sunshineverse | [Closed] This handbasket is a little more hellish than anticipated.

Spooked was the understatement of the year for it. Sasuke had been looking for even the faintest whisper of Obito's chakra when they'd finally run into each other, Sharingan flashing in flagrant disregard for etiquette as he'd flickered over the rooftops of Konoha. It had only been hard-ingrained instinct that forced him to end the doujutsu when he landed in front of Obito to follow him to his apartment, barely remembering to take his shoes off.

He was still pale when Obito ushered him toward the couch -- only managed to stay sitting for a second before he'd returned to his feet to pace, gaze flickering in the direction he'd come from as if that would somehow allow him to see what was happening.

"Yes --" He grated out, hand straying momentarily to the hilt of his sword before dropping again, trying to force himself to report with any semblance of coherence. He clarified late: "Yes, a privacy seal."

He eyed him for a moment, then was on his feet, moving around the room activating seals before sitting back down. "Okay Sasuke. Talk."

Sasuke's eyes followed his teacher's movements even as his feet continued to tread a nervous path in the carpet -- as soon as the last one was activated he nearly felt his knees buckle, doubling over instead to brace himself with a gasp:

"I fucked up, sensei," he said, less miserable than desperate. "I really fucked up -- I don't know how it happened, it wasn't even me, I -- it wasn't me, but it was me, they all saw me, they're --"

He wasn't being coherent, he could tell that much himself, but he could only replay the look on that child's face in his mind: the shocked fury, the blood on his own hands, the slow sinking awareness of where he was, what he'd done, the Konoha leaf still proudly, obviously emblazoned on his forehead.

He peered at him for barely a moment, then moved over and crouched beside him, a hand on hs shoulder. "Breathe in, start over."

The hand made him flinch, first, before he folded into seiza, the formality of the pose letting him clench his fists and inhale -- exhale --

"I was on my way home," he started, trying to hold the timeline of events in order. "Everything was fine; I was ahead of schedule, so I stopped to eat. Whoever did it must have followed me from Ame, maybe even before -- I should have noticed --"

He stopped, inhaling-exhaling again, before continuing: "It must have happened there, at the inn. I remember eating, and then after that I -- I didn't know where I was going, but somehow I did. It wasn't anywhere I'd been before; it was a civilian household, but I just --" His fists clenched tighter, knuckles paling. "I just walked in, in front of everyone, and killed a man. I don't know who. It wasn't even an assassination, it was plain as day, I --"

I knocked his son unconscious before he could say anything. And then ... "I didn't want to. But I didn't know what I was doing until it was done and I -- knew."

Hunching again, afraid to look Obito in the eye, he repeated: "I fucked up bad, sen-" and cut himself off, because what right had he to call himself a Hokage's student right now? Shoulders stiff, he waited.

This made him go very still, one knee rested on the ground, as he pulled his hand slowly back to his lap. This? This was... worrying. Horrible in fact, but Sasuke wasn't perfect and he knew it.

He hated to have to press on him but he needed to watch over the village. "And then what did you do?"

It was as much a judgment as Sasuke needed, spine curving in shame.

"I sealed them," he whispered, then cleared his throat and tried again, voice still unsteady. "I sealed them. The family, the staff ... the house was isolated, they were obviously protecting themselves from something. They're all --"

As good as dead, the part of him he'd been ignoring until now told him, the part that was all terrible reason. They'd looked dead when he'd moved them into the house's underground storeroom, sealing that trapdoor in turn and rigging it to explode if opened. Bad enough was that, but there was the sense-memory of paralyzed bodies, the reek of fear.

"All five senses," he said finally. "The spine. I -- I used interrogation-level versions of my seals."

On civilians.

"Did you do everyone who saw you?" His tone was careful, even, but he was inwardly horrified.

It would have been kinder to kill them.

"I did," he said, sure on this point at least. Whatever jutsu he'd been under hadn't affected the memory of Uchiha eyes, and what had happened had been so quick that there had been no chance of escape.

But now -- "I didn't know what else to do," he admitted, head still bowed. "I thought maybe -- if there were some way I could silence them until I could go back and explain what really happened, that it wasn't Konoha ...

"I can find whoever controlled me," he said, grasping for straws. "And that could -- that could prove it, right, sensei?"

He looked up at Obito finally, a naked plea for agreement.

He was solemn, and reached down, resting his hand on his head. "The truth doesn't matter in a situation like this. Even if you explain, and they promise, someone will lie and use it as a weapon against Konoha."

He shook his head, shifting a little, settling lower on his knees. "What travel did you use to get there and back home Sasuke?"

"But it's --" Sasuke protested, disbelief colouring his features. "It's the truth, sensei, there were no orders, there was -- something controlled me!"

And he could still sense the lingering horror there, the feel of it crawling over his skin; how it wasn't just his body moving without his will but his will itself, the total uninterested logic of every step taken up the moment he'd realised there was blood on his sword and terror in the faces of everyone around him. It was gone (it had to be gone) and still -- and still --

"Summons to the closest seal point," he answered late, looking away once more. Even Kono-hana had taken one look at his face and refrained from snapping at him for summoning her without using any of her clutch first. "It was close enough to the border and late enough that she could fly low and out of sight," and at a dizzying, spinning pace through the trees.

"What happened still happened Sasuke. And then you locked them into a technique used for torture for a reason." His tone was very soft, very careful, like Sasuke was about to fall into a wreck of tears if he misspoke. He wasn't sure that was wrong to think.

"Even if they believe you, even if they promise, do you think word won't spread? Of what happened in some form or another?"

He brushed his hand sideways, ruffling over his hair and touching his temple before lifting his hand away. "I wish with all my heart that that were true."

"I only -- I didn't want to kill them," but Sasuke was fully aware that he'd been drafted into T&I for those seals alone. The look he'd earned when he'd ventured that the seals might be more useful for low-level interrogation because they didn't cause pain -- but he'd had no choice.

"I couldn't kill them," he repeated, staring upward through the fingers in his hair, trying to understand if he was being understood. "Sensei, they were innocent -- none of them should have been involved at all. What could I do?"

A moment, and then more hesitantly: "What should I do?"

"...This isn't something that should be recorded. It can't be. Honestly, this is something Naruto definitely wouldn't understand, and Hinata... she would understand too much I think but." He dipped his head and sighed, then met his eyes again. "This will be between us... but you understand the mess has to be cleaned up, don't you?"

He shifted back on his heels. "Tell me where this was and I'll deal with it."

Isn't something that should be recorded. For a moment, Sasuke stared, expression blank, before his shoulders drew up in a horrified flash of realization. I'll deal with it, Obito said, and Sasuke didn't miss the deliberate switch in pronoun from the shared secret to the action.

Slowly, not voicing the cold draining his core, he asked: "What are you going to do, sensei?"

"What has to happen Sasuke. You can stay here until you've collected yourself okay?" He gave his head a small shake, solemn, but was carefully ordering himself to deal with this. He hadn't... had to do something like this in quite some time, and never on the scale he suspected this would require, but he had given orders of this nature, and he never asked what he wasn't willing to handle himself if it were appropriate to.

There was no reason to do that to Sasuke though, and perhaps he was soft for protecting him in this way, but if he hadn't been able to do it before... he wouldn't ask him to do it now.

Some part of Sasuke, too-young and still reeling in horror, was trying desperately to reconcile this moment with all the ones that had come before: this seriousness on the face of a cousin whose laughter he'd grown up with, this task on the shoulders of a teacher he'd always known as fair.

"There was," he started, swallowed, and tried again: "There was a child. He must have been the son of the man I killed. He looked me in the eye when I sealed him, just -- looked at me instead of running, though I could see his hands shake."

And his own, the seal messy.

"I --" Said I'm sorry, as if that would change the fact of death. Sasuke looked down, noted the whitened ridges of his knuckles with a distance he couldn't shake, as if they didn't belong to him. They hadn't when he'd committed murder, but now:

But now they did. "I can't let you do this, sensei."

"It can't go undone." His tone was so soft, so gentle, and it made him ache to need to say it, but he did none the less. "We've been cruel enough to these people, with what was done. They can't be allowed to speak or act against Konoha. It's a risk that in the present climate..."

He closed his eyes, shaking his head once. "I need more time to prepare, and leaving this as you left it would rob the village of time that will save many."

He opened his eyes again, shoulders dipping just a bit. "It's a terrible thing, but it's my responsibility to protect this village Sasuke. The location, please. This should not wait or it will spread when people go looking for those you sealed."

"No," he said, voice low, and then stood abruptly. "No -- that's not what I meant."

If his hands were shaking again, Sasuke ignored it. They would steady with a blade in them: they always had. Weaponry had been a comfort all this time, death far from unfamiliar, and yet it had never struck home what it meant to open a throat or cut through an artery in the name of the village. It still --

It still didn't mean something Sasuke could fully comprehend, not really, not when he couldn't stop hearing the wet, startled gasp of the stranger he'd killed, couldn't stop seeing the hatred frozen on the boy's face. But his teacher was all reason, and every senbon or kunai Sasuke had ever hidden in his clothing with the eager excitement of a child was a tool for murder, and Obito was right. Sasuke had known the answer before he'd asked what should I do.

He just hadn't -- hadn't known it deeper than the coldest top layer of his skin, hadn't let it sink in past that. Hadn't wanted it to. Had thought -- maybe they'll listen to reason, after dealing with civilian clients for years, after taking home paycheques from the petty wars people fought for causes far less than vengeance. An assassination on the border, a host of shinobi villages ready to take the first mission against Konoha to arise, and the inevitability of word spreading: telling the truth, trusting in goodwill, letting the news grow that Konoha-nin could be used with less impunity than a knife.

He'd run scenarios as a child in the Academy, flanked by Naruto's insistence on the straightest line from one point to the next on one side, Hinata's textbook patience and surprising deviousness on the other. They'd been told --

"There are always more paths than you see at first," he said, mouth twisting, eyes averted to the memory. "We were taught that, but it wasn't true, was it, Obito-nii-san? Not always."

Not now: there was only exit route now, only the pressing dawn outside, a world about to wake and wonder where a household of innocents were.

Inhale, exhale. He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin.

"This is my fault," he said, and kept his voice steady. "Give me the order to take care of it, Hokage-sama."

"There are, but that doesn't mean even we have the eyes to see them." He touched his shoulder lightly, then pushed to his feet. There was a resolve in the set of Sasuke's face, and he knew the boy still didn't understand what he was putting himself in the path of, and he couldn't, wouldn't leave him to that alone.

No one deserved to live that kind of nightmare by themselves. If he was going to see this innocence stripped from this student of his, this person who had always wanted so dearly to be a protector...

He offered a hand down to him. "Let me get my things and we'll go. It needs to be taken care of, yes, but your fault? No. We'll find who has the ability to cause this and they'll be dealt with as well."

His lips twisted. "They'll seed whispers soon I'm sure."

Sasuke had offered to do it himself once: he didn't know if he had it in him to offer again, to walk alone into the dark underground silence of minds unmoored in their own bodies, to -- to do what needed to be done.

To kill them, he thought forcefully: to kill them in cold blood, and he'd need to do more than think it when the time came, even if Obito would be there too. Especially if, because he'd pledged his life and his blade to protect the village and his Kage, and more than that -- to protect his kin. His teacher, who would have taken responsibility for Sasuke's failure alone.

His failure, and the action that had taken advantage of it: his face hardened when Obito mentioned that, a flash of steel cutting through the forced calm. Just a flash, but it was all he had, and he focused on it to still his hands to purpose, to slow his heartbeat, to focus on the task at hand.

"It wasn't far from the seal point," he said once Obito had finished preparing, voice tight but still even. "We can fly from there."

"Then we'll go. I'll be out in a moment prepared to leave, and I'll meet you soon. I just have to leave a note and give my guards a quick deflection to keep anyone from looking for us. Go just south of the normal training area and we'll leave out the west gate and circle around."

He didn't wait a moment more before going to get his weapons and change into something a bit more suited to 'training'.

Pre-dawn, Konoha was all burnt shades of red and orange and yellow, shaded only by the green of the forest around it. Sasuke had always found it warm, even when he'd stifled within the familiarity of it; home, indelibly, as much born as bred. He felt like a stranger now, face frozen into something he hoped approximated bored calm, as if he were simply waiting for an early-morning training session with a busy teacher.

Few enough people were outside other than the guards, and they were accustomed to seeing the Hokage and his students out for training at irrational hours -- Sasuke was left alone to wait just outside the gate, carefully pressing his thoughts and emotions through a sieve until only those necessary to get where they needed to go remained.

He was only logic, loyalty, and the confidence of a blade in his hand.

When he met back up with Sasuke, he was set up for combat, and waved for them to set out, starting off without a word, though his posture was fluidly loose and deceptively relaxed. He flashed Sasuke a grin that was congenial with an edge of sharpness, as they walked lest someone be watching closely enough to note details.

They were off out the west gate before he said a thing. "You gotta work on our pokerface. If it wasn't so early someone might've noticed something." His tone was at odds with the expression, that's for certain.

The sudden end to mock-companionable silence startled Sasuke, though he was no guard enough not to let it show past a slight tensing of his shoulders and tightening of his mouth. The words though, made him blink for a moment at Obito, thrown by the incongruity of voice and face.

"I ... I usually figure people likely don't know me well enough," he said, trying to remember what was normally an unconscious response to a casual reprimand. "I'll try harder."

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