Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Untitled ❯ One-Shot

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

At night, the curse seal reigned over Sasuke.

Kakashi had noticed immediately. Sasuke wouldn't make a sound, but he'd begin to shift and writhe, in the throes of nightmare. The curse seal, or at least what he thought was the curse seal, would appear on his skin, covering more and more of his pale skin until the sun came up and the marks subsided.

For a day or three, Kakashi wasn't overly concerned. He knew from Anko's reports that the Tenfuuin was tied to emotions and Sasuke's subconscious was like a boiling pot covered by a heavy lid. The only time the next-to-last Uchiha ever released those bitter currents was in dreams and so long as it didn't seem to be actually breaking his seal or infecting his body, Kakashi wasn't going to do anything about it.

But Kakashi'd never seen the curse seal look quite like this. Instead of the usual random ,inky brushstrokes spreading from the Tenfuuin, these were paler, slowly appearing like faint bruises on the skin in set formal patterns. It didn't look like anything Kakashi had ever seen before.

Then again, there was no precedent for Uchiha Sasuke in Konoha's history. No one could control an unshielded curse seal, and certainly not if it had already activated. Oh, he knew Anko had a modicum control over hers, but she had already been infected to the point that her seal had reached level two. Sasuke should never have been able to push back his curse seal during those preliminaries of the Third Exam. Yet he had.

Kakashi mused. Perhaps it isn't Sasuke. It could just be that my seal is fading; this isn't something I've had to use for a while. He leaned forward to try to get a glimpse at his seal.

"Sasuke?"

No response.

"Sasuke!"

Only quiet, almost inaudible breathing.

"SASUKE!"

Satisfied that his student really was deeply asleep (and tickled by the trust the antisocial Uchiha was placing in him), Kakashi reached out to move the collar of Sasuke's shirt.

He was tired. Although only a genin, training Sasuke definitely pushed Kakashi's limits. He never wanted to stop and even at rest he would endlessly quiz Kakashi, openly about the fight his sensei had witnessed between Gaara and Lee, subtly about darker matters like his Sharingan and ANBU. (Well, subtle for Sasuke. Kakashi easily avoided those queries.) Anyway, that was the only excuse Kakashi had for not dodging the kunai aimed at his face. It clanged against Kakashi's hitae-ate and knocked the small metal plate off. Two red Sharingan eyes stared into an equally surprised, mismatched set.

Kakashi was only vaguely aware of the fading curse marks, sinking into the Uchiha's pale skin like smoke.

Sasuke leaned back, put away the kunai and closed his eyes. "What do you want?" he growled. When he opened his eyes again, they had returned to their usual midnight blue.

"Take off your shirt."

The student gave his teacher an odd look. "No, pervert!"

"Wait, wait, I didn't mean it like that . . . " One grey eye closed lazily, while a free hand searched the ground for the fallen accessory. "I just want to check my seal again. I think it might be breaking and we wouldn't want that to happen."

Sasuke stared at him and Kakashi wondered if he knew just how accusatory he looked. Sasuke hadn't even been born when Kakashi had 'acquired' his Sharingan, hadn't even known that the Hatake had one until they faced Zabuza, yet the expression on his face was equally cold and calculating. Finally satisfied, though not completely without suspicion, the teenager pulled back the collar of his shirt.

Nope, the seal was still intact. That was a relief to know, but it left Kakashi with the unsolved mystery of the evolving seal. "I think it's time to cut the training short."

"What? Why?"

"Something strange is happening to your curse seal. I want Sandaime-sama to have a look at it."

"NO!"

The older man mentally flinched from the shout, but outwardly did nothing. "This could be serious Sasuke and could-"

"I said NO!" he was suddenly treated to the quick smirk that the black-haired genin so often gave his shortest teammate. "I don't think you're right about this."

"And I think I would know far more about this than you do. If I say we should go back, we're going back."

"You've been wrong about this before."

Kakashi's thoughts drifted away. Eyes cannot express emotion. They can only close and shift. The pupil can shrink and widen, but you need to see the entire face to truly read a person. How can he put such hunger into a gaze, when his entire face is like a porcelain mask?

"Okay, we won't go back. On one condition." Gai would have his head for this if he ever found out, but what the Green Flower of Konoha didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"What type of condition?"

"Something like what I did during the preliminaries. As long as your Tenfuuin doesn't activate or break the seal I put over it, we can stay until you master the Chidori. The moment you do, we see the Hokage immediately. If he says to stop, we stop and I pull you out of the exam." Sasuke flinched at that. "Of course, that's only if you can perform the Chidori. That should give us a plenty of time."

"It's close old man, no matter what you think." For a moment, Sasuke was quiet. "What happens if any of those things do happen?"

"Then we go back, I pull you out of the exam and you spend the rest of the month in the hospital getting tested. No sneaking out this time, I'll assign two ANBUs to follow you everywhere."

Sasuke said nothing. But he smirked up at his teacher.

Once again, Kakashi wondered what he had gotten himself into.