The Echoes of Broken Bones by Crimson Nightmare
Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. Don't sue.
Pairing: Sasuke x Kakashi (In the order of SEME x UKE!!! Yes, that order, don't like, don't read!!!)
Sasuke here is a very different Sasuke because he's all GROWN UP! At very least 20 years old. Therefore, I was able to pin him as a character developed in a very different way. To many it may seem OOC, but I remind you: I put him through a lot. Thus, the concluding dynamic between Sasuke and Kakashi would be Kakashi as uke and Sasuke as seme. I AM aware of how old Kakashi will be, but in my settings, his appearances don't change, and his personality certainly won't change either. Copish?
Warnings: Yaoi (duh!) – male/male sexual relationship, a bit of blood and gore, a bit of coarse language, … oh yes, and a few insane people. Mentions of Major self-mutilation.
Author's Notes: I cannot believe my first piece of Kakashi-uke writing is this pairing. I've always thought it would be YondaimexKakashi first. Technically it is, but it was posted and it sucked. That's okay, this pairing is interesting, though it is new to me.Read at your own discretion. There are notes at the end.
Chapter 1: Peeling Off What's Left of Normality
He took the kunai out of his mouth.
Lips stained with blood from his own gums.
He licked his lips once, twice, and then gave it up.
Sasuke wasn't a suicidal person, never had been. He was a perfectionist. No matter how much he hated the failure that was himself, he would not stop until he got it right.
Suicide would be easy. The coward's way out. Death was fearful to many, but death was easy to a ninja who had years of training to practically live with death. Way too easy.
His father had taught him at the age of six, the fastest way to kill himself, if reasons were sufficient. Just put your hidden kunai into the back of your mouth, his father said as the man placed the blade in between his jaw and skull, place the kunai at the sliver of rotation-gape felt between your skull bone and your jugular bone, and push. One push, and your brainstem breaks completely (1). Voila, you have the quickest death on your hands.
But Sasuke wasn't a suicidal person.
No. Sasuke would live. He had a mission to complete. He had a man to kill. No one. No one will stop him from getting what he wants. No one.
Present: Kakashi
He stared at the snow-covered plant.
"If this is edible, then I'll live for another hour."
"---If this is poisonous..." He licked up the white liquid dripping down the stem, "Then let it kill me anyways."
xxx
Flashback
Konoha was in the phase of healing. Things were damaged. Friends betrayed. A battle was fought. That's that. People mourned. People moved on. Well, most people at least.
There were always few of those weirdoes in life that just couldn't function normally without going through a few rituals.
Smart weirdoes --- but still weirdoes.
Like Asuma, who, habitually, lit cigarettes at five in the morning, claiming it was incense for the dead, who probably needed the cigarettes more than he did – wherever they are now. Like Genma, who never stepped on a crack in the road of the graveyard, because, he said, those were the marks of the battles that took his friends away. He counted the marks, remembering where each crack meant to him. Like Hayate and his weekly rice ball offerings... Like Anko and her need to atone for her sins through savage killings, mission after mission... Like...
Scratch that. There were many weirdoes, especially those who had been Anbu, even just for a while. Those were people who killed on orders and slept in the field of the dead. They lived their days associated with blades and they understood just how fragile human sanity was.
In the eyes of others, these behaviours marked insanity. In their own views, they were preserving their sanity. It was a fine line. No one really pointed out what the marking standard was in the beginning anyways.
Hatake Kakashi did a lot of things that others would call weird. Or insane. Whatever. He didn't keep track. On missions like his current one, he didn't let himself be bothered when his fellow teammate looked at him worriedly as he kneeled before the window on this early morning. Sharing rice with air. His teammate shook his head and got dressed beside him. They had rented a small hotel undercovering as tourists in the Snow country. They still had time before they scout the next market area for information.
"Hey, are you coming?"
The teammate watched as Kakashi nibbled off the last grain of rice on his chopstick and nodded at him. "I'm all ready to go." Kakashi was smiling like that again. Every time he smiled like that, his teammate feels a shiver down his spine, knowing, however vaguely, the countless bloody memories beneath that smile.
xxx
Present
He couldn't see the road. Snow was covering his nose, eyelids, and soaking through his mask. He knew he'd have to take the mask off soon. Ice was forming on the soaked material, and it would tear his skin along with it if he tried to peel it off. It's been three days since he last ate. Kakashi was beginning to wonder if he had been travelling in a direction opposite of Konoha.
'Wonder why it snows so hard these days. Of all the convenient times to snow, it has to snow on a long-term mission. On MY long-term mission.' He could only plow through the storm, looking for solid ground to step on for his next step. Ice could crack underneath him anytime soon. Falling into an icy lake…again…would be...unpleasant.
Stumbling, the man made his weary way over a small snow platform. 'The shoulder is becoming a bother.' He poked sulkily at the blood clots forming between the fabric covering his neck and right shoulder. If this had been a warmer day, he'd be bleeding to death due to artery puncture, but in this icy weather, the wound literally froze in mid-leak and just held the wound there intact and sealed. He couldn't last like this for a few more hours. 'If this road,' he peers down at a small white field below the platform, 'doesn't lead to Konoha, then I'd just freeze to death. That's actually quite nice.' He considered. 'I hear hypothermia feels like sleeping. Kami knows I need it.'
xxx
Flashback
Who knew the Snow nins had jutsus like -that-?! His teammate was now dead and frozen at the bottom of the lake, and he was facing the rest of the sixteen Snow nins that formed a circle around him. They carefully avoided the hole that his teammate had fell in, which has now already formed a new layer of ice over the opening, and tried to drive him onto its edge.
The ice cracked slightly underneath his feet. They all stopped moving. "If you move, you'll die with me at the bottom of this lake." Kakashi spoke slowly, his Sharingen activated and his katana pinned between his thumbs in a seal-ready position. As if on cue, the leading Snow nin began a jutsu exactly at the same time as Kakashi copied it in lightning speed. Both jutsus clashed in midair and cancelled each other with an enormous explosion of ice shards.
Now the ice beneath Kakashi's feet finally broke completely, dumping him more than fifteen meters deep into the ice lake in the snow. He cracked open an eye in the freezing water and saw the rest of the Snow nins falling in through the broken surface as well. Struggling, he tore off his metal gears to lose more weight and swam to the surface, smacking off a few dying Snow nins on the way.
He made it to the surface puffing and panting, clutching at the steel necklace he had tore off from his dead teammate's body at the bottom of the lake a few feet away from where he had landed. He spent a few seconds trying to understand the feeling he had after his failure to save his teammate before giving up the contemplation and performing one last jutsu to kill all others that were left alive at the scene.
Damn these hands. He shuddered in the cold. Can't wash the blood off…
xxx
Present
He made it there by night, almost midnight he assumed randomly. No longer really coherent in mind, he just closed his eyes and blindly felt his way forward in the midst of the snow storm.
Too tired.
Too tired to think.
Too hungry to do more.
Too cold to care.
He's going to die. He knew it. He was sure he'd touch the gate soon, though. Soon. Oh. What's this?
He fingered the object blindly, too tired to get up from his position on the ground and to open his eyes. It was kinda nice. Soft and warm. But wood shouldn't be soft and warm, should it? He was so sure he'd have touched the Gate by now. Unless...
He forced his eyes open.
Sasuke was looking down at him.
'Oh okay.' He felt content and just left it at that. "Yo Sasuke how are you?" He muttered offhandedly.
Wait.
SASUKE was looking DOWN at him?! Down? When did his student look DOWN at him?! He was NOT taller than him!!!
Wait.
Wait.
Wait
SASUKE UCHIHA is here?!
Okay, he was now officially sure that he was dying and hallucinating. This was probably not Konoha and he's probably NOT touching Sasuke's black-material-covered arm.
'the boy who was missing since the last attack on Konoha village; the boy who went off on his own to find power at the age of fourteen; the boy who asked for nothing less than perfection of his own actions; the boy who decided his friends and those who cared about him were never more important than revenge; the boy who hated himself for not achieving perfection no matter how hard he tried; the boy who left…without saying goodbye…' (2)
"I'm sure it's the cold." He wondered out loud.
A deep chuckle.
A chuckle that did not come from Kakashi. "Yeah, it probably is."
That's not his voice.
His own voice wasn't deep like that, or coarse.
Then whose is it, if not Sasuke's?
The world suddenly seemed to be spinning.
Vague feeling of firm, strong arms around him.
Blank. Darkness.
0
To be continued...
(1) – Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT think this is for real, kids. Don't try this if you want to commit suicide, please? Please? I beg you? I made it all up. Technically, if you can find a way to sever the brainstem completely in one quick motion, it would be quick and almost too quick to be painless. BUT usually people do it with a GUN because that should be fast enough. I just can't picture Sasuke with a gun in this setting, so I made him use a kunai. Suicidal people always hesitate and cut shallowly at least a few times until they actually do the final cut, so this is NOT the way you want to go. Not with a knife stabbing the back of your mouth. Please. (sweatdrops)
(2) – Yeah, sure, the boy-who-lived… Hahaha... How lame.
Notes: Well, I don't imagine this to be a popular pairing or anything. Basically because no one's every done it before here. But I hope someone might like it, so please leave a review and tell me what you think. I hope there won't be flames, but even if there is, I won't know what you're trying to accomplish because I warned you over and over again. Flammers will only prove themselves illiterate that way.
Constructive criticism and any other comments are welcomed. I hope you find this interesting at the very least.
Formatting of this site sucks.