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

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

Where: Konoha with a detour out of town.
When: January 4th, ridiculous early in the morning to late evening.
Notes: Sasuke had a simple mission. Then he went and complicated it all to hell on his way home. Time to fix it.

Obito hadn't actually made it all the way to the office yet when Sasuke tracked him down. Or ran into him, he still wasn't entirely clear if it had been intentional. Still, it was obvious something was up and since his place was closer, and the teen looked rather on edge, he decided to just drag him right back to his apartment, sitting him down on his couch as he took the chair across from him.

"Alright, what's got you spooked?" He paused a beat. "Is it something I need to activate a privacy seal for?"

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There was a part of Sasuke that wanted to say: it's sunk in plenty, because it had. There was literal blood on his hands, a fire growing bright in the clearing they'd left, a local counter to the sun over the horizon. If there was more to sink in, he didn't want any part of it.

But at the same time he knew, in a distant, intellectual way, that the growing desire to have the luxury of silence and quiet was itself a sign of -- of something.

That meant that Obito probably needed to discuss the finer details of their cover story now, before it would be suspicious for them to meet more frequently, which meant Sasuke tightened his lips and looked ahead, waiting to hear what the next step would be. Whatever it was. He'd already lost track of his hands and feet more than once in the last twenty-four hours; following orders would be the easier option now.

"I thought as much." It was almost a sigh, and he reached out, touching the back of Sasuke's shoulder. "I want you to come see me when you feel yourself slipping and need to finally speak about this, first. Second, will you be able to compose yourself by the time we get home to a level where it won't be so clear something is wrong?"

It didn't make him tense further, not completely, but the touch did make Sasuke's focused gaze ahead flicker once into something less outwardly collected. Slipping, Obito said, as if he hadn't slipped by allowing this much to happen. As if he hadn't been slipping for longer than he cared to remember, and this wasn't simply the inevitable capstone to a year of failure.

Composing himself was the minimum reparation he could make. Taking a deep breath -- and then another, until he'd first unsynced and then resynced his lungs to his moving feet -- he concentrated on remembering the lesson on the way here: focus on the minutiae.

"I can," he said. "I have to."

He'd recovered from his failures each time, ultimately, whatever the damage in the doing so. Mission successes, every one, and this one too on a purely technical sense. What had happened at the house now blazing smoke for anyone in a hundred-mile radius to see had just been a side-note, to be kept from the official record. The sun was bright at the edge of the lake when Sasuke slowed, glancing back to see if they were planning to round the lake or simply go across.

"I regret this had to be done." He let out a soft sigh, and there was a... thoughtfulness to his words. "A part of me is relieved you didn't stay behind in the village. Another part, however, wishes I could apologize for not making you."

"It was my responsibility, sensei," Sasuke answered, paying attention to the tension in his shoulders. They were very nearly always tense as it was, but whether that showed more or less than usual was a strange exercise in trying to remember what usual was, when it was normally unconscious.

"I couldn't have stayed, even if you had ordered me to."

"You could have, but f you would have is another matter entirely." He came to a halt, looking at him intently. "Do you know why I'm relieved?"

Sasuke stopped when Obito did, uncertainty filtering into the expression he was still trying to keep studiously normal, whatever normal was for his face.

"Why?"

"Because now you understand this without my having to send you on a mission of this nature myself. I dread the day that Naruto or Hinata face this, and I fear it's likely to be on my hands when they do." He shook hs head slightly, sighing and reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.

"You three are my students, the people I have poured my heart into, to help them grow and learn and become the amazing shinobi that you are now." He shook hs head once, slowly. "No Sensei wishes to be the cause of the suffering that comes with the life of a shinobi in their students. I'm proud that you've handled this so well, even though you must hurt very deeply because of this, but I am relieved, even if that, at least, is nothing to take pride in itself."

It slipped out before he'd thought it through -- "Are there many missions like these?"

The rest sounded through a weird haze, Sasuke trying to imagine Naruto or Hinata in a situation like this -- Hinata, quiet sure hands stained with innocent blood; Naruto, bright and broken under the weight of cold-blooded murder -- he'd seen a genjutsu not unlike it, not too long ago, in the very worst of his fears pulled to the surface. If there were other missions (and if he thought about it, the look on Obito's face when he'd realised what had happened, of course there were, of course there were), and if there were many --

And if there were many shinobi leaving the village gates with Konoha bright in the mind's eye and returning with nothing more than blood seeping into skin -- "I can't," he tried, and couldn't phrase it well: "I don't want them to have to -- I don't want this to happen to them."

"Neither do I." His tone was very soft, almost a sigh. "If it bad to be one of you... I'm glad it was you. You've always seen a different side of things than those two. I think... even though it hurts, you'll be able to make this into something, to not be broken by this. I'm not sure that Naruto could do that, and Hinata... With her family, I wouldn't wish more darkness in her life."

He went silent for a breath, finally answering the question. "But yes. There are more missions like this than I care for there to be, but it's part of what my ANBU do. I try to keep it away from the hands of my man force shinobi as much as possible, but there are limits, so I try to tailor things to the individual and what I know they can handle personally. It's exhausting at times, and there's no way to account for missions gone wrong and the like, no matter how prepared my people are."

Not be broken? Sasuke had been trained in field medicine, and he'd seen and learned to heal a great many broken things, but in all of those cases there had been something to break. He wasn't even sure if -- he had no reference point for what had happened tonight. He hadn't even thought about it; nothing like it had existed for him.

But he'd seen that before, too, if he really thought about it. Shinobi gritting their teeth through surgery too urgent for anaesthesia, laughing afterward that they hadn't even know that they had muscles there to strain.

Laughing after this didn't seem possible. But for Hinata and Naruto ...

"If it had to be one of us, I'm glad it was me," he said, low. "If they -- would ANBU take care of it, if something like this happened to one of them?"

"Sometimes. And sometimes it has to be handled immediately. Usually it's something taken care of before anyone leaves the site of the situation to make sure nothing is missed." He shook his head slightly, looking for words as they came to a halt at the water side.

"This sort of thing is assigned to ANBU from start to finish. It's something else when someone comes stumbling in."

Usually, Obito said, and stumbling in, and Sasuke could read between the lines just fine; that he'd fucked up, first by falling into the trap and then by not cleaning up behind himself. But if he'd been caught in a trap like this, even if he'd been unwary on the tail end of a completely peaceful mission, travelling between countries in agreement if not allied ...

Why aren't we taught this? was what he wanted to ask, but the words stuck, his attention diverted by the sudden sight of his own reflection in the calm surface of the lake.

"I wanted to ask exactly how many cases like this happen," he said, still quiet, hating his own cowardice. But there was blood on his face. There was blood on his hands, and he wasn't even sure how to enter the village, and -- "I don't know if I want to know right now."

"More during peacetime, because at least during war the hostilities are active." He murmured the words, watching Sasuke as he watched himself.

"It's one of those things that just don't get internalized by Academy students, because so many in the Academy turn to being civilians, though the lessons are there. History, if nothing else, teaches about the results when these things don't happen, or should."

He moved, resting his hand on his back. "Hold your breath."

More during peacetime. It sounded counterintuitive until it didn't, but that seemed to be most of what was happening tonight: impossible until it was possible. Of course there were more in peacetime: apparently Sasuke had thought that the peace came free, even with the number of regular missions that still dealt with death and assassination.

His silent question had been answered, too, in a way that made him want to -- something. It was there, an inarticulate heat in his throat that wanted out and wouldn't be pretty when it emerged, and so he swallowed it -- breathed, remembered breath -- and then looked up in surprise: "Why?"

He wrapped his arm around his shoulders, getting a good grip on him. "So you don't drown."

That was all the warning Obito gave him before he used his body as a weight to keep Sasuke from just stumbling on the water's surface instead of being dunked with him when he jumped out.

"So I don't --" was as far as Sasuke got before he was sinking under the water, surface tension broken by the added weight and his distraction. He had barely enough time to gulp a breath of air before his body was seizing up in instinctive response to the cold, the weak winter sunlight far from sufficient to warm the lake.

Muscle control returned after a second, Sasuke struggling free of Obito's grip to break the surface with a gasp, sputtering: "What was that -- ?!"

Satisfied, he hauled them both back to shore, looking more relaxed in spite of the frigid dunking. "You're covered in blood and scent nin would be able to tell it's not ours easily. Dilute it."

Blood. Yes, that made sense, Sasuke subsiding enough to glance down at his hands. The water had washed away the worst of what was on his skin, only thicker dried spots left that he smeared off with a thumb that shook -- only from the cold. Only from the cold.

He crouched when they reached the shore, scooping up a handful of icy water to scrub down his face as well, the hot spray of arterial -- sense-memory, not as crisp as Sharingan-memory, and perhaps once the skin was shed it would go with it (it didn't work that way).

He washed his hands thoroughly, then stood back and blew small flames to the open area to Sasuke's left, leaning back so he was just behind his position while he did it so the boy wouldn't freeze while he washed. It was just glancing heat and not huge, but it would keep the kid from turning into a popsicle.

Sasuke didn't notice he was shivering until the sudden warmth caused a big one to break over his body, his hands automatically closing over one another for warmth for a second. They were clean already: blood had washed away quickly in the cold water. His face, too, felt clean when he swept his hands over it one last time.

There was nothing to be done about his clothing except hope that any shinobi with a strong sense of smell wouldn't identify it as a point of concern.

Part of him wanted to turn more fully to the flame, warm himself through, but -- the sun was still lifting higher on the horizon, and Obito would certainly be missed if they were gone for much longer. With a last scrub of clean hands, Sasuke stood, facing his teacher with what he hoped was a neutral expression, and waited for the signal that they were moving again.

He noticed the aborted move and shifted over, clasping him in a brief, tight hug. "Let's go. We should fly back and walk around to the village. Then go home and get warmed and washed for real okay?"

Fly back and walk around -- to look normal, Sasuke reminded himself. That meant that once they'd returned he'd need to head home and stumble in and out of shower as he often did after long missions. That would at least be convincing, and as for afterward --

"What kind of mood should I be in when we get back?" They'd had training sessions that ended with Sasuke exultant, delighted with a new technique, and they'd had sessions that ended with Sasuke sulking his way back home, thoroughly beaten and with an incomplete jutsu to struggle through on his own.

"Drag. It'll be easier for you and you tend to hole up when you're in a mood after that. I'll dig around for a jutsu to justify it." He tightened his hold a moment, then eased back. "That should make it simpler for you."

It should have been more of an insult, perhaps, to find that his tendency to sulk after an unsuccessful training session was better known than he'd hoped, but that concern felt oddly distant at the moment. Instead, Sasuke simply nodded, inhaling deep before consciously fixing his shoulders where he wanted them, slouching his spine to what felt habitual.

"Alright?" He asked, more for confirmation than permission.

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

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