Teamwork - chapter 9 part 1

[askerian]

Previous part is on FFnet, i'm too lazy to link back to the one on eljay. *is bad asuka* Just hit the tags or something. >___>;;

And, I just realized my bitching about what I don't like about I just wrote tends to spoil people and/or give them a bias coming in that they might not have had otherwise, so if you want to see the bitching/crit-begging, highlight the gray bar, and if not then just ignore it.
Okay, this one part = DILEMMA. On one hand, as a rule Naruto is optimistic and bounces back fast.

On the other hand, it's not everyday he stabs a cute kid through the guts à la pinned butterfly and bites Sakura to the point he cracks her forearm in the middle of a rape attempt and then proceeds to threaten Sasuke with also-rape and face-eating, because that shit cake totally needed a rotting apple core on top.

First Tifa and now Naruto, I'm so saturated with guilting characters it's coming out of my ears aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhhh. DX So, I can't judge whether it's too much or not. I wouldn't be adverse to suggestions à la "this sentence isn't exactly necessary and might even be kind of overkill, you could totally trim it out!" My word count would cry, but.



None of them would hand him a mirror, and strangely enough the one in the bathroom attached to his and Sasuke's hospital room had recently had a little accident; but he had slept all night and most of the next day, and by next evening, with darkness as a backdrop, the windowpane reflected enough for his purposes.

The seal was faded out again. He was alone in his mind. (He'd made sure. Triple-sure.) He hadn't been using chakra today. He wasn't angry. (Just exhausted.)

His eyes were blue again -- their normal shade as far as he could tell, not that he could be sure without a real mirror.

His pupils stayed cat-slices.

Wordlessly, Sasuke stalked his way around Naruto's bed, closed the blinds with a loud snap. Naruto looked down at his hands instead.

At least Sasuke didn't... well. There was a reason Naruto had waited until Sakura left the room before he dragged himself to the edge of his bed to check. Every time she met his eyes, she ... twitched. Sasuke at least didn't seem to notice. Or care, either or.

Sasuke was limping, back mended but still stiff; all muscle and ligament tears were healed, though the scar tissue was still frail, but they hadn't bothered with the soreness and bruises. Likely Sasuke hadn't asked. 'A real ninja needs to know how to function through discomfort and pain', or something.

"We can turn off the ceiling light," Sasuke said. His voice was completely neutral. That was strange.

Naruto realized he'd been rubbing his eyes again and dropped his hand. He swung his legs back on his mattress, pushed himself up to press his back to the headboard. "I'm fine. It doesn't hurt."

It didn't. Just felt a little tight for a couple of seconds when lights switched on or off. The doctor had said his eyes were working fine.

He hadn't said anything about how likely the pupils were to go back to their normal shape. Whatever. Naruto wasn't blind, so it didn't matter.

Naruto was a murderer.

Naruto was a murderer who couldn't even manage to murder the right person, the evil one. He killed children.

He stared down at his hands again. Got the nail clipper. He'd already trimmed them earlier -- the claws had retracted, but his nails had still been a bit too pointy.

They still were. Clip, clip. Ow. Bit too short there; it stung. He kept going on to the other nails, painstakingly.

"You've got debriefing in twenty-five minutes," Sasuke said, not really looking at him.

Naruto grunted an acknowledgement. It was something they both knew.

Seemed like Sasuke wanted him to talk. Naruto didn't want to. He'd kind of assumed Sasuke didn't want to talk either; he hadn't said a word since Naruto woke up, probably longer than that.

Itachi. Of course. Naruto remembered the man being there, and he should have reacted more because he hated Itachi on principle, but none of his reasons why were as immediate as Gaara's limp body thrown over a big blue shoulder all casual-like.

Naruto wanted... he didn't know. To ask Sasuke if he was okay. (Sasuke wasn't.) Ask what had happened (while Naruto was busy going crazy, trying to cancel his innocent-murder with an evil-person-murder, as if two wrongs had ever made a right), ask if there was anything Naruto could do, maybe. (Sasuke would say no, and then Naruto would sit on him and make him... and say...)

Naruto was a murderer of children.

"Fucking stop it with that nail clipper!"

Naruto blinked as Sasuke backhanded it out of his hand. He was standing by Naruto's bed now, looming. Naruto wasn't sure where the anger was coming from.

Sasuke probably expected a 'what did you do that for' but it was pretty obvious why. Naruto looked away. "I don't want to fight."

"I don't give a shit what you want! You're getting on my nerves."

He felt a twinge of -- anger? Offense? It reminded him a little of forbidding Sasuke to challenge him because if Sasuke tried, he would hurt him for real. No play-fighting, no equal grounds. Just 'how dare you, bitch.' He squeezed his eyes closed and turned his head away, stuffing the feeling away.

There was silence for a little while, Sasuke's stare heavy.

"Just -- be normal already. I--"

He turned his back then, shoulders just a little hunched. Naruto could almost hear the words he'd wanted to say. 'I need you to be normal.'

"...Sorry." He rubbed his eyes again. They burned. The light maybe. Yeah.

Shit.

"Sorry."

"Shut up," Sasuke replied, back still turned. Now he sounded exhausted.

Naruto made a little noise of acknowledgement, because Sasuke didn't really want him to shut up, there were just things he didn't want to hear.

Just seemed like anything he could have said fell into that category, so never mind.

"Man, you look like somebody just died!"

Naruto's head jerked up. There was a guy in the doorway, sitting in a wheelchair. Dark skin, moss-green hair. Naruto stared at him for a couple of seconds before he remembered where he knew him from. Right -- one of the members of the Grass Country summoner team. The guy was grinning wide, staring straight at Naruto with his weird yellow eyes.

He didn't have fangs, but it still felt like his grin was full of them. Naruto couldn't even pretend it was a friendly expression if he tried.

"Kon. What the hell are you doing here?" Sasuke asked, puzzled, kind of wary.

"Oh, I was just wheeling by. Lots of time to do that now. What with, you know, only having one teammate left to visit me anyway."

Rage thrummed under each flippant word. It took Naruto a moment to really understand the meaning.

"... One of your teammates...?"

"The other guy didn't make it," Sasuke said, tone clipped. Naruto stared at his profile, but Sasuke refused to turn and look at him. If he knew that, why hadn't he told Naruto so?

... Then again, when? Naruto hadn't really had a discussion with anyone since the moment he awoke, apart from the doctor coming to check on him.

So the big guy was dead. The one who'd brushed against him mid-battle, and Naruto had woken up to Sakura's blood in his mouth and a kid pinned to the ground like a butterfly. "... Ah. I'm sorry," he said dutifully, by rote. He didn't know what to feel. It... kind of sucked? But if the guy hadn't done that to Naruto in the first place then nothing would have --

"You killed him, you know."

Naruto stared at him blankly. His "I...What?" was drowned by Sasuke's "What the fuck? No he didn't."

"He kind of did, too."

Sasuke moved closer to the wheelchair, eyes narrow and jaw clenched. "Are you sure you should be out of your room? You're confused. Take any drugs today?"

"Not at all." The green-haired boy grinned again, though it was all in the teeth, nothing in the eyes. He looked at Naruto again. "No, see, you aimed for me."

He tugged open his shirt. His whole chest was encased in bandages, but the edges of raw, ugly scars stretches up to his collarbone and down over his hip, and that was a pretty clear preview of what else was hidden under there, how deep it must have gone.

"Tried to kill me -- slash, show me your guts. Damn near succeeded. Maneki drained himself to save me, and then he didn't have enough juice left to save himself."

Naruto realized he could remember it, with that face in front of him and those words in his ear. Blood, exposed ribs shining ivory in the middle of flayed flesh. So fun, and just what the stupid monkey deserved. Bile rose in his throat.

"He was unlucky," Sasuke retorted in a clipped tone. "That can happen to anyone."

Kon's golden eyes flashed, handsome face going ugly with raw hate. "Not to Maneki it can't."

Suddenly Sasuke's back was blocking Naruto's whole field of vision. "You attacked us first," he said. "None of you can bitch about the consequences."

Kon moved his wheelchair inside the room and to the side so he could meet Naruto's eyes again, and let out a short, barking laugh. "Yeah? Ask me if I give a fuck."

"Your teammate died on you because we were ambushed while we were out of chakra, injured and outnumbered. Why don't you go after the guys who ambushed us when we were escaping -- the ones who actually killed him?"

"We shouldn't have lost to them, we shouldn't have been running away in the first place! And now Maneki is dead," he snarled to Naruto, not even bothering to acknowledge Sasuke anymore. "He was mine and he's dead. Trying to protect us from a monster. I'm not going to let that go."

Sasuke's hands landed on the arms of the wheelchair with jarring force, and he jerked it around to force the boy to face him.

"You think going after Naruto for revenge will change anything? You think -- what, that he'll be less dead then?"

... Sounded almost like he was trying to warn Kon that revenge wouldn't bring him anything good. It was almost funny how ironic that was, coming out of Sasuke's mouth. Naruto chuckled, he couldn't help it.

"You're laughing, you fucking monster," said Kon in disbelief, and his voice came out mingled with hate and something that was almost like admiration.

"You're really messed up, you know," Naruto said, before he could hold the words back. He should have explained he hadn't been laughing at Kon's pain or his desire for revenge, but it had slipped out before the automatic 'sorry'.

"Funny, I never used to be messed up before my teammate died on me."

His teammate. The brief moment of off-beat, twisted amusement died right there. What would it be like to lose one of his teammates? He couldn't get angry at that guy for lashing out, he couldn't say either 'I didn't' or 'I'm sorry'.

It was okay if that guy accused him of murder. One more, one less...

"If you start anything now," Sasuke said, "you'll drag your last teammate into it as well. You okay with getting her killed too?"

Kon chuckled again, though the sneer on his lips made it come out weird. "Careful now, that sounds almost like you're threatening her or something."

"You go for my teammate and I'll go for yours," Sasuke replied, rage barely restrained, all uncaring concealment gone. Fine tremors were running up his arms, tendons jutting out, fingers clenched white-knuckled.

Naruto swallowed. It hurt to hear the anger bare in Sasuke's voice for all to notice. Something that shouldn't have been shown, something that he wouldn't have shown if Itachi wasn't... wasn't so close and making everything so blown-open and raw. Any other time Sasuke would have shown an enemy nothing but cold contempt, and Naruto hated it.

He snatched Sasuke's sleeve. Opened his mouth, to tell him to stand back, stop shielding Naruto when he was hurting too. It was okay. He didn't care if Kon threw insults and threats at his face. He should have but he couldn't even really feel it, it was too much.

"Yeah, that's not something that will ever happen," Kon said, before he could speak. He was looking at Sasuke now, and he was smiling, satisfied. Playful. Cruel. A Kyuubi-face. "Lie about it as much as you want, but you? You're honorable." He said it like an insult, a fatal flaw. "Cold blood? You couldn't."

"Maybe he couldn't," Sakura said in something that was almost a conversational tone. She stopped in the doorway, feet set apart solid and ready. "But I could. And I wouldn't come from the front."

Sakura's left arm was in a cast. They'd had to break and set it again. The cast didn't make her total absence of expression and the coldness of her eyes less convincing.

It made Naruto sick to see her like that. It was all wrong. She was supposed to rage for silly things and then go right back to laughing, and to be a bit smug and temperamental and teasing, and -- and to just be Sakura-chan. She wasn't supposed to be cold-blooded.

"You gave your message. Now leave."

She stepped back to free the way. Kon gave her a long weighing look, and then slowly went, pushing himself back in the corridor. Sakura stepped in the room with her face still frozen, and closed the door slowly, precisely.

Naruto would have preferred her to slam it.

He leaned back down against the headboard, gazing down as Sasuke turned on his heel and stalked to the window. The blinds were still down; Naruto didn't know what he was looking at. He didn't say anything about it. He didn't want to look at anyone else either.

The thing was, he couldn't even manage to mind that Kon considered him a murderer. After what Naruto had done, had allowed to be done, to that kid, that was only what he deserved.

Sakura put down a package she'd been carrying in the crook of her cast on the table, spent a few seconds fussing with it. "... Ino left food for us at the nurse station."

"Ino?" Sasuke asked reluctantly. "I didn't know she was around."

Sakura shrugged, like she hadn't known either, like she didn't really care. Her face was still disturbingly blank. Naruto's eyes slid away.

Sakura had been called out earlier because of the care package, but that wasn't the reason she had gone at all; she'd have asked Kakashi to get it later on if that was all. But now Naruto couldn't make himself ask. The fact that she hadn't told him what she'd found out on her own, right away... It said everything.

"I don't get it," he commented. "Sasuke tried to save them, but..."

Sasuke snorted quietly, arms crossed, face still turned toward the blank window. "Yeah. They'll never forgive me for that."

The conversation died again. He'd hoped Sakura would pick it up and go with it, but she kept fiddling with the little boxes inside Ino's package, lining them up by length and then by width or some other criteria he didn't get.

"He's still in the critical ward," she said, staring down at the boxes. "Status unchanged. That's all I could find out."

Status unchanged meant still dying, just apparently taking his time about it.

Naruto wanted to think it meant the little redhead was going to beat the odds and survive, but the doctor's face when he asked how likely that was...

He hadn't asked again after that.

"...Thanks, Sakura-chan."

Kakashi was going to be there any minute to escort him to the debriefing, so he slipped off his bed and went to splash some water on his face.