He really does mean to go straight to Konoha, really he does but-
"Get him!" A man yells from the other side of the pub. He has three friends, four shot glasses in front of him and a nasty looking farming implement. "That's Giri's dog right there! He's a fucking terrorist!"
Sasuke sighs and presses his cold beer against his black eye. Across from him Kakashi has his feet up on the table and Icha Icha dangling from a loose grip. He's looking at Sasuke as if to say your problem, you fix it. Sasuke has lost count of how many things are his problem, fix it. Maybe it comes with crossing the line into eight or nine digits in the bingo book; suddenly you're granted the ability to look at lesser shinobi and make demands.
So he fixes it. Turning in his chair to face the pitchfork-and-shovel mob, Sasuke says, "Woof."
Kakashi sighs and disappears his book, "Your tab."
Sasuke slams the rest of his beer back, fishes out his wallet and throws down a few blood sprinkled notes.
Kakashi raises an eyebrow.
"It's not illegal." Sasuke shrugs. "I'm a terrorist."
Kakashi shrugs his shoulder to rattle down a shuriken into his hand. "You're a pain in my ass."
And then the fight is on.
--
They cannot get a damn drink in any damn backwater shithole and it's pissing him off.
They'll hang around for maybe 20 minutes and then some asshole says hey isn't that and it is, it's the Copy Nin or the Snake Skinner or, in hilariously poor taste, wait, I thought the White Fang was dead why is he tramping around with a rent boy? Between that and Kakashi's frankly baffling route back to Konoha Sasuke sees his chances of good ale in the next six months slipping away. He's gotten use to drinking regularly. It's almost what you do as a missing-nin.
They're speeding across open ground that's about to give way to dense woods. Sasuke adjusts his chakra for the transition and brings himself level with Kakashi. "Is there a reason we're avoiding Frost?"
"Yes," Kakashi takes one giant leap into the canopy, "the bounty on you is really good."
Sasuke takes two leaps to cover the same ground. "I've been there twice."
"You left an awful impression."
Fuck you, too. "We could always fake my death and collect the money."
Kakashi scowls at him. "No one's that stupid."
They'd pulled it with Yumi twice. She'd been thrilled to bits to be buried. She always was a mite bit crazier than your average Giri member. "It can work."
"No." Kakashi says firmly, "I am not going to fake kill you."
Sasuke clenches his jaw. It's much better than pouting.
Kakashi rolls his eyes. "Run. I have a meeting to make."
--
My aunt died of a broken heart. They say her blood came rushing from her lips. The roots from her garden still wrapped around her fingers. A posse of blue flowers, red thorns, made red lips. Her daughter's family was hunted down by a group of 'collectors' today. They wanted the children for pets, her daughter for their cocks and her husband for bits and bobs and holes to use when they were done with the girls. They were very clear about this when the patrol caught up with them. It was too late for the children, the husband was dead and the daughter was never taught to fight so she killed them all rather than give up. Their bodies were burnt and prayed for. It's time to look for another alliance, that's the only time no one hunts us for our eyes. I'll go myself once this wretched bleeding is over and done with, who knew killing an unborn could be so messy!
Red thorns made red lips is the opening line of The Saga of Foxes, a collaborative work between Kazue and a member of the Water Court rumored to be one of the great beauties that belonged to the long tradition of courtesans that bless that country. Sasuke heard it read aloud by a travelling troupe while laying low in Water.
Tajima was disgraced today. He came down from a fight with Kaguya forces with a child on his back. The boy was half ours and very ill with the lung disease that plagues our line. There are ways to lessen the effects but the child was too far gone. Tajima asked his father to let him make the kill, to end the boys suffering. His father said no, that the boy was only half and must die as that half. Tajima argued and of course his father was strict. It would be an act of treason to help or kill the child. For anyone. Tajima left at night and killed the boy anyway. His line is struck from his father lineage. He, his wife and his future firstborn are now no longer of the main branch of the family. They are common soldiers like us. My younger sister went to Naoko with some rations this morning, to help her ease into the transition. She'll never eat well again.
Uchiha Tajima means something to him, although he can't remember why. Maybe one of the old stories, the ones from before the Founding. Either way it's not so important.
There's something to be said for cunt fighting. I have seen more of the world then my sisters, than my own father even. I have learned the edges of all our worlds. The Hyuuga do not travel far from the streams so they know more of river fish and moss than almost anyone. Laying with one I can see the whole world as the trout does. He will tell me of the world as the trout does. Poor boy. He should have kept his mouth shut. I've never managed a Yamanaka, they're smart and this kind of warfare is their bread and butter. Isn't that a funny phrase? Heard it from a travelling builder, he had this stuff to put over his food all fat and yellow. Isn't it funny, almost, that a whore knows more of the world than her father?
And in the middle of a vicious winter, writing cramped and half mad-
Saya has lost her third child. Etsuko her fourth. Kaede is struggling to birth her fifth. Naoko has given birth to her fourth child and he is the first to survive a week. Michiko has had her seventh and she is dying and the men will not stop. Michiko's oldest is a fighter. I am unwed still. I have too many uses as a spy and whore-spy to be bound to my marriage bed. Half the time the babies come out lumps of flesh with no heart, half the time the babies live and are killed when they're still drinking mothers milk because it is all the food we can afford.
Months after that, when she's written about the famine, the strange blight that has crossed the lands from east to west and crippled all but the wealthiest clans-
I can't imagine being without war. I can see it, surely. A few months ago I had to steal land from a lord and I pretended to be the servant girl. I spent four weeks living with a family who had never seen blood, never starved. Their children still had life in their eyes, the lord was kind to his wife all the time not just when there was food on the table. I liked his wife, she was blonde! She fed me secret sweets and told me not to tell on her. He wouldn't hurt her if I had, certainly I would have killed him first, but it occurs to me that this is a game they play. She laughed when he admonished her, he touched her gently when she talked back. Hurting and killing and raping are so far from what they know they can make a game of it. How sweet! I was meant to kill them messily but instead I poisoned the evening meal. They went to sleep in their beds, none the wiser that there was war in the room.
There's a knock on the door. Sasuke puts down the scroll.
The chakra on the other side of the door flickers up then down. Indecisive, if Sasuke had to put a name to it.
"Yokokita," Kakashi says.
"Alright." Sasuke nods and shuts the door. Kakashi sighs and mutters, "That was probably my bad."
A flicker of a smile crosses Sasuke's face.
--
Yokokita is one of the most beautiful places on the continent. It reminds him of Sasabuchi with its clear waters and greenery, but where one is a town with nothing to it's name the other is a sprawling metropolis built into the arms of ruined cities. Years ago, long before Sasuke was born, a bunch of civilian families settled in this little dip of a valley. They found a ruined temple to a long forgotten goddess. Tall falling down arches, long stretches of mosaic, the faded remains of scripture and pieces of broken gold and bronze. As they excavated they renovated, building new homes and shops, planting rows of vegetables and fruit trees in fertile soil. It wasn't the first permanent settlement; soil turned yearly and renewed every spring rather than the long travels, abandoned towns and sparse produce of the wandering years, but it was the first successful entirely civilian settlement of the modern era.
For that reason it is a home to the arts and the educated, public libraries and wide open parks, and a home to the black market that also lives in the ruins underneath the city.There is no standing army or police force. What laws there are are enforced by a mysterious force no one quite names and no one quite believes in. It's not a home to any ninja clan, nor does it fall in the direct jurisdiction of any daimyo. In fact the maps of the world are very careful to dot around it. There are reasons for this, Sasuke knows, but there are some secrets no one will ever tell.
Kakashi dumps him outside a Library for the Arts with a shrug about needing some time apart and a jaunty little wave. He expects Sasuke to meet him here in four hours, if not there will be hell to pay. Sasuke is no fool, he knows this is a test.
Luckily Sasuke has friends in this town. He goes down and around the temple near the heart of the town into the merchant hub heading directly for a little side street that houses one brothel and six or seven refuges. Yokokita is a well known refuge for those seeking passage or a new life. A woman standing outside the brothel makes a well meaning pass at him as she has since he was fourteen and here for the very first time. This time Sasuke gives her a coin and a wave because he never intends to come back. The woman raises an eyebrow at him but in the end just shakes her head and waves him on.
The first time Sasuke came here he was recovering from ripping his hamstrings to pieces in a fight to the death with one of Orochimaru's experiments. He won, barely, but after he was seen to Kabuto told him that Orochimaru was pulling him from the shinobi rotation until he healed completely. Among other things that meant he lost food privileges. Kabuto handed him a small wallet of cash, told him to make it last and fucked off. No one in Oto was going to hire the Kage's pet for work unless it was something that would really turn his stomach. So Sasuke starved for awhile, only a few weeks really, not long enough to really bother anyone. It builds character, Kabuto said while tending to his wounds, Sasuke was dirty and hunched over, feeling every inch of his skin and bones, you need more of that, honestly.
One of the jounin took pity on him one day when he was lounging around hungry and pissed off at his still shitty mobility. The jounin told him there was a small group leaving for Yokokita and if he went to the refuges and asked for the smoking man he might be able to get some low level jobs to make ends meet. It was common practice for those out of commision.
So he went. Among the beautiful walled gardens of Yokokita Sasuke found a small hidden away street off to the side of the refuges. The street descended at a sharp angle and Sasuke nearly twisted his ankles on the overgrown roots that litter the ground. The air smelled like rotting wood and flower smoke. The street was dark and lit with slants of light falling through the trees that twine above his head. When Sasuke looked back he saw the street and the women trading on it, when he looked forward he saw a dark space and trees where there logically couldn't be any. He'd always thought himself brave, though, and when not brave he thought himself capable. He pressed forward. Eventually the street gave way to a small booth, like a ramen stand, with two seats in front and an old man behind the counter. Instead of cooking pots or pans the back of the stand is covered with boxes and plants. There's a small figurine of a fox sitting on the counter. The old man was dressed in traditional civilian clothes, dark pants and shirt, but his shoulders were covered by a beautiful embroidered coat in red and orange and gold. In his mouth was a lit pipe. The smoking man raised an eyebrow at him.
Sasuke clears his throat. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke," he said, "I am here for a job that will get me enough food for three months."
"You're an idiot," the smoking man said, "and I'll give you a day's worth if you go weed Yukimura's garden."
Bristling, Sasuke opened his mouth to argue. The smoking man frowned at him, his old eyes very stern in his equally old face, and said, "Don't belittle me."
The smoking man tilted his head just so and tapped the seat in front of him. After a brief staring match Sasuke sat down. He continued to glare because that was who he was at fourteen. From this close distance the old man's eyes are dark stones in his face, completely inscrutable. The wrinkles on his face make Sasuke's hair stand on end. They're soft, smooth, his skin is poreless like a mask. The smoking man tilted his head again and said, "No one owes you a thing boy."
Sasuke looked at that strange face, looked back down the path to the light of the street, feeling his face pull into an expression it hadn't worn since he was a child. Sasuke pouted, and pointed to a just noticed pile of ongiri by a pot on the counter. "Can I have one of those then?"
The smoking man rubbed his chin. "Usually the magic of this place makes people more compliant, breaks down their emotional barriers. More honest they are with what they are on the inside the more I can trust them."
"Okay," Sasuke replied, "but I am really hungry. Can I have one?"
The smoking man picks one up with long spindly fingers and hands it to Sasuke who wastes no time in eating it. The filling is tomato. When he finished he looked to the plate again. The smoking man smiled.
"It must have been a long time since you felt safe, boy." The smoking man moved the plate to the counter so Sasuke had free access, "I'll see what I can do."
Since then Sasuke has been coming back irreguarly to do little odds and ends jobs. He doesn't think about why. What happens in Yokokita stays in Yokokita.
The smoking man is in a beautiful blue and green coat today, fabric spilling down his arms with violent waves of colour. His pipe is unlit but still sitting between his lips as he looks over a file. Sasuke pulls up a chair and stretches as the now familiar magic spills over him. Sasuke has ideas about what exactly the smoking man is but it would do nobody any good right now for Sasuke to be right. Instead he accepts the man as he is: crotchety, mean spirited and married to one of the best cooks Sasuke has ever met.
There are more boxes and trinkets behind the counter now. Little figurines from plays, scraps of fabric, the occasional scroll or bundle of herbs littered among piles of paperwork. They're categorised, Sasuke assumes, by how much the smoking man hates the people they represent. He is somewhat mollified to see that the small blue enameled tengu figure the smoking man randomly assigned to Sasuke on a shelf above the mess.
Sasuke puts his head down on the cool counter for a moment. The weight of his hair is a pulse on his head. Reaching up he undoes the scrap of fabric pulling it back and lets it fall down so he can get his fingers in and massage his scalp. "Akatsuki put a hit on me."
The smoking man grunts at him. He puts two bundles of herbs onto a shelf below Sasuke's tengu. "Shocking. You're such a nice person."
Sasuke scowls. "You got anything good? Like food? Or beer?"
"Remember when you were innocent?"
"Somedays. They're not my favourite."
The smoking man stops his pottering to look at Sasuke. Sasuke stares back blankly. Deliberately he drops eye contact. The smoking man huffs and pulls out a match to light his pipe. He also pulls out a plate filled with food. He pulls the fire in the pipe and in a second the small area smells of floral smoke.
"That will kill you, apparently." Sasuke comments.
The man is still puffing away on his pipe. He moves the plate further away from Sasuke because the smoking man is kind of a dick. "More like a retrieval. Strange if you ask me. I'd heard you were following that little Giri bitch."
Sasuke shrugs and discards the thought of worrying about it. If Akatsuki wants to come for him let them. They have nothing to interest him now. "Anything good between here and Konoha?"
"You wanna go somewhere that's gonna be a pancake in like three days when they go to get that cranky old nine tailed bastard?"
"No." Sasuke says succinctly. "I want to be in that general direction."
The smoking man grunts and turns around, opening a box and flipping through files. He mumbles under his breath picking and choosing ones that play to Sasuke's strengths. Sasuke steals a few of the octopus balls lying on his plate. They're good, nice and spicy the way the old man's wife prefers.
The smoking man comes back and after a disgusted sigh at the way Sasuke is licking his fingers announces, "Farmer near Kusa bred a more sustainable strain of potato. Kusa wants it gone yesterday but don't wanna do it themselves."
Sasuke wrinkles his nose. Keeping the world at a rate of technological development the Hidden Villages approve of was one of the main things he did while in Oto the first time around. One of the most common missions was killing so-and-so's uppity chancellor or someone elses too smart farmer or the civilian who gets it into their tiny head to try and push technological progress on a nation that still pays people to run everywhere. The fact that all those people paying him to off people for making a better battery or running on renewables were funding his research which was just as forward thinking if much more inhumane just tickled Orochimaru somewhere inside.
The more Sasuke thinks on it the more he realises how much time Orochimaru spent doing things for shits and giggles.
He holds up a scroll edged in red. Courier job. "Got one from Uzushio."
"It'll do."
"It'll do more than that boy." The smoking man grins, "be timely with that one. I'd hate to throw things off."
He looks at the scroll and feels that magic work on him.
The smoking man frowns. "Something wrong, boy?"
"Do you dream?"
A wry eyebrow. "Do you?"
"Only about home. I'm beginning to suspect," eyes in the jars, Itachi defending him, Tobi spitting angry that Sasuke no longer feels so much hate. The growing feeling that if he just moves everything around more something will fall out. "I'm beginning to suspect I don't know everything."
"So you don't."
He blinks up at the old man.
"Sasuke." The old man's face is as kind and open as he's ever seen it. "Take one of the few gifts that comes from living the way you've been living. Go find out the truth and make your own choices."
Sasuke bites down the urge to do something mortifying like cry. He flips him off and takes his leave, strolling up the dark passageway and out into the light once again. It's been a bit shy of three and a half hours so he moves back to where he has to meet Kakashi grabbing food along the way.
Sasuke takes his dinner -sweet glazed octopus, seasonal vegetables and a small cake of rice and tubers drizzled with a salty fish brine sauce- to a park near the lip of a canal near the centre of the town. Kakashi will be able to sense him if he tries and the place is peaceful enough empty as it is of people and noise. The grass is green and soft underfoot, almost tempting him enough to relax, put his feet down and let go for awhile. All of Yokokita tends to remind him of the odd magic of the smoking man's stall. There are layers upon layers of ruins, each piled on top of each other and peeled away by time, by history. The old temple walls are worn away and you can gaze into the dark of the abandoned temple. There's something...peaceful about it. When he finds a seat he likes, perched precariously over the edge of the fast waterways, he can smell the odd sweetness of mountain water and feel the old seals woven into the walls. Taste the stone on his tongue and hear the crashing of the water.
For no reason at all he flicks on his sharingan and gazes into the dark.
The sound is the first thing to hit him, no one ever talks about how your senses are layered on top of each other when it comes to dojutsu. Sometimes his hearing will heighten for a moment or drop out completely. When the sound calms down the sight kicks in. Long spiralling lines from the still strong seals, looping and moving together in the gorgeous calligraphy of Uzushio. There are older things, things that flicker and sting his eyes when he looks at them. Solid lines, pure and perfect in how they move chakra. On one level they're congratulatory and happy and then he moves his eyes and slanted down, breaking up the dance of Uzushio's seals, is something that looks like graffiti. Beware the rabbit witch, it says. Beware the cursed fruit.
Maybe he should send Dosa a letter, he thinks wryly, and continues looking. It's a strain to look into the dark for too long but he tries anyway. Carefully layering his chakra he extends his sight like an eagle would, pin point accuracy at great distances. There's more joy, more warnings, roots breaking up rock, verdant leaves shining with life in the dark, stone embedded in the walls glowing like calcified fire. He has to remind himself to look away several times, there's just something about that dark fire that calls to him.
After a point the walls dip into the water. He stares into that, the rushing movements making him queasy. There is something small, near unnoticeable just below the water line. A figure outlined in gold, ceremonial dress old enough Sasuke can't place it. Pointed ears, long white hair, a sorrowful mouth turned down. He searches for the eyes and finds one wide open eye made of faceted moonstone. It glints in the water; a fat chunk that has to be worth tens of thousands. Beside it is that strange red stone glowing with captured fire, a thin black something rotating in its depths. Round and round and round the black goes. The red glows, the moonstone reflects beams of pure light into the water. He meets it's red eye-
A hand slams down on his shoulder.
Sasuke jerks, sharingan turning off in surprise. "Shit."
"Oh? What are you up to?" Kakashi peers over him into the dark, squinting at how little light there is.
"Nothing." Sasuke snaps. The food in his lap is barely lukewarm now, octopus on the edge on inedible. "I got a job."
"What are you talking about."
"This isn't cheap. I'm burning through my savings travelling around with you."
Kakashi cocks an eyebrow as if to say and whose fault is that?
Sasuke scowls, but accepts that he's still in the dog house for the clusterfuck in Tawatsukawa. "It's a simple courier job."
Kakashi takes the scroll off him. His eyebrows raise as he reads. "No."
"It'll take a day."
"We have to return to Konoha."
"Uzushio is close to Konoha."
"Uzushio is dead."
Right. Because dead villages hire missing-nin. "I'll be quick."
Kakashi gives him a long stare. "You won't be going anywhere."
Sasuke opens his mouth to argue, but shuts it again with an audible click. Kakashi thinks of him as a runner, not as someone who has run dozens of courier and medical missions. "I know Karin. She was on my team, like Suigetsu." And heaven help him if she hears him say that. "If nothing else she'll give us a safe place to say."
"You're sure."
Right. Like Karin would matter to him. "She's an Uzumaki."
"They're dead."
Sasuke doesn't dignify that with an answer. "I already sent word back. On my honour as a Konoha-nin." His lips twitch a little, it's more effort than not to suppress. "I have to fulfill the obligations of my contract."
That will weigh with Kakashi, who has proven time and time again his loyalty.
The man in question leans back, hands shoved in his pockets, looking towards the skies for aid. When nothing strikes Sasuke down for his insolence or crumbles from beneath to relieve him of his misery. Finally, when all hope is exhausted, he mutters, "I do not even want to think about any of that."
Sasuke takes the victory.
Later, when the night is full bellied above studded with light, Sasuke spins on the sharingan to follow the long line of the night sky.
Kakashi sits up from across the fire, frowning. "Alright." He says. "I'll bite. Why?"
"My cousins used to do it. The ones old enough to be in a genin cell but not old enough to join the KHMP. I used to sit with them when my mother was out, sometimes we'd order a D-Rank and the Hokage would make sure a cell with a Uchiha was assigned to it. The ones who had their sharingan would compare who had the coolest image from their missions. I heard about temples in the north of Fire, the ocean at sunset in River. My father, his brothers, we all did it. I-" thought I could tell them about it, thought I could bring it home with me when I was older, and better, and my mother could be proud. "After I got mine I thought I might as well."
"I see."
I bet you do, he thinks viciously. But he is man enough to realise the edge of his temper is not fair. Kakashi lost someone too; Obito, son of Hoshiko. It's not the same weight, but he can bend himself just a little.
He's saved from the emotional torture of having to find a way to communicate this by men dropping from the canopy. Four of them, bandits most likely, brandishing weapons. Two are bald, one has suspiciously silver hair, the las wears a bandana.
"Konoha." The man in the bandana spits.
Kakashi whistles, leaning back on his left foot. A light stance that will allow him to anticipate multiple opponents. Sasuke matches his stance, moving the hilt of his sword down just enough for a quick draw.
No one fights Konoha-nin travelling in pairs.
Sasuke sighs. Why are other missing-nin so damn stupid?
Kakashi smiles in that who me? way he pulls off so well. "Ah. I don't think it'll be us you'll be fighting today."
Sasuke raises an eyebrow just as the feeling of an oncoming fire hit him right in the back. He grunts, turning it into something sarcastic out of sheer reflex. Whoever this is caught him by surprise.
He feels extra shitty about it when a large red and white blur runs right over the two missing-nin.
"I am going to defect." Sasuke says very seriously.
"No," Kakashi sighs, hand coming to rub at his temple, "you are not. That is an inappropriate reaction to this situation."
"Why? Because everyone would just defect instead of putting up with-"
The red and white blur stops, swinging his hair over his shoulder as he comes up to his full impressive height. "Wow. Rude, kid. I see your time away didn't make you politer. "
"I'm serious." Sasuke turns his whole body away from Jiraiya. "I am going to defect."
"I'm serious when I say no you won't. "
Jiraiya stands beside them, watching with dark eyes. Sasuke knows his being sized up and judged by the way Jiraiya's hands twitch, as if for a weapon.
"Where," Sasuke asks snidely, "are we going?"
Jiraiya crosses his arms. Kakashi scratches his head.
Kakashi shrugs. "Nagazawa, I think."
"Sure," Jiraiya drawls, "he can come too."
Sasuke rolls his eyes and sets off in the direction of Nagazawa. If either of his companions are surprised that he knows the way, he does not fucking care.
Nagazawa is a civilian settlement sitting in the centre of several contested regions. Tucked into a man made crop of hills, it's the only way through the mountainous region. It's a common area for shinobi business because everyone, regardless of who they're aligned with, has to cross through the town. Assassinations are common.
Technically the settlement falls inside Fire's borders. They've had a constant presence in the area for decades. Under the Shodai and Nidaime Hokage's it was used as a training grounds for young shinobi. In recent years it's become a symbol of Konohagakure's illustrious military history and a long denied occupation. What Sasuke knows personally is small: it has an excellent onsen, a fantastic curry bar and has recently undergone a power shift, backed by Giri, forcing the occupation to give ground to civilian law courts. The daimyo is backing the move, undoing the restrictions Konoha has placed. Under occupation the citizens of the area are afforded legal rights at the leisure of Konoha courts, they cannot vote for their own representatives and they cannot form political parties of more than five members. For whatever reason the Senju brothers loathed them. It's commonly assumed that Hashirama is the one who put the mountains around it in the first place.
They've recently gained the right to political assembly. Allowing someone to be nominated to the position of village head democratically for the first time since before the Founding.
It looks about how he expects: well made but worn buildings, neat streets. Konoha's symbol is stamped on doorways and pavement. There's no green. No flowers. What colour there is comes from fabric in the windows, murals of anti-occupation slogans, bright doors and abandoned toys. There are homeless too, whole families lying in bundles in street corners and alleys. Out of a habit born of a dozen or some aid missions he checks to see if they're well fed, well looked after. Most must be new arrivals because they lack the hauntedness of long term refugees and homeless. Some are as old as the buildings, the way they huddle together out of the way of everyone else speaking to generations of living this way.
Jiraiya walks with great purpose leaving Kakashi to follow in his lazy gait. Sasuke pulls up the rear, deeply uncomfortable with the dropped eyes and scorn the locals throw at him. He almost wants to yell out I'm not the one who did this. He's left to grit his teeth at the way the men in front of him walk as if there's nothing out of place here.
They enter a courthouse. A huge high ceiling lifts the room out of the dull browns and greys of outside and punches him with nostalgia. This room belongs among the great trees of his hometown, in the green and blue spaces of Konoha. There are peonies in vases, great bursts of jasmine crawling over the wall. He even hears the tinkle of water coming from somewhere. It is all very beautiful and somehow deeply obscene.
The room floods with people. Immediately he can tell who is in charge. Four men and women stand tall and straight bearing the demeanour of seasoned politicians. Behind them he can see the village elders, the merchants, anyone with a fraction of power. He can also feel the hate pouring off them. He feels doubly strange in his worn in clothes, his well maintained but not ostentatious weaponry, his long braided hair hanging lank between his shoulders. Next to Jiraiya and Kakashi he looks like a bruiser.
There's a wave of pale pink hair, the rustle of green and blue fabric, and before he thinks better he calls out, "Amaya?"
"Sasuke!" Amaya grins. "Are you here with them?"
"I am going to Konoha." He manages to get out with some difficulty. He usually comes at the thought sideways: I am following Kakashi or I am going to Fire Country . In this room he feels like the other answer would have been better.
Her eyebrows pull together. "Oh? Oh! How nice. How have you been? Where's Sora?"
"Between here and Wave I imagine." Sasuke licks his lips, glancing away from his companions. "Delivering messages for a friend."
"Ah," she says happily. Pleasantries dispensed, she rounds on Jiraiya and Kakashi. "Jiraiya of the Mountain. And you are?"
"Hatake Kakashi."
"Of course." She smiles pleasantly. "We cannot accommodate your request."
Jiraiya grunts. "Mrs-"
"Ms."
"Ms." He allows. "These are delicate matters. They would be better discussed elsewhere."
"Do you not trust your companions?" Amaya asks guilelessly.
Jiraiya looks meaningfully behind her. Amaya continues to smile as of nothing is amiss.
Jiraiya snorts softly. "Fine," he gestures to the assembly, "bring your two advisors. We'll talk in the garden."
Amaya gestures toward her left. "After you."
Jiraiya stalks off, Amaya and her advisors follow. Sasuke rolls his shoulders and makes to go to.
Kakashi grabs his shoulder. "Not us."
Sasuke pulls away, forcing his muscles to stop flexing. He needs to get out his agitation.
Kakashi sighs, betraying the slightest bit of unhappiness. "Go smoke."
Sasuke works his way through half a pack. Stubbing out each one with gusto. He can feel eyes on him. He's tense enough to snap when the doors of the courthouse open again. Kakashi and Jiraiya are deep in conversation as the stride off not a single look behind them.
Amaya appears after, a mean little snarl on her lips. Her dress flutters around her as she approaches him, snags a cigarette and lights up.
"So-" she begins.
Sasuke shakes his head. "Catch me up."
Five weeks ago Amaya was released from her job as ambassador for Giri. She was highly encouraged to 'step in' as interim leader for the town. After negotiating them down to a six month lock in contract she discovered why they didn't want one of their own people in the job. Around ten months ago a group of shinobi has taken a note out of Fuyuki's handbook and engaged in a stealth operation that left a hundred of the village dead. Who did it is under investigation: the town assume Konoha, Giri assume Konoha, Konoha denies it. Begrudgingly Amaya agrees with Konoha. It is far more likely an independent force framing Konoha. They managed to capture one of the shinobi but when interrogated he simply stood perfectly still and said nothing, eventually starving to death. The one useful piece of information they did discover was that the mission was an attempt to stop a rebel faction from overthrowing the occupation.
Three weeks ago Giri caught wind of a second operation to finally 'extinguish' the people in the region. A civilian reported the news to a mid-ranking Giri officer, who passed it on, who passed it on to someone else. By the time it reached the ears of someone in the position to do something about it, it had become a mess of rumors and speculation. Fire was planning an attack, Giri wasn't in a position to stop it, and if a civilian from Nagazawa attempted to lead Konoha would burn the whole place down. Amaya was pressured into taking the posting because of her work with the Kimura, and the belief that she could talk everyone down.
Sasuke sighs. "So Giri got intel -bad intel- from someone that Konoha was going to mount an attack here? And they called you to mediate because of-" he grimaces around the memories of dead police men, dead civilians, dead people who got caught between a rock and a hard place, "and, what? You're denying them the right to speak their piece?"
"No." She sits on the couch, fanning her hair over a pillow. "They want our informant."
"They can't ask for that. You aren't Konoha occupied territory anymore. You have the right to self-governance." In theory, anyway.
"And you say you have no talent for this," Amaya teases, "but essentially, yes. They have requested that we hand over our informant to be interrogated. By which they mean tortured. The poor boy is barely seventeen." What little amusement she had leeches. "He thought he was helping."
Sasuke refrains from pointing out that he was seventeen or so when they met and no one would call him a wilting flower. But then if the boy was a hardened shinobi and disposable enough they would have just given him up. In all likelihood it's a civilian.
"And then," Amaya's face twists with distaste, "they send fucking Jiraiya of the Sannin, pervert extraordinaire and living army to a settlement made of peasants, public servants and lords with middling power. If he doesn't impregnate all of them they'll just expire from the stress. It's like sending a bouquet full of swords that might grope you with a note saying don't fuck with us, kisses, your heavily armed neighbours. "
Visions of delivering summons float through his head. For a moment he understands what he must have looked like with his red eyes and deep voice, Fuyuki's words coming out of his mouth. Wryly, he comments, "Inexcusable."
She pats his hand consolingly. "At least you're here."
"Not really a choice."
"I don't care why I get to see you, nadeshiko." Amaya pinches his cheek. "I just care that I do." She pats the soreness away. "Hell of it is, this region is slated to become like Takaki and Yokokita. The daimyo's wife has cousins here."
That gives him pause. If the homeless are refugees, and Giri has a stake in it too... It won't end bloodlessly unless Konoha backs off. "I'll talk to them."
Amaya punches his shoulder. "I know you will."
--
Kakashi is nowhere to be seen when he finds them in a local inn. Jiraiya complains loudly about something and leaves for a whorehouse. Sasuke mulls over waiting up but decides to get curry instead. When he returns some hours later both are in their rooms. He goes to bed instead of engaging. It's easier, and he still doesn't know what to say.
In the morning he wakes up just enough to grab his leftovers from the night before, jam some in his mouth, and roll over to grab a drink.
"God this is sad," a voice rumbles.
Sasuke tenses, but continues drinking. There are only two people here who would bother to judge him like this, and neither is inclined to kill him.
"I owed her a big favor." Jiraiya says, as if Sasuke has asked.
Sasuke mulls that over as he searches for pants. He is always pantsless when this happens. "Does she know she's being set up?"
"Excuse me?"
"You know they won't give you the informant."
"Some half trained flea bit from Kiri?" His voice lowers. "They'd go to war over this."
That's a weird piece of misinformation. He makes an idle note to find out how Konoha-Kiri relations are at the moment. "An untrained civilian from this province," Sasuke drawls, wondering how much of this he'll have to spell out, "this province which has the ear of the daimyo through his wife's second cousin, and whom he is on the cusp of giving permission to establish itself the same way Yokokita does. No allowances made for shinobi."
Jiraiya waves his hand angrily. "Out with it."
"Fire Country has no enmity with Giri, Konoha has not declared them terrorists. I have no idea why not, but I can assure you that if you take a member of their force, a civilian member in particular, they will retaliate." Sasuke says thoughtfully. "The daimyo of Wind has come out as anti-Giri and the Fire daimyo responded by sending him a gift basket with delicacies brought to him by the head of Giri herself."
Jiraiya's eyes darken, but that's all the response he gets.
Sasuke nods sympathetically, "if Tsunade sends you to suppress a civilian populace trying to claw their way out of the draconian laws set on them under the rule of the first two Hokages, and you not only fail but also ignite the temper of the only force strong enough to put up a fight against a Hidden Village, don't you think that will reflect badly on her? You might have been thinking your impartiality made you better because civilians would fear you less but you're wrong they're twice as scared of you, they don't know who you stand for. In fact the only person they do know you share a connection with is Tsunade. Most countries already think Konoha's strong bonds make them weak. Now they'll think it made the Hokage foolish."
Jiraiya stares at him, speechless.
"Apparently," Sasuke squashes the strange urge to laugh, "apparently I am the only person here that everyone is happy to talk to."
"Well." He crosses his arms with a big motion. "Good for us then."
Debatable. "The question is," he continues, "who told Tsunade about this in the first place and who told the informant? I bet you'd find they'd crossed paths."
Jiraiya loosens his shoulders and looks at Sasuke oddly. "I bet I might."
Sasuke nods, already shifting gears to politely staring at the door.
"I can't help but think," Jiraiya mutters, "about how easy this would have been to leverage against the Sannin. And how easily we might have walked into that trap had you not been here."
Sasuke shrugs."Yeah well." He leaves it. Every other response is just unbearable.
Jiraiya surges on, "I expected you to be irredeemable."
It sits jaggedly in his chest, this off hand estimation of Orochimaru's influence. The man was immoral, he put his soul into the bodies of children so he could use them like a change of clothes. He was even tempered and clear eyed, making what he chose to do so much worse. He was never safe in his Otogakure but he got to live with himself; his rage, his quiet echoing silences, and there was something safe in that. The Sasuke that stayed in Konoha might by the standards of the man in front of him been a better person, but Sasuke can't rightly erase his own existence like that. It was his choice and Sasuke has always stood by his decisions.
"Maybe you didn't understand as much as you think you did." Sasuke replies quietly.
"I knew him better than anyone."
And what about those quiet echoing silences? There were days in Old Otogakure where the walls would quiet, the noise would cease, and all you could here was the even breaths of people who'd stopped fearing everything. Fear still lived there but it was fear of a concrete thing. It was fear given a form. It is a rare man who understands that without needing to. When Sasuke pushes himself against the reflexive wall that stops his memories from overwhelming he hears odd things, things Jiraiya would never accept. Like Orochimaru freeing every slave who came to him. Like him teaching Sasuke how to use his sword in the courtyard when it was summer, how he answered all questions patiently and gently. How when those silences came through the echoing hallways, sometimes, once in a blue moon or rarer, he would sing the songs of humble dragons.
No man is one thing. "No. You really didn't."
--
It's going poorly.
It's a full assembly: Konoha representatives and civilians both. Sasuke bullied his way into the gallery and gamely sat between a middle aged mother and a farmer. They don't like him but they can cordially accept his invitation to bite his ass. The meeting had started unpleasantly: Kakashi was late, a great dominance move that told the Nagakawa that Konoha doesn't respect them. Amaya cut across Jiraiya every time he made a point with icy politeness. Jiraiya looks ridiculous in this room, too big and too angry to be here. Sasuke suspects that only he and Kakashi know that his discomfort is as much to do with his personal ideals as it is to do with intimidating Amaya. Sasuke knows she doesn't fear him but only because he knew her husband.
A few hours in Amaya reaches down and pulls out a blue file. Sasuke watches the indecision fly across her face. With a practiced flick of her wrist she opens the file and lays out several black and white photos. The woman next to Sasuke tenses up with a sob.
Amaya has thrown down a gauntlet: dozens of images of the dead spread across the table.
The tension in the crowd is palpable. Amaya uses it to make her point. "We are not being difficult, Jiraiya of the Sannin."
Jiraiya takes a long steady look at the pictures. He slides them back over. "They did not belong to Konoha."
Sasuke applauds her gumption. If she wasn't using that move on someone who has seen hundreds of dead bodies it might have worked.
"That does not matter." Amaya hisses. "You showed them no respect. You showed no mercy. When the people of this town awoke to their dead they did not care that their tormentors were from somewhere else. They cared that their brothers, wives, husbands, uncles and children were dead.
"You misunderstand my point in showing you these. We will not give in. You will not take more than you already have. Do you think people flee here because they fear Konoha? No. They flee because here they know that their neighbours will not go missing in the night. They flee so that business rivals won't have them killed in their sleep. They flee so that the powers of this world will not kill them for trying to make a better life for themselves."
Jiraiya leans back, with hooded eyes, he asks the question that always halts the conversation. "And what about those who would do us all harm?"
"They live everywhere," Amaya gives him an honest smile, soft voice she says, "in the faces of mothers, of police, of friends. Women of peace, men of war, in the hands and minds of children too." She glances at everyone but Sasuke. "Evil lives even in the minds of beloved husbands."
Sasuke holds his breath.
Amaya leans forward. "We cannot stop evil. You cannot stop evil," so low he only just hears it, "but we can stop this. "
"I am sorry," and he sounds it, heavy with aged grief, "but I cannot agree to these terms."
Amaya smiles bitterly. "Will you return to the table?"
"Yes." Jiraiya returns that smile. "Yes I will."
Sasuke holds his breath just a little bit longer. Faces in the crowd fade to small facts: some are glad, some are angry, some are merely waiting for permission to leave, uninvested in the process. Without a word he turns on his heel and walks out.
No one stops him. He doubts anyone would've thought to. What is he right now but an outsider, staying on the fondness of people he's barely connected to?
He grits his teeth, discarding that thought. It's both self serving and pathetic. He is far to angry to be pathetic. Angry because he's bored of seeing this. Angry because it's one stick on a pile already layered too high. Angry because there's a part of him wondering why no one can see what he does.
There will be no discussion later, no chance for him to ask Jiraiya who told him to say no no matter what the offer was. This was the wrong choice, and it feels good, vindicating to think it. But he knows the system. He knows that what your elders say goes, regardless of who is on the other side. Even if Jiraiya was the type to ask for his opinion he wouldn't be okay with the kind of conversation that would follow, Sasuke's discomfort with it.
It sits at odds with what he's almost gotten used to. By the time he was handed a new mission in Giri he'd talked the old one to death, gotten feedback, and seen a psychologist. He'd understood the point of it after heavy combat missions. Shinobi have a high rate of suicide, burnout and domestic violence. It was lowering, very slowly, in Giri. He's not naive enough to ignore the perils of this life. Civilians are happier, less complicated people.
He understood it even better watching people who truly believed crushed under the weight of waning hope.
He wishes he had the comfort of knowing he could go to the old temple, and talk to that old priestess. It's funny, but he got used to having to talk out his feelings.
But he does know what she'd tell him to do. She'd tell him to sit down and take his stick out of his ass. Sit down and remember what beauty lives around you, without you, and find your peace with that. Morbid old woman.
He pools his chakra in his hands. Loops it around his body, through the coils. Night falls over his shoulders. He finds his mind quiets with the dark. Thoughts are easier.
Slowly the connection blinks to life in his head. Symbols matter. That's why Jiraiya is here. That's part of why Amaya trusts him. Suigetsu was being an asshole when he told Sasuke he symbolised something good but if there's anything he's learning untangling the myth made of him it's that intention only means what people think it does.
Bone snake. Grief, pain and suffering.
Another thought surfaces. A picture of Orochimaru; proud, looking at the room of Oto-nin eating under his gaze. A picture of them sparring in the garden, Sasuke questioning him until he gave an answer that matched what Sasuke thought. There were shades in his eyes. Flicks of darker colour.
The flesh-bone-skin snake shifts in his hands.
It's not the knowledge that he wasn't what he seemed. Sasuke knows that. He acknowledges it. It's that he's thinking about edges. About change. About finding the truth. The simple truth is that things are complicated. Picking a path and sticking to it as all well and good when there isn't anyone to knock you off it. Some of these thoughts are the endless merry-go-round of debate and diplomacy and failed meetings between states and rebels and pacifists that all seem to end in the same grim unhappy message: peace is not an option.
Some of it is knowing that Karin went home. That Juugo is happy. That even though Suigetsu can no longer kill on a whim, he can free others and be free himself. His first complex thoughts about what it means to truly seek power start with Orochimaru. It's the legacy of their first meeting.
A better legacy, in some ways, than what his family has left him.
No. Not better. Easier to live with. The weight of one man versus an entire family of ghosts.
His muscles lock, a huge weight pulling through his body, through his chakra coils. He grits his teeth and holds true. Dry, dead skin gains vermillion colour. Flesh morphs into muscle, to fat and sinew. The bones become teeth.
A dragon.
It looks at him lazily, blinking one eye and then the other. It turns, shimmers, rolling its muscles as it stretches.
He's about to speak, is in fact in the process of doing so, when a fluffy orange tail is shoved unceremoniously into his mouth. Sora jumps on his head, stretches, then tumbles to the ground in a flash of warm fur. Sasuke eyes the dragon, because it's unavoidable, and ignores what he suspects to be a flash of disdain.
"Sora."
The cat doesn't listen, stepping right up to the dragon. The dragon blinks, one eye and then the other, but leans down to gently touch the cat's nose.
Sora meows happily, retreating to a tree then disappearing up it. God knows what he's going to do with that cat.
The dragon turns in its slow curling way to meet Sasuke eye to eye. Its claws are the size of his forearms. Its teeth are as long as his neck. He's proud of it, even as he's wondering how the hell he made it. The dragon rests gently on its belly, eyes still moving in that slow blinking pattern. Its eyes open and in it-
In it he sees fire.
It's not the fire of burning houses. Or the fire of battlefields. It's like lighting a match in a dark room, breathing ozone, and feeling that flash of bright warmth on your skin. It's like that match being joined by another and another until you realise the room is big enough to reflect everything back. It's realising that in the fire is the universe, and it always reflects back. It's a warming fire. A ballast. Something that says, to something deep inside of him, we are still with you.
His eyes water. He blinks twice and his vision clears. Kakashi is standing across the river, watching. Slowly he approaches, walking across the water. Sasuke holds the dragon still.
Kakashi crouches down next to him, side by side. "What's this then."
Sasuke rolls his eyes. "A dragon."
"What does it do."
"I have no idea."
The dragon blinks, curling and uncurling its claws, but settles in Sasuke's control. It lays its head down with a yawn, staring straight at the moon. Those fire bright eyes seem to absorb the light of it, and in his own head Sasuke sees the snap of the stars against the full belly of the night.
"It was Orochimaru's first. Now it's mine." Kakashi stiffens, and Sasuke sighs internally because he can't explain this to him properly. He knows the first step is making his voice sound confident and adult, rather than the small boyish quality it has now. "It was his, and it was a snake. Now it's mine and it's a dragon. I just took what he taught me and made it better." Like Chidori. Like the fire techniques of his family.
Kakashi looks at the dragon. He looks at the moon. He looks at the way the dragon gazes soulfully up at the sky. He shrugs. "Okay."
--
When he gets up in the morning it's to the news that the talks have failed.
He rolls over and goes to sleep. He has to really reach back to find a time when talks on this scale don't sour in the first quarter. Everyone escalates until someone fires, and then the war starts. No one knows how to make diplomacy work when all sides are constantly pointing weapons big enough to end the world at each other. People have debated for generations whether or not Hashirama was right to give up the tailed beasts, but Sasuke doesn't think it would have made much of a difference. Even leaving aside the fact that Hashirama could wipe the floor with all of them, he at least saw what generations of people raised on a one sided idea of power would do with it. They'd do their best to destroy each other.
Jiraiya and Amaya have found enough peace to hold a banquet. It is civil when they arrive, no one was holding out a hell of a lot of hope, but Sasuke does see glimmers of something good in the way that Jiraiya shows his respect. It's met with respect. That's something, then.
They walk in an informal procession. Jiraiya takes the same position Orochimaru always did. On point, shoulders back, head high. Same posture, same slouch. Kakashi takes the lazy guard position to the left, shooting the shit with Jiraiya; Sasuke knows in his bones that he is to stand a step behind and to the right as per protocol.
Never can get all the Konoha out Fuyuki sneers in his head. It's something of a shock to realise how right she was.
Sasuke steps forward, steps back. It's hard to choose. No one seems to mind that he changes position, just that he stays close.
Amaya gives her speech, talking about her hopes for the future. Jiraiya says something wise disguised as something inappropriate. They're still not comfortable but maybe it wouldn't be a mistake for Jiraiya to be the face of Konoha here.
Amaya catches his eye. He smiles, small and quick. Her returning one is tired. One of the diplomats turns to her and he watches as she picks herself up and carries on. Sasuke decides to take a note from her book and carry on too.
The urge carries him through the early hours of the evening, through the first few rounds of drinks, and into the dark dusty den of a club. A woman he knows is setting up her set, running through her notes, seeing how far her voice reaches in the dark. With nothing else to do and a bottle to drain, Sasuke sinks into a well pillowed corner and shuts down as much as he can. Kakashi comes and goes at points, Sasuke assumes it's to check on him. When he realises that as long as Sasuke stays drunk he's not going anywhere he liquors him up and leaves.
This drunk he carefully unspools his thoughts. Itachi sits at the top, and he feels bad and cold for how he still feels love. He keeps trying to sour it with his dead parents. The dead children. The dead housewives, nurses, butchers. But when he tries that he sees dead policeman. He sees everything he mowed down while trying to face him. He tries to feel regret and none comes. He tries to feel self loathing, and there's more than a touch, but it's blunted by what he knows now: nothing he did was worse than what others have done.
Everything, absolutely everything , is more complicated than that. It has to be, or nothing about this world makes sense.
That hurts. Or it's confusing. So many of his thoughts feel like missing links to something he can only see the edges of.
He takes his time coming out of his self imposed fugue only to find the music has changed.
Anger is just love, left out, turned to vinegar, she croons and Sasuke aches to tell her how right she is. You wake up a stranger to yourself and then you learn to live with her.
Jiraiya refills his glass. "You didn't strike me as the type."
Sasuke blinks. He had no idea he was here. "To like singing?"
"To like poetry."
"My father and my uncles considered it a well rounded education." He replies too quickly, words running together. There's a burn in his cheek from too much poor alcohol. "Not many people know but the Uchiha produced many great poets."
"Oh? You got any in you?"
"No."
"Not even a little rhyme." Jiraiya pouts. "Let me help you a little. I've got some great ones."
Since Jiraiya is determined to be annoying he picks his time and joins in with the woman singing. He knows this song, he heard it with Haru in a bar once, when he couldn't worm his way out of it. " You come as fragile, soft machines, and you're bound to fast, you're bound to grieve, but you're built to balance on two feet ." He lets her have the next few lines humming along. Mouthing the words. " You learn to live on less, you duck some, you take some square, your luck runs out, you're there in midair. " His voice sounds weird to his own ears; a little off pitch, too deep.
Jiraiya points his empty bottle at him. "Where'd you learn that?"
"Know a guy," his eyelashes feel heavy. He probably should have stopped a few drinks back, "he showed me a few things."
"Yeah, where did he learn it?" Jiraiya asks, oddly gentle. "You've got a good voice, kid."
"In Oto."
"In Oto. He learnt to sing in Oto?"
"Nah, but it didn't matter, we all learnt." As Sasuke tries to order his thoughts he stumbles, he says, "I'm not sorry for killing him."
Jiraiya laughs harshly. "Don't mourn him. Not worth it."
"It wasn't all bad," he tries to put Orochimaru's poor jokes into words, his insistence on survival and overcoming fear, even if his articulation was horrific, "he tried to show me how to be kind."
"You're joking."
"No." Sasuke knows what he's saying - what he's thinking- is ridiculous, but it does not stop it from being true. "He wanted me to be like him but he kept messing it up. Never made me cruel. He could have. He made others like that."
"He didn't make you?" Jiraiya says incredulously. "Cruelty is a choice kid, he can't make you."
Sasuke made a snake out of blood and bone and bile once. True fear and suffering. "He didn't make me anything. But he didn't give many choices." He made a better one out of something he doesn't quite get yet. "Didn't get many choices. But that was just being shinobi. We didn't get many choices."
"Who did?" Jiraiya says flippantly, "time for bed kid."
He has whiskey dreams that night. He's by a river rising over it's banks. There's blood in the water, swirling against his ankle.
There is a woman, thin and slight with nasty eyes. Her narrow hips are wrapped in dark robes. She holds a huge war fan in her hands dripping with something viscous. She's no great beauty but he can't say he'd look past her. Uchiha Kazue, the war poet.
From the ground the same dream flows to the surface. It is the compound at night. The moon is red. He begins his usual walk home, to where his parents will be dead. The trees are overgrown.There is blood on the ground. There is more murder to be found.
He hesitates over the archway to his home, one foot up, usually at this point he has to brace himself to remember. His foot hangs over the doorway and he realises: he doesn't want to walk in.
He stands outside the door. He's always crossed this. He's always wanted the reminder of what he has to do, who he has to kill. Instead he remembers when this all first happened. When he would have done anything to forget, to move past it. He couldn't, though, all he could do was make it something he could use.
What happens if he steps back? What if he leaves the compound? What if he goes to where he knows his parents are buried, he says his prayers, and then-
A hand lands on his shoulder. Thin, scarred, recognisable. Shisui turns him around bodily and beyond him he sees faceless people. He feels that if he reached out and touched them they could be more, but he can't, not while he still has the house to enter.
Shisui guides him towards the left. A door opens, and out flows a man in a formal kimono. He sits perfectly still at the end of the walk. Blue cloth, wheat and birds sown on the outer robe, a hand-me-down. Itachi opens his mouth to speak, his brother listens, but there's no connection.
Itachi keeps talking. No sound comes out no matter how much Sasuke strains to hear him. He walks through the crowd to get to him, then he runs, but no matter how close they come to touching he can't make the difference between them. Mud, or old blood, falls from the sky and Sasuke can clearly feel his own frustration. He thinks his brother is saying Tsukiyomi, but he could be calling his youngest cousins, three year old twins, whose names ran together Tsuki and Yumi.
Flowers grow in the cracks of the pavement. The moon is no longer red. He feels like he's breathing again, like he just found out Itachi is gone all over again, and then he feels grief, like he just found out his brother was dead.
Long red nails reach over his shoulders. Kazue's harsh voice whispers into his ear, nails drawing blood. Blackness falls over his eyes. "If he didn't break you, and the eyes are real, and there's another Uchiha, then there's still more to find isn't there?"
Like matches in a dark room, red sharingan light up the night.
--
He wakes up singing to himself. There's a wealth of red fabric over his eyes and the taste of damp sweat in his mouth. He feels like he's floating in a river; down the swirls, down the arches. Time passes. His body comes awake and if this is a river, it's a rocky one, bumping up and down over stones.
He's forced to action by the sun and the scent of passing trees. He pulls the fabric down just long enough to crack an eye and take stock of his surroundings. It's the back of the cart. The horses are quick and light on their feet. Kakashi is sitting beside him braced against the slow rocking motion of the cart. Sasuke pulls the fabric all the way off, looks down the stretch of red at the two gold circles, lies back down with a groan, already closing his eyes. Kakashi laughs gently, nudging Sasuke's side. Sasuke flips him off and covers his eyes again, gently rocking back to sleep.