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

Maboroshino was perhaps Obito's most level headed summon so it made sense that she kept her nerve and even better in this situation, that she kept pace, keeping close. She also made sure that they weren't spotted, reflexively covering for them.

He kept careful track of where they went and noted the progression of the path, settling himself into the ride otherwise. WHen they landed, he was quiet, only thanking his bird and releasing her to go home.

Perhaps the smaller wildlife in the immediate vicinity of the house had been frightened away by the wingspan of the summons, but the lonely clearing was quiet enough that Sasuke was tense again when he slid off Kono-hana's back. Away from the need to control his body language and the distraction of his summons' sense of etiquette (none; she dispersed with a cursory bump of her head against his shoulder), the weight of what was actually happened pressed in with a terrible claustrophobia.

"This is it," he murmured to Obito, an entirely unnecessary aside; there was only one house in the space, the only lights left on the ones that Sasuke had barely kept it together to light to give the semblance of activity. The Sharingan spun into his eyes as he circled the house, looking for the window closest to the cellar trapdoor.

He reached out, catching the back of his shirt. "Sasuke." His tone was low, careful. He didn't want to spook him. "Make sure to get them under control and off before this happens."

He nearly jumped at the contact, evidence enough that he needed calm without the realisation that he'd allowed his doujutsu to get away with him. Obito's features resolved into the too-sharp definition of Sharingan a few times before he forced the chakra down, red sputtering out of his eyes reluctantly.

With normal vision, the night deepened, the contrast between the shadow they stood in and the warm glow of the light spilling from the window too stark. He swallowed.

"Sorry, sensei." He kept his voice low despite unlikelihood that anyone was able to hear them. A glance at the window, shoulders stiffening before he forced them to ease, and then a frown: "Should I make it look like someone broke in?"

"No, we'll be burning the building down. Just..." He leaned in, examining his face. "No matter what you do, keep yourself tight under control. You don't want to remember this in perfect clarity. You don't."

I will, Sharingan or not: the thought surfaced without reaching his lips. There was memory and there was Sharingan-memory, and this ... this wasn't even going to be a fight. There was no reason to use doujutsu.

This is a butchering, part of Sasuke thought, and he shoved the thought away with a sharp intake of breath -- and a slower exhale. Control. They'd need to burn the building from the inside out, leave nothing for even a shinobi forensics team to tie to Konoha. To do that without destroying a suspicious amount of the area, they would definitely need control.

"I'll go in first to disable the traps I left," he said in lieu of acknowledging the words: better to focus on anything other than the instinctive want for better sight. "After that, there's --" A break in the words, barely noticeable before he continued. "There are twenty people."

"You're not alone." His voice was low and firm. He was steady for him, as it should be. He wasn't going to leave this in his hands by himself. It was bad enough without that. "We'll deal with it."

It was easy to think in steps, from travel to breaking-and-entering, easy to be reassured by the steadiness of his teacher's voice. But within the house were people who should never have been involved with him at all, children and household staff, not a ninja in the lot. Sasuke lifted his hand to the sash of the window, ready to force entry, and then --

Had to stop.

"I've never," he started, fumbled his words and stopped to rephrase. I've never killed someone who wasn't also trying to kill me. "I don't know how -- how I should --"

He looked back at Obito, anguish poorly-hidden.

"The first time is always the worst. Watch me. Not what I do. You already know their faces so don't look at them. It will stay your hand if you look." He reached out, touching his wrist. "THe sooner done the sooner over. Send them a lantern next year."

The first time, Obito said, and Sasuke looked down at his hands, head bowed enough to shadow his face in the grey dawn.

"How many more times?" He asked, halfway rhetorical, voice low. If he had paid more attention, if he'd been more aware; ifs by the dozen and the rational part of him wondering how preventable these situations even were. If people other than him had gotten into them and required this kind of ...

He wanted to ask that, too: how many others? How many failures like me? But there was sunlight cresting over the woods and time pressing, and no time to do much more than reach back up, jimmy the window lock and hoist himself up, tucking and rolling into a loose crouch.

No movement came from inside the house. He hadn't expected any, but it was still -- it was still a place where he needed to focus. The cellar trapdoor was directly ahead, the seal laid over it undisturbed. Sasuke didn't give himself time to breathe and think: he disabled the seal with swipe of blood in the right place, pulling the doors open and letting light down onto the bodies laid out neatly on the packed earth, side-by-side in two rows.

"Too many." He took a careful breath and closed his eyes for a moment as he came in the doorway, carefully packing away all emotion and pulling a basic Kunai. Then he started over to them. "Where are the seals on them and will they dissolve when they die?"

The sight of Obito with sword drawn made Sasuke have to look away, which left him staring at the sealed eyes of the people (bodies, he reminded himself: if not yet then soon, and by his hand) around him.

"The eyes, the ears, the mouth, and the base of the skull," he replied, trying to keep his voice steady: still focusing on the details of himself, where he would need to be precise. "They'll dissolve."

He moved further into the cellar, reaching for the chain of the light that dangled in the middle. A yank, and then weak yellow light flooded the room from the single bulb, the interrupted by the swing of the chain when he let go.

"Stop looking at them." He murmured it, low and firm. "It just makes it worse. Stop thinking. Blank your mind." He switched the grip of the kunai and headed for the youngest ones. He wouldn't put that on Sasuke. Even with this kind of terrible thing there was some solace in not bearing that.

After all, he would never ask what he would not do. He knelt near the first. "I'm starting here."

Not looking at them was easier said than done, not least in order to figure how to -- how to do what needed to be done. It didn't escape his notice that Obito headed for the children of the household first, the youngest one whom Sasuke had caught in an upstairs bedroom, sleeping through the commotion, and had woken up to blink sleepily at him unsuspecting innocence.

His Sharingan had been flickering, out of control as it never should be, and the crispness of the memory wavered like an image viewed by candlelight: wide-eyed, dark-haired, the edge of a question still curving out of her when Sasuke had reached out to lay the seal over her eyes.

He could stop looking at them, but it wouldn't help. Sasuke stepped to the oldest in the room, an elderly man who had come running at the first cry of distress. Blank your mind, Obito said, but the only time Sasuke had learned how to do so was in chakra meditation. Still, he tried, focusing on nothing more than chakra flow and the movements of his teacher's hands, his own sword half-drawn, only half-believing.

He didn't look at Sasuke, then started to take them out, quick economical movements that would kill as swiftly as possible though they couldn't feel pain at the moment, and just hazed. It was an interesting, perfectly tranquil frame of mind he'd learned to use for things like this. He would have gone mad if he hadn't perfected it. He'd cry later, because you couldn't not cry when the innocent died because of you, but that was later, not now.

Now Sasuke needed his steadiness, and he'd just work hs way up the ages, not let Sasuke get at the young ones at all.

It was better that way, because he wouldn't put that weight on him so young. Not if it could be in any way avoided.

As easy as that. Sealed as they were, they wouldn't have felt much pain to begin with, but Obito's movements were as efficient as they could be even as blood began to soak into the packed earth, a deep burnt black in the dirty cellar light. Sasuke had been drilled in anatomy; he know how to kill to hurt as much as he know how to kill painlessly, and when he looked down to draw his sword --

If he breathed in and thought about anatomy exercises, the location of arteries, if he didn't think about the look on this man's face when he'd walked in, if he didn't think about the purpose of Obito's smooth, steady movements --

If he didn't think --

The artery in the throat, a second's cut with a well-honed blade. Blood beneath his feet, the silent passing from life to death. And the next, no face, just a point to strike, a slice of red over a white throat deep enough to ensure bleedout in seconds. Here, he could picture on an anatomy chart: here was another carotid, easily accessible, his many years of habitual sword maintenance telling in how the edge purred through flesh like shears through silk. Cut and step over to the next, just a progression of test sheets. Just blood under his feet. Just blood on his hands.

Here, a neck obscured by the tilt of a head bent awkwardly to one side; Sasuke turned the flat of the blade to pull the skull into alignment and --

Froze, the point of his sword locked just before the cut. The boy he'd sealed first was lying in front of him, face still twisted in devastation under the seals, and behind hi were -- bodies and before him was -- this and --

Obito had been moving quickly himself, and that meant that he finished the others in time, silent. Still, when Sasuke froze, he came to his side, gently taking his hands from the boy and using hs body to nudge him away. He didn't speak, instead nudging gently to turn him away from this one, because this one was real to Sasuke.

He didn't stumble, not really; shinobi was as much in the marrow as built through training in some ways, and Sasuke only stepped back. The packed earth beneath his shoe gave, soaked through with blood already, and the yellow light traced out features with a strange, soft glow. The boy had looked Sasuke straight in the eye, in the moment when Sasuke had still been figuring out what had happened, and --

His hand was on his teacher's wrist without thinking about it, Sasuke looking up at him with a desperate plea written in his face, uncontrollable:

"Please," he said, and wasn't sure what he was asking for -- "There must be -- sensei, please."

"Can you tell me with no doubt in your heart that this child will not seek vengeance for his pain if left alive Sasuke, after hours of torture?" His tone was soft, level, and he met his eyes, held them. "Do you think that can be afforded, that lives of people in Konoha who are just as innocent won't suffer?"

"But --" Sasuke tried, words starting and then stopping without releasing his hold on Obito's wrist. "What if it were just -- he can come after me, it was my fault -- I can take responsibility for it and it doesn't have to come down on the village --"

As if he hadn't been wearing a Konoha leaf, as if he weren't fully aware that a ninja was just part of the body of the village, as if it weren't -- as if there were options. There had to be, whatever he'd seen before and come to know; there had to be something (something other than the boy's entire household bleeding out into the foundations of his home, something other).

He gave him such a sad smile then. "We're shinobi Sasuke. Close your eyes."

He was steady, even, waiting and being that rock for Sasuke to lean on and rail against. As he knew he must be, on some level.

We're shinobi, Obito said, but this wasn't what they'd been taught as children, wasn't what they'd entered and exited the Academy to know. The curriculum had covered every fatal point on the human body and had failed to cover this, and Sasuke wanted to say --

Wanted to shout, protest; this isn't what I was told I was going to do, this isn't what I believed this would be --

And instead all that came out, voice an unsteady crack: "Is that what it means to be a shinobi, sensei? This?"

"To be a shinobi is to be the thing that's frightening in the shadows." He waited though, and shifted back. "In Konoha we're known to be soft, even now with the treaty, maybe especially. But we're also known to be strong, to have the best weapons, the best bloodlines, the strongest warriors." He paused, letting out a soft sigh. "Even I cannot change the world of shinobi in my lifetime and this? This still happens."

He leaned in, holding his gaze intently. "You or me Sasuke, choose who will do this. You haven't touched the children, and I intended to keep you from it."

It had been a point of pride for as long as Sasuke could remember what pride was, Konoha-the-strongest, Konoha filled with bloodlines other villages could only hope to steal, the village with the Hokage monument rising tall over the trees. Konoha was hidden in name, only, and Sasuke had thought it strength.

What was the true strength of the village, now? There was what he'd known, growing up in daylight; flashy jutsu and the thrill of speed, the faster blade and the more powerful chakra.

Now there was this, a dark room in a civilian house, a dawn that wouldn't wait and a world that would want answers outside. And answers it would find, one way or another, whether it was in the form of a child allowed to declare vengeance -- and what that would say about Konoha, no matter what version of the truth won out -- or a burned house, an authorless tragedy. If it had been Sasuke's choice alone, his burden alone ... but Obito was here, his cousin and teacher who hadn't taught him to expect this, not really. No one had. Was it even possible to teach this, or was the only option to share the enduring of it?

"I thought I knew what the shadows were," Sasuke said finally, just a whisper. The shadow of the Kage, the shadow of his clan. His brother. "All this time, I've been a child in the sunlight."

He bowed his head and took a long, steadying breath. And then he drew a kunai instead of his sword and knelt: intimacy in proximity, the soft hot spray of blood when he cut the boy's neck. It died down from a gushing flow to a trickle, minutes ticking past, and then a sluggish pulse -- and another -- slowing. Carefully, Sasuke tucked the kunai back into his weapons pouch and gathered chakra to his hands, pressing it to the red-gashed neck.

"I'll close the cuts in case someone calls in forensics," he said, voice as evenly businesslike as he could make it. "Without smoke in their lungs, they'll know the fire didn't kill them, but this will at least help cover our tracks further."

"Them being down here is enough to show they were killed. Be careful of how clean you make it, that's more suspicious than cuts." He made sure hs hands were clear, still even in his tone, watching him as he cleaned off his own kunai and put it away finally. He'd started close in, after all.

It was only fair he give them that much due.

"I admit I've protected all three of you, and I'm hardly the only one. We like to protect the innocent hearts, many of us older ones, who remember the last war."

He made sure his hands were free of blood carefully, rubbing them clean on the darker parts of the material. He'd have to avoid Kakashi until he could bathe. And tell Sasuke to do the same.

"That war was started because someone didn't do this. They put their team first and left witnesses behind. I consider the man a hero true but..." He shook his head. "As a Hokage I cannot afford to indulge my beliefs before the needs of my village. I merely have to try to reconcile the two."

He reached, touching the back of his shoulder. "Now come away. We'll start the fire here."

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