DAY 37: MEN'S SHOWERS (4th Shift)

[mazoku-king.livejournal.com]

There had been an awkward air left between him and Tyki after their conversation. Yuuri knew he wasn't the best at explaining much of anything, and for the tenth time he wondered why Murata wasn't here to answer the difficult questions for him. Everyone had been herded out of the cafeteria after that, and Yuuri had simply followed along in confusion as he headed towards the showers.

Yuuri still hadn't seen Wolfram yet and the young Maou was wondering if the blonde Mazoku was alright. Stretching his head up higher, Yuuri attempted to look over the heads of the other patients around him in an attempt to catch sight of Wolfram. Unfortunately, though, he was unsuccessful.

"Where are you, Wolfram?" He muttered to himself while stepping under the shower's spray. Maybe a shower would help clear his mind.

[Waiting for Wolfram]

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[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

Eyes narrowing slightly, Sai turned to look at Sasuke again. "I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it, Sasuke-kun." Granted, he wasn't a hundred percent sure what the right way really was, but he was fairly sure that wasn't it.

The subject was a difficult one for Sai to handle, and Sasuke was possibly the most difficult person to discuss it with (as had been proven time and time again). The pale ninja fell quiet. What should he say? Naruto would have had plenty of things to argue about. "You and Naruto are both equally stubborn," he said finally.

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

Sasuke snorted, derisive, gingerly switching the sponge to his left hand so he could manage some semblance of scrubbing at his right side. "What's your suggestion?"

The question was mostly rhetorical -- he doubted Sai had one, or at least that Sai had one that Sasuke was willing to consider (it wasn't hard to remember whose side the Konoha-nin was on, after all). There was a pause while Sasuke didn't really expect an answer and Sai didn't really give one, and then the other shinobi spoke again.

Stating the obvious. But Sasuke would be more persistent, ultimately. And one of these days even Naruto had to see the truth. "He's stubborn when he shouldn't be," Sasuke said, decisive, and then with just a hint of accusation. "The people around him encourage it."

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

The smile that appeared on Sai's face then was almost natural. Almost. "Are you sure it doesn't go both ways?" Certain parties would say, after all, that Sasuke was the one being stubborn when he shouldn't be. It wasn't as though his old teammates were trying to stop him from getting revenge on Itachi.

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

"He has no obligation to follow me," Sasuke said. It was an easy answer -- the easiest answer, since he'd tried to work out a decent reason for Naruto to be doing what he was doing and honestly couldn't put together one that made sense. "I'm no brother of his."

Implicitly: the blood that was between them wasn't lifeblood and it wasn't the same blood. The bond had been broken at the Valley of the End; they owed each other nothing.

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

"But he considers you one. In the truest sense of the word." Sai understood that at the very least. The bond Naruto considered himself to have with Sasuke was more than a simple bond of friendship. Sakura had said it first, but he'd seen how the blond acted when it came to the Uchiha.

He closed his eyes, bowing his head to let the water run down the back of his neck. "I had someone very close to me that I also considered a brother in the absence of a real one. It's not an unnatural occurrence." His voice was lower now. He didn't recall how much he'd told Sasuke about his visitor in the stupor he'd been in after it the day before.

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

Sasuke was unsurprised by what Sai said first -- Naruto had said the same thing, years ago, and he'd understood just as much of what brotherhood meant then as he did now. Friendship was just one part of it. Perhaps the least of it.

He was surprised when Sai offered information about himself. It was arguably the first time Sai had done so (Sasuke distinctly remembered questioning the other shinobi when they'd met and facing a neatly blank wall). It was also arguably the first time Sai had spoken of any bonds other than those he had with Team 7 -- and he spoke in the past tense. A dead brother.

"The bond between Naruto and me is broken," Sasuke said, voice flat, almost bored. "The bond that is between Itachi and me still stands, and will until he is dead. That is the way of vengeance."

There was a pause while Sasuke wrung the sponge out and plunged it into the bucket again, not sure how to explain completely. Perhaps -- "How did your brother die?"

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

"Is it really broken if Naruto still holds one end of it?" It was an interesting way of putting things, and Sai had to think over his own words to make sure he was making sense. "You can say you don't want that attachment all you want, but the point is he's still there."

There was another pause between that and his next answer, eyes still closed.

"He died of an illness. Or... he should have." His mind still rejected the idea that somehow Shin had survived, despite his meeting with him the day before. Sasuke was right. It couldn't have been real.

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

"He thinks he's still going to bring back his teammate," Sasuke said, dismissive. "The bond he thinks is still there is one that he keeps with a person who no longer exists."

Naruto was a fool who still couldn't see that things had changed, irrevocably, without hope of reversal. He would, though; Sasuke had to believe at least that much or run the risk of losing any faith he had in the ability of humans to learn.

The next thing Sai said gave him pause, however. Should have? "Are you not sure how he actually died?"

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

Sai shook his head. "No. I saw him die." He raised his head up now, letting the water push his hair back away from his face as he willed himself not to relapse into any of those feelings from the day before. "That's why it didn't make any sense when he appeared as my visitor yesterday."

His hands clasped behind his back, as he thought they might start shaking at any moment. The rest of their conversation was momentarily forgotten, not that he'd been successful on that end at all.

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

... ah. Well, that explained why the Konoha-nin had been so shaken up yesterday. The only other time Sasuke could recall Sai being that emotional had been after Naruto and Sakura had disappeared. It made sense. The fake Fugaku's visit had had an impact on Sasuke, however little he liked to admit it.

"The visitors are fake, or at least not the same people we knew," Sasuke said, with a conviction that he had forced himself to hold. Even if his visitor had been human and alike in every way to Fugaku, that man hadn't been the real one. "I was also visited by someone long dead, but there is no way that he could have bought into the stories of this place."

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

Having been brainwashed himself for a night, Sai knew that choosing to buy into the lies wasn't always an option. It could be forced onto you. Though the reasons why it was permanent with some and not others was still a confusing matter.

Still, he was willing to believe what Sasuke said if only because it was the easier answer for now. The thought that Shin could somehow be alive... No. It couldn't be the same boy, no matter what he said. He had to believe that or he'd constantly be questioning his actions while he was here. That was the reason they brought along false friends, wasn't it? To confuse them and make them question their existence?

"Yes. Yes, you're right."

[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

Sai seemed to agree easily enough. It made the most sense, really, that their lives weren't lies (if they were delusions, it made no sense that so many people could possibly share the exact same ones). Besides ...

"And the night staff know the truth," Sasuke said after a long pause, voice as carefully blank as he could possibly make it. "The doctor who blinded me knew of the Sharingan."

It was the first (and the most) he'd ever admitted about the conversation that had taken place when he'd been blinded. But it was just another piece of concrete evidence that Landel was lying.