Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Let it Burst and Bloom ❯ Let it Burst and Bloom ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3

 

He awoke to Sakura's voice. It was shrill and edged with panic as she called out to him from some undetermined distance. “Sasuke! Are you here? Are you injured? Sasuke!” It was funny, he thought - even 19 years old, even a jounin, Sakura still sounded like a child when she was upset. And, he recalled, over the years, he'd given her plenty of reason to be upset.

 

There was another shinobi walking with her, but he was silent, and Sasuke could not determine which of her teammates he was. He was too tired. His incredible chakra reserves had finally been depleted with the Chidori Current. If he went by the silence alone, he could rule out Naruto as her partner. Sasuke took a few moments to just breathe, and while doing that, tried to anticipate Nara's strategy. He undoubtedly had one, and it was most likely good. He looked up into the night sky and tried to find any of the remaining dead villagers he'd dragged into his service when he'd first found Itachi and Kisame traveling together. There were very few left; the drag on his chakra was almost non-existent. That meant that the bulk of the fighting was nearly done. He found the last few doggedly attacking Kisame. A sudden blur of orange confirmed that Naruto was there too, engaging the missing nin in his usual brash manner. That left the question of whether Sakura was with the shinobi best able to take him out in a physical fight - Hyuuga Neji - or the one best able to manipulate him into the right place to either capture or kill him - Nara Shikamaru. He wasn't sure which he'd rather see.

 

He rolled carefully to his feet, resigned to the fact that he'd be awake when the Konoha nin found him. Swaying slightly, he tried to push some of his hair out of his face and found the first three fingers of his right hand broken in multiple places. He tried to raise his left and found that a kunai in his shoulder kept him from doing so. Groaning low in frustration, he hooked his right thumb through the ring at the end of the kunai and gave it a quick, hard jerk, pulling the blade free with a sickening sucking sound that was thankfully covered mostly by the heavy rain. He bent to pick up Kakashi's tanto and nearly toppled over again. He grit his teeth and wrapped his arms around himself. His entire body throbbed with burning, pulsing fire. He felt certain that if he went down on his knees to rest for a minute, he would not get up again. Everything hurt. His hair hurt. He thought he was probably dying of chakra burnout. If he closed his eyes, that would be it.

 

He took a few hesitant steps over to where Itachi lay and nearly laughed aloud. His brother's head had been sliced clean off, all the tissue cauterized by the electricity burns. While he fought Itachi, Sasuke had felt more powerful even than when he'd had the curse seal. This time it was all his own, and it was not frightening, like the curse seal's power had been. He'd done this alone.

 

And fucking hell, he was paying the price. His muscles screamed in protest as he bent down to pick up his brother's head. He turned and started down the rocky hillside, breathing through clenched teeth. Every step sent knives through his legs. Every step took a little more of his sanity until finally he saw Sakura, her pink hair visible in the dark. He saw Nara beside her and he wanted to throw a fit. His breath came in painful hitching sobs and all he wanted to do was fall down at her feet and beg her to make it stop. But she couldn't; he was sure of it. There were some things medics could not do, and one of those was repair severe damage to muscles due to over-exertion and chakra burnout. He moaned to himself and stared morosely at his brother's head, gripped in white-knuckled fingers. He took a few more steps downhill and lost his footing, sliding and going down on one knee. The sound he made was not pleasant and he was not proud of it. Instantly, he saw Sakura's head snap up.

 

“Sasuke? Are you here? Are you injured?”

 

He squinted and saw Nara standing close to her, looking twitchy. He had an idea. She couldn't help him, but she could knock him out. He would stop hurting if she knocked him out. And if Nara was as twitchy has he looked, he'd probably help without too much prodding. He thought briefly that if he overdid it, they might kill him, rather than just rendering him unconscious. As he pushed himself to his feet and the pain shot up his arms, he decided that was an acceptable solution as well.

 

He closed his eyes and focused what little chakra he'd managed to recoup while he was unconscious into his hands. He performed the seals Orochimaru had taught him and then slapped his hands down against the earth, nearly passing out as pain surged up his arms again and was then dragged back out of him with the ragged flow of chakra. When his hands struck the ground, thunder sounded underneath him and around him. He saw both Sakura and Shikamaru look around quickly, confused. There had been no lightening. He felt the sound waves rumbling under his fingers, his chakra seeking long-gone channels to run along. His mouth tightened in a satisfied smirk. This had been a good place to fight his brother. He heard their voices rise together in alarm as the ground opened up beneath them. They sank up to their waists in mud, instantly trying to get a hold on solid ground to pull themselves out. For the first time, Sasuke heard Nara panic - not for long, and not very loudly, but he imagined it was when dead hands grabbed his legs and tried to pull him down further into the mud. Sasuke didn't blame him; he'd made a similar noise the first time Orochimaru had done it to him. However, it didn't take Nara long to figure out what Sasuke was doing.

 

“He's raising these people with a Sound jutsu!”

 

Sakura shouted something wordless in response and then they were hauling each other out of the mud, cursing and kicking at the bodies that tried to follow them. Knowing that he couldn't maintain his hold on the dead villagers for much longer, he continued to make his way down the slope, keeping his focus by counting each painful step. He heard them speaking softly to each other, and he couldn't make out what they said, but Sakura's voice was louder and she stood away from her squad leader, arms wrapped around herself.

 

“This is monstrous. Tsunade was right to have it sealed away. He shouldn't be able to do this!”

 

Nara spoke again, his voice low and measured, and all the while he looked up directly at Sasuke, watching him approach, probably trying to determine whether he was another dead villager or a different sort of threat.

 

In the three years Sasuke had been back in Konoha living with Kakashi, he'd had perhaps a handful of conversations with the sleepy, lazy Nara. He didn't remember any of them in great detail. He felt distantly guilty about the chuunin exams when Nara was an examiner and Sasuke, still a genin then, had shoved him up against a wall and threatened him with a fist through the chest - directly before his fight. He could have been disqualified for that stunt. As he recalled that had been a really bad day for him. Kakashi had left not long before on a mission to the borderlands, watching Water Country. He hadn't even told Sasuke he was leaving - this the night after they'd first-

 

The other conversations had all been in the last few months, and he really couldn't remember those. His brain had been pretty scrambled by that point. But he knew that they'd been primarily about Sakura. And that was odd because Sasuke made a habit of never entangling himself in Sakura's affairs, mainly because she would find out - being a sharp kunoichi after all - and think that he was interested in her and he wasn't. He kept track of her from a safe distance because she was his former teammate and a sister - sort of. He vaguely remembered that she'd been in trouble - trouble involving Naruto and the Hyuuga clan. It was the very fact that he couldn't remember the details of her trouble that prompted him to ask Nara to sort it out for him, first, because he was better able than Sasuke with his chakra muzzled as it had been and, second, because he'd seen the two of them spending a bit of time together. Or at least, he'd seen her setting Nara's broken nose once, and he seemed to recall that she'd been the one to break it.

 

Whatever the reason for their conversations, Sasuke figured he could trust Nara. The kid was smart as hell and not nearly as lazy as he looked. He reminded Sasuke of Kakashi in that regard. Both appeared to shirk every official duty they had; however, in a pinch, they would risk their lives for friend and village alike. This was most clearly exemplified in Nara's case by the fact that he'd tried to bring Sasuke back home after he'd escaped the village six years ago. And they didn't even like each other - still didn't, honestly.

 

These useless thoughts cleared out of his mind when he heard Naruto shouting in surprise and pain off in the distance. He winced, knowing that Kisame's sword could rip a person apart in very little time. He saw a burst of blue light and guessed that it was Neji's kaiten, though since the sword ate chakra, he didn't suppose that defense would work too many times. He told himself that Hyuuga and Uzumaki together should be able to handle Kisame. And he told himself that he didn't care either way. He'd dealt with Itachi's traveling companion by finding others to fight him.

 

He lost his footing again and dropped Itachi's head, watching helplessly as it rolled the rest of the way down the hill and ran straight into Nara's shin. If he hadn't been doubled over in pain, he would have laughed out loud at the sight of Konoha's Number One Coward leaping back a pace and then tentatively rolling the head over with his heel. Sakura was shouting at her teammate, saying it was Sasuke's head, that he was dead. Nara didn't look convinced, bending over to examine what Sasuke had dropped. He sank down to one knee.

 

“No, Sakura, it's not him.”

 

Sasuke decided that right then was as good a time as any to make an entrance. He shuffled forward, watching in slight amusement as his fellow shinobi backed away from him until they were on solid rocky ground. As he passed over the villagers struggling in their mass grave, he released the jutsu, feeling the drag on his chakra cease. Without having to think too hard, he knew the other villagers had all been destroyed. Just as well - he needed every bit of chakra he could get.

 

He must have really looked like a monster because, Sakura squinted as he approached. “Sasuke?” She sounded as though she didn't recognize him. “Are you okay?” His jaw was clenched so tightly that he didn't reply.

 

Nara took a step toward him. “Hey, Uchiha, why don't you call off those villagers attacking out team? They're not helping our situation.” Dark eyes slid over him. “Or yours, clearly.”

 

He took a slow steadying breath and forced his mouth into motion. "They're all gone. Only Itachi's companion is left. They're fighting him now. Are you here to kill me?"

 

They both went still. Sasuke smirked to himself. He wondered exactly what their orders were. Nara shrugged stiffly.

 

“N-no. Probably not.”

 

The words jerked out of him before he could haul them back. His voice was broken and jagged. “Why not?” he shouted. He wasn't at all sure whether he meant to sound that desperate. He let downward momentum as well as his cramped muscles carry him straight into the shinobi he faced. He brought Kakashi's tanto down with terrible force, relief slipping coolly through his muscles as Nara stepped into the strike, catching the blade on the reinforced plate of his glove. He needed help remaining upright.

 

"If I try to kill you, or if I kill her, if I rip this through her gut, will you kill me then?" Sasuke could see the whites of Nara's eyes, and even in the dark, he saw dark irises slide to the side. Next to him, Sakura's face was set and hard.

 

Sasuke heard Nara's teeth grind together. “Why are you being such a pain?”

 

“You don't think I'm serious?”

 

His gaze turned forward again. “Not really, no,” he said. He sounded as though he were trying for nonchalance.

 

“Oh, for the love of- HAH!” Sasuke lurched back, slicing Nara's hand in the process, as Sakura - tired of their posturing - slammed her fist into the earth, opening a muddy pit between them. He took a few halting steps backward and fell into a crouch, watching Sakura drag her teammate out of the mud by his collar. All-in-all, he thought his plan was working quite nicely, though he wasn't sure what to think about Nara not believing his lethal intent. Honestly, he didn't have any. But if he could just piss them off enough to-

 

With effort, he straightened, watching them speak softly to each other, all the while keeping him in their sights. He watched her heal Nara's hand and then look away quickly, vanishing as though she'd never been there. Sasuke closed his eyes and felt her reappear several meters to his left. She had to realize that he knew where she was. She was waiting for something - waiting for her squad leader to make a move, which he did a moment later.

 

Nara leaped neatly over the hole and took a few casual steps toward him, hands shoved in his pockets. Right then, his posture reminded Sasuke so much of Kakashi that he had to blink a few times to reassure himself that the silhouette was all wrong. Kakashi was taller and his hair stood out ghostly pale, even in the dark, even in the rain.

 

"Is that Kakashi's blade?"

 

Sasuke's fingers tightened involuntarily. It sent a spasm of pain up his arm and he took a slow breath, forcing his fingers to relax."Yes," he hissed. "Is he dead?"

 

"No. He's in the hospital. Did you try to kill him? Would you do that to him?" Sasuke hesitated then, just for a moment, wondering what Nara meant by that, and what he knew about them. He was more observant than the average shinobi.

 

"Kakashi brought this on himself."

 

"Because he trusted you." Sasuke's eyes narrowed. Nara definitely knew something.

 

"His mistake."

 

He shrugged again and changed the subject, eyes returning to Itachi's grizzly remains. "I see you've succeeded in killing your brother. That must have been quite a fight. You look like hell."

 

Sasuke's lips twitched in the beginning of a grin. Oddly, he felt like boasting. "He thought he had me, thought he'd won. He told me I still didn't hate him enough. Do you know what I said to him?"

 

"I don't, but I imagine you're going to tell me." It was as though they were having a conversation after training, or over lunch or something equally casual.

 

"I said, 'This isn't about you and it hasn't been about hate for a long time. You are half the person I am.'"

 

"And then you cut off his head, making him even less of a person. That's pretty funny, if you like that kind of humor." A heavy pause. "Which I imagine you do."

 

"You imagine correctly."

 

Nara shifted his weight to the other foot and removed his hand from his pocket, rubbing the back of his head. He appeared to be readying himself for something unpleasant. "Look, do you want to know our real mission orders, huh, Uchiha? You want to hear what Granny Tsunade told us before we headed out to look for your lame ass... again? She told us to bring you home if we could, but to worry about ourselves first. She values our lives over yours. She wants us to come home more than you. If you're not salvageable, Uchiha, we're supposed to put you down like some rabid animal." Sasuke remembered then that he'd never liked Nara's voice, or his face really. He sounded and looked pinched. "Is that what you want? The four of us here, we're the only ones in the village who'd come after you. The only other is in a hospital bed with a shattered hip. Everyone else would rather see you dead. But not us. We're here in the fucking rain and mud. Naruto's getting shredded by that shark freak's sword. And you're bringing people back from the dead. This is probably the worst day of my life and it's your fault."

 

Sasuke ran Nara's list of people who would come for him against his own. It was a pretty close match, barring Hyuuga Neji. The last time he'd come looking for Sasuke, he'd nearly been killed, or so Sasuke had been told when he'd returned. He didn't know why Neji was here. Maybe it had to do with the trouble Sakura was in with Naruto and the Hyuuga Clan. He really needed to get his facts straightened out when he got home.

 

"Why are you talking to me?" Sasuke asked finally. "I know where Sakura is; I know she's close. Why are you doing such a poor job of distracting me?" Nara had something in his hand, was fingering it nervously. Sasuke readied himself for a strike he could feel coming.

 

"I'm not trying to distract you. I just had to get that off my chest." Nara was smiling when he said that. He tossed whatever he had in his hand - a flash tag - into the sky. It exploded in a brilliant shower of light and gold sparks. Sasuke closed his eyes against the brightness and then wondered at the adrenalin rush zinging through him. He didn't think he had any chemicals to spare, but his body moved when he told it to and leaped away from Nara's shadow jutsu. He'd never sparred with him before, never really even seen him spar, but he instinctively knew that he could out-run the kagemane no jutsu. He leaped and spun and twisted away from it as the strangely lit sky began to darken. He chanced a look at Nara, and the jounin had not moved. Only his eyes followed Sasuke's erratic movements. He looked very patient, which made Sasuke uneasy. The power of the jutsu was weakening, and still Nara did not look concerned. Sasuke realized that he was playing right into the strategist's hands - he just didn't know how, exactly. As the light finally faded, his short adrenalin burst gave out and his legs cramped. He dropped to the ground, fear gripping his insides as he waited for inevitable paralysis - or perhaps Sakura's attack. Nara'd had no intention of catching him with his shadow; he'd only wanted to tire him out so that they could-

 

He formed the seals in the blink of an eye, bringing his fingers to his lips and blowing between them. His Great Fireball was pretty pathetic by Uchiha standards, but then, he was feeling pretty pathetic at the moment, and he didn't want to kill Nara anyway. Still he was impressed with the size of the flame he blew from between his fingers, given the circumstances. He expected Nara to leap away from it, ending the shadow jutsu. His mouth fell open when he saw his opponent remain perfectly still. He saw the jounin's hair catch fire, saw flames licking at his skin and clothes. He moved to take a step forward and found that he could not. Momentarily confused, he looked down to see his feet firmly stuck to the ground, held in place by a strong, solid shadow. The ball of flame provided all the light it needed to grab him and hold him. He saw Nara jerk his hand away from his mouth and Sasuke was forced to do the same, effectively ending both jutsu as the flames went out and the shadow dissolved. He saw Nara fall to the ground the instant before Sakura tackled him, her fist connecting with his cheek bone.

 

He went down underneath her, her voice harsh and child-like in his ears. “I hate you! God-dammit, why are you like this! What is wrong with you?” She had her hands around his neck, choking him. His plan had worked quite well by the looks of it.

 

A few paces away he heard Nara coughing, trying to speak. Nara's plan had worked quite well, too, though he'd gotten the shit end of the stick. “Sakura, don't kill him.” His voice was rough and raw.

 

“I'm not,” she gritted above him. “I'm cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain until he passes out.”

 

“Erm... that doesn't sound-”

 

“Shut up!” she shouted. Sasuke clutched weakly at her arms. He didn't want to die. He was no longer an avenger and he didn't want to die. Sakura was crying. She pressed down harder and he tried to roll away, but with her bare hands, she would always be stronger than him.”Oh god,” she keened. “Shika, I hate him so much.” He didn't blame her for that, but he couldn't very well apologize for all the trouble he'd caused her when she was crushing his windpipe.

 

He opened his eyes wide when he felt another's approach. Their chakra was carefully masked, and he didn't recognize the stride either. The person was limping as they came near, and then he heard Nara's rough voice again. “Kakashi.... how did you get here?”

 

“I ran.” He recognized that tone and his battered lips twisted in a small smile. He looked up into Sakura's eyes and could only see blurred shadows. Her fingers had loosened slightly with the force of her crying and they loosened further when Kakashi loomed over them both. He was dimly able to make out gloved hands reaching down to pull Sakura off him. Then his familiar voice rumbled, “You should take care of your teammate, Sakura. I'll handle this.” She clutched at him one more time but only to squeeze his hand. Unfortunately, it was the one with the broken fingers. He hissed in pain and jerked his hand free. Then he heard her splashing through puddles to get to her squad leader.

 

Gentle fingers prodded his throat, feeling around for serious damage. “I think she probably would have killed you,” he said, voice deadly serious.

 

Sasuke nodded and struggled to speak. “I attacked her squad leader.”

 

“Oh, was that all?”

 

In the 24 odd hours he'd been gone, Sasuke had missed Kakashi's easy sarcasm. “There may have been a few other things,” he whispered.

 

Kakashi huffed a small laugh. “Do you think you'll be able to make it home in this state? Sakura has her work cut out for her. Between Shikamaru's burns and Naruto's injuries, she may not be able to do much for you.”

 

He shrugged and then winced. “If I can sleep the whole way, sure.”

 

He heard his former teammate's approach and groaned. Naruto's voice was abrasive and loud as ever. “Can you see them, Neji?” He didn't catch the Hyuuga's response. “Can't we go any faster? Granny Chiyo was way faster.”

 

“She wasn't carrying you.”

 

“No, but she was really old. Come on, Neji, I wanna see what's going on.”

 

Sasuke's attention returned to the man leaning over him as he silently checked Sasuke's battered body for injury. He opened his mouth to tell Kakashi what he'd told Itachi just before their battle ended. He'd wanted so badly to share the excitement of victory, to tell Kakashi everything that had happened, but he was far too tired and oddly shy about it now. He didn't want to tell his lover the real reason he was able to kill Itachi. Verbal expression of that sort would be too difficult... and embarrassing. Instead he tried to help as best he could when Kakashi pulled him into a sitting position, leaning heavily on the man's arms and chest. They rested like that, listening to Sakura scold Shikamaru for his stupid plan that had worked far too well, and waiting for Naruto and Neji to find them.

 

Just as Sasuke was about to drift off to sleep, a muscle spasm in his thigh jerked him awake. He flinched and glanced around quickly. Finding no visible threat, he massaged his cramping muscle and chanced a look back at Kakashi.

 

“So... how's your hip?”

 

“Blazing, unceasing agony. Tsunade was in a hurry when she fixed it.”

 

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”