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

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."

"It doesn't matter how well they know you. If you're tense, it'll show in your walk and someone will know something is wrong. It's a skill you need to get good at if you're serious about this career you've been poking at lately." He tilted his head, checking to make sure that they weren't being tracked as he circled them toward the seal point. "You have to be conscious of your body language and what it's saying. Relying on people not knowing you is a bad habit that can get you hurt because it shows your inexperience."

This career indeed, as if Sasuke had ever considered a future as anything other than Itachi's shadow. Whatever deviation from that path had been pushed upon him as the result of turns he hadn't even realised he'd made until after the fact. What this was now, where he was headed and what it meant --

He didn't know, and he couldn't afford to think about it now. Instead he merely nodded, taking a deep breath and reminding himself: control of the body is as much willpower as strength. He exhaled as they rounded on the seal point, forcing awareness of each muscle group through his mind and relaxing them with technical, medical precision.

"It's about forty-five minutes by goshawk, sensei," he muttered, low enough that only Obito would be able to make out the words clearly, reminding himself what his own voice sounded like in a normal unexpected morning training. It helped that he'd travelled so quickly back; he looked ruffled enough that it might pass for a teenager rolled unceremoniously out of a warm bed. He just needed to sound like he was emitting the complaining tones of one.

"Less than that if we each take a bird and lighten their load."

He flashed him a grin that from a distance would look more amused than it was, but the warmth of it was real as he saw Sasuke implementing his words. "Of course. Though given the youth of your primaries I'll take my own flier. She's used to my weight and is more experienced in keeping herself concealed from people below."

The chicks were more than capable fliers by nature, but they weren't used to carrying humans as yet, and though their far more experienced mother might have been willing to serve for transport in a pinch, their father would probably require more cajoling than they had any amount of time for. Annoyed though she might be by the request, Kono-hana could probably mimic a magpie's flight pattern enough that they wouldn't be slowed down by wingbeats.

"She'll know the fastest way there," Sasuke nodded, then remembered to roll up a shoulder in a half-shrug to respond to that grin. "Once there, it's a two-level building with an internal storeroom trapdoor. That's where I -- that's where things are kept."

It was a slip, and the recovery inelegant, but he hoped the meaning was clear nonetheless, and it still looked like a natural hesitation. Without realizing it, the attention he needed to pay to keeping his body slouched at a relaxed angle and the pitch of his words was helping to keep him steady, distracting him momentarily from the task at hand.

Self-modulation could be soothing, when applied properly, Obito knew it well. "We'll be over that way quick enough." He nodded and then shook his head, looking up at the sky. "We have to move quick though, my people take guarding me preeeetty seriously and don't like the idea of me skipping out for a bit."

Sasuke nodded as they reached the seal point, body reacting easily to the words before his brain caught up to exactly what they needed to do quickly and tripped him for a moment. Nearly literally; there was a break in movement before he stepped into place for seal activation.

"Right," he said out loud to cover the pause. "Right -- yeah, I want to get home too, sensei."

Thankfully the seal was designed so the person inside pressed the pont of the seal they were gong to as those outside activated it, or there would have been a trail and questions that really couldn't be afforded. He stayed quiet until they reached the other side, giving a little wave to the guards on that side before heading quickly away from the point like be had a goal in hs destination. He only spoke with hs back to them and once he was sure he was out of earshot. "So, which direction will we be headed?"

"West," Sasuke responded, and waited until they were out of sight of the guards before biting his thumb for the summoning jutsu. The enormous mother of his regular juvenile retinue appeared with a sweep of wide wings and a curve to her neck that was -- almost concerned, oddly enough, the wicked beak butting against the side of his head in what might have been irritated affection.

She turned a lurid orange eye on Obito in the next moment, tilting her head skeptically.

"I plan to help him resolve something unfinished." He peered at her solemnly, then shifted away to summon his own bird, who looked around with interest... then rather incredulously at Obito after getting a look at the other bird.

Oh yes, the meeting of a new summon. Whoops.

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