A/N: Sorry for the delay. Again, this is a drabble series, so the chapter's short, but there's been a request for me to post discarded scenes - so those will be up on tumblr in a day or so. (They've been discarded for a reason though, so they aren't polished).

Also, we're dealing with mindscape junk, so this chapter's trippy. We won't be jumping back in time after this.

...soooo remember when Sasuke in the hospital with Kakashi and the whole Legilimens thing?

Act VI

Reflection.

Now: Sasuke/Severus

With no memory of having closed his eyes, Sasuke opened them to a world as empty as the head Kakashi often pretended to have.

The place suited that jester of a teacher.

The floor stretched out in every direction that he turned. And somehow, this was all too unsurprising. It would figure that the results of legilimancy were different here.

Something made him looked back down, at his sandaled feet.

He let out a breath of idle amusement.

Underneath the underneath – wasn't that what he'd always taught?

With another look at the ground, he crossed his arms in a basic guard position and held his breath. Redirecting his chakra to the soles of his feet, as if he was about to step onto water, he didn't even have to wait, before he plunged through waters that stung his eyes.

His hair drifted upwards, and for a moment, he was suspended amid bubbles and shafts of random light. Then, gravity tugged with gleeful abruptness and he was stumbling forward, water sloughing off of him in sheets.

And so, blinking away the water that dripped off dry hair, it took him a moment to register that he was no longer alone. Hurriedly, he stepped away from the presence beside him just as a sense of horror pressed down, causing him to reflexively raise both shoulders. Despite himself, instead of facing and assessing who it was that stood at his shoulder, he found himself turning to the other side to see a girl, roughly his age, hanging suspended about a meter off the ground.

Bitter regret prickled at the tip of his tongue, and he was inhaling even as the presence – presences staggered backward. The silence popped and though he could hear the shrieks that reminded him of nails on chalkboard, all he could really see was the accusatory gaze of the girl in front of him.

Blood.

Lily's blood was on his hands. And now the dancing shadows that obscured her face dimmed, revealing a purple stripe on each cheek, and –

These weren't his thoughts. Snape gasped, wrenching his focus around to see who it was beside him; it had to be Kakashi, who else could it be –

– and then he was dry heaving, curling both inward and away and just tugging at what he could, because he was bound, spread-eagled, and there was something piercing his stomach, his chest, and he couldn't fall, not yet, because he was truly, hatefully, unable to fall and he could not–

focus.

With a snarl, he choked off his thoughts and held his breath, while pulling up every mental shield he could recall.

And then the pain was gone. He took a step backward, absently noting the crunch of grass beneath his foot as he opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by indistinct figures.

Oddly, he was reminded of a shattered mirror, except the edges of the fragments weren't visible.

Half the humanoid figures were on the ground. Each apparition was paired with another, suspended a meter above and away. Like clockwork, the figures on the ground would stumble forward, like a sea of broken puppets, only gaining features and horrific grace as they slid their swords into the figures before them (-where he had been).

The swords would turn into arms, buried in a torso, right before the identities of the attackers would change. Features melting seamlessly into their previous victim as the attacker stumbled back and everything blurred.

Sasuke stared, not quite comprehending, but comprehending at the same time. He exhaled, turning so that the Kakashi that stumbled back would miss his shoulder, and watch as his sensei's single eye widened as the chidori died by his side.

Sasuke swiveled and managed to catch the change in full this time, as the girl who floated in the air grew and lengthened. Her arms rose and lengthened, wide sleeves bunching and twisting to form ropes that tied both arms to wooden posts. Her chin-length hair drifted up and greyed until he was staring into the mismatched eyes of his sensei as they widened in pain and shock.

Sasuke twisted his head to the side, to see the exact same scene, but from a different angle. Standing next to Kakashi's bound legs, Sasuke looked up to confirm the attacker's identity as the man slowly slid the sword deeper into Kakashi's chest.

It was his brother.

Familiar features set in an unreadable expression stared up his sensei. There was no hate or judgement. There was no derision even as Itachi finally stopped his press forward and his features broadened into the uncomprehending features of his teacher again.

Exhale.

Again, Kakashi staggered back to stare up at a girl with a bleeding chest.

Inhale.

And then he was up there, taking her place to be stabbed by Itachi.

It was a melding of two memories, looped in time and repeated in space out as far as the eye could see.

It didn't bode well for Kakashi's mind.

Sasuke reached out, then hesitated and stared sightlessly in thought as Itachi lunged past his outstretched hand. As far as he could tell, Kakashi was only in such a dire predicament because Itachi had constructed the stimuli in such a way as to be endlessly overwhelming, stitching together old wounds that were had been readily reopened by habit of guilty obsession with the repeatedly jarring sensation of new pain.

That was to say, it was a deluge of sensation that Kakashi's mind simply could not process as it fixated on the pain, now out of instinct.

This wasn't Itachi's style. This was using a hammer to punch a hole when a needle would suffice.

Gathering his magic, he stepped forward and extended his palm further out so that his sensei would stumble back into it.

The impediment curse should suffice. Theoretically.

However, his index finger had only grazed the rough fabric of Kakashi's flak jacket when his surrounding shuddered. Without warning, he was plummeting down. Distractedly, he noted that he had managed to cast the curse before he had dropped.

Instinctively, he pulled his magic close as the sensation of freefall ended. Unlike with deeper thoughts, as in introspection or reflection, and the recall of memories, it was clear from the lack of ground that he was swimming around in surface thoughts.

Apprehensively, he stretched out his awareness, uncurling out. Mindscapes, deep ones in the middle of agonized turmoil, didn't just vanish. And yet, if he didn't know better, he was almost certain that he was sitting in someone else's mind.

He braced himself as he aligned himself with the senses and pushed. As always, sensation came first. He felt the chill first, followed by the rough surface of bark below his fingertips, and then the warm air of his own breath ghosting back over his face.

A mask?

He heard leaves rustled with the wind just as brightness burst in his mind's eye. His vision cleared, softening down into the sight of a shadow above murky water. He was reminded of the discomfiting nature of lurking in the background of the mind as he felt his single eye blink instead of pulling back, as he would have liked to do as the scent of sulfur finally registered.

Marshlands? How was he in the marshlands? He felt the wind blow again, and revised his earlier estimation of leaves to reeds.

This was not in Konoha. He was not in Kakashi, which meant that this was either the result of the interaction between shinobi arts and magic, or Kakashi's mind was connected to someone from out of the village.

He wasn't sure which option he liked less.

A/N Cont: Was it clear whoes mind he's in?

This'll be the last chapter with direct replies to reviews since ffnet isn't friendly for chapter edits and i haz grad school. I'll try to PM people instead, but Ao3 will be the easiest way for me to respond. If you don't care about replies, I obviously love your reviews (you guys don't know how much of a pick me up they are).

As always, feel free to poke at me on tumblr.

I'm never giving up my thanks section XD. I just jinxed myself didn't I?

Thanks to: Loner Kid, Wicken25, Reaumer (ooh love the random words!), Kurai Unmei, Moka-girl, yorushihe, Silvanon of the Orchard (my nebulous plan has so far been consistent with ending it before Pein, but we'll see haha. I'm not really sure why my mind jumped to the whole 'Then' and 'Now' type of thing since I normally don't like those in stories myself), Gigapode (yea, trying to tone down the angst fest, though I make no promises when it comes to dark humor), Shining Ducky, Guest (I switched coasts, plus school), Tcolt, chimika (aww, thank you!), Deer-Shifter (Oooh, yes, I'll post the extra scenes on my tumblr, but they're not very published. Thanks for the suggestions!), Noodle Telekinesis, Beloved Daughter, Guest, Elaine du Lac (Errr, does this count as the present? haha, thanks for the vote!), Elise, paragoge (excellent question, and I still haven't decided if I'll ever explain that in the story, but my current head canon is that it's the same energy, just processed differently - kinda like calories for physical activity vs mental activity), Phoenixbat, Viktorius, not the usual baka, laelruin, Moonlight Memories, GraySonofGotham, Sailor Pandabear, Storm Scripter (haha, yea as a reader I hate the jumping back and forth thing. I dunno why my muse insisted on it), Crescent Melody, , Orange3WhiteSkew, Mirthful-Malady (bwahaha, I know right?), vincent1875, Serial Peacekeeper, WRose, Favored, mabidiso (haha, uh, so the 'past' scenes up to this point have been from when Sasuke first gets bitten, and the 'present' scenes started in the hotel clash - so yes that was after the chuunin exams), ksecc1