from pursuing him and has learnt to manage them as best he can. He tries being uninterested, then non-committal and when that doesn't work he lets the dark roll of his chakra do the speaking.
Kakashi, who is not exactly unpopular- laughs at him. "Do you remember when I taught you chidori?"
They camped out under the stars for weeks. Kakashi was as he always was back then -Sasuke might as well have not existed when Kakashi didn't want to see him- but there was a level of commitment and companionship they never managed to recapture. Sasuke's betrayal warring with Kakashi's loyalty. Kakashi had always assumed he understood him and Sasuke had assumed he was too complicated. For a week Sasuke didn't say a word. All he did was train, eat and sleep. With hindsight Sasuke can see that Kakashi thought it was his drive vengeance. With things being twenty-twenty Sasuke can see that it was the comfort of the stars, the sharingan and the small half-lit hope that he wasn't alone. Oh, vengeance was there too, but as he has been forced to admit many times, no man is one thing. Not even when he's a boy.
Sasuke inclines his head with a small smile. "I do."
Kakashi blinks, returning an equally small smile of relief. "I'm glad that boy survived."
Sasuke's not sure he did, but if Kakashi could see his reasoning for that, he'd probably be glad.
--
Sasuke knows the exact moment they enter the redwoods of his childhood.
It's a disease of is blood, this ground in knowledge of the dirt and rivers of his home. He was young the first time he left Konoha's walls with his retinue of cousins and uncles. His mother lead the long walk to an abandoned camp -the camp where Madara and Hashirama made peace, the feasted and sang and danced. Sasuke was too young to do anything but remember it and watch his brother dance with their cousins. It's in his blood for better or worse.
The bonds of water wash over him too. This is the only way into the village.
Thoughts of Naruto are always a hot knife in the middle of his ambitions. He can't keep them in the same stratosphere let alone reconcile them. All the bits of him that are still there underneath, still bleeding from loss a decade on, are constantly screaming out for him. Like an eternal wound. Sasuke is the business of letting his goals set his needs. He needs power so he goes. He needs a way back so he stays. He needs a way forward so he lets Kakashi drag his ass around the continent for months on end. He needs, he needs, he needs. It kills him a little to use that word.
He looks to Sakura sitting calmly beside him and has half a mind to say sorry and run. He looks to Kakashi on his other side and thinks I'm sorry too but throws that thought away.
In front an oxen freaks out at the chunnin approaching it throwing rugs and other wares around. Sasuke has half a second to look at the shining Konoha forehead protectors on their heads before the gates are open and he's swallowed whole.