Day 41: Sun Room

[feartehreaper.livejournal.com]

Haseo's steps were heavy with the weight of righteous anger as he was escorted into the Sun Room, his posture so sullen and reluctant you could almost hear the nostalgic cry of an electric guitar. He was seething, and though perhaps it was a bit harder to be intimidating while wearing the uniform of an insane asylum and flanked by a bored-looking orderly, it was not for lack of trying.

Unfortunately, his nurse seemed unaffected by the act, and even with the cloud of failing to keep "Kai" away from "Peyton" hanging over her, remained determinedly cheerful. She merely said something about receiving a lecture later on, ignored his retorts, and assured him that it would be alright even though his internet stalker was in the same building. For the most part, Haseo tuned her babbling out after that, dismissing it as hopeless.

"...and usually this would be the time children would be taking showers, but you don't have to worry about that right now. Now then, le--"

"Wait. What?"

"Oh, all the children seventeen or under are separated right now while the adults go to the courtyard..."

"Hey, I'm not a kid you old--!"

"Oh of course you aren't dear, but you're not eighteen yet either, now are you?"

Haseo resisted the urge to do something rash, literally biting his tongue to keep quiet. But upon having the bulletin board pointed out to him, he shrugged off his anger for the most part and headed that way, fully intending to get more answers than he'd had time to receive during breakfast.

Well... at least Endrance is in another shower group, he thought, Thank god.

[Closed to Tsukasa, for now!]

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[sasuke-of-sound.livejournal.com]

More surprises. For a moment there was a retort almost on the tip of Sasuke's tongue, you didn't have to fight your way into a new path in order to avoid killing your best friend yourself, but he managed to swallow it barely in time. That was too much for an outsider to know, even if Kakashi had an Uchiha eye, even if he'd once had an Uchiha student --

Even if he'd once had an Uchiha for a best friend. That explained the eye. Of course, Sasuke had wondered, but ...

It was too eerily reminiscent of Itachi's words. The taking and retaking of life and blood and sight. What would Kakashi think if he learned that the way in which he'd received the mirror-wheel was perhaps not as unique as it might have seemed? And would it change his perspective at all to know that it was this precise tradition, the lifeblood of a best friend and the eyes of a brother, that meant that Sasuke's duty was unfinished? Somewhere in their own world was an enigma that had lived for years after blinding his own brother, and as long as both that man and Sasuke were alive, Sasuke had no other path to walk.

But that was far too much to explain right now, and Kakashi was still telling the same lie he'd told all those years ago.

"My path belongs to Uchiha," Sasuke said after a long pause, but the words were heavy. "That is where it began and that is where it will end. The most I can do now is choose how I will walk it."

His past and his future. Itachi had seen to both. And Naruto and Sakura, for all their misguided and foolish hope, couldn't change that -- shouldn't have had to have a part in it anyway. Naruto had spoken of wanting revenge at breakfast and obviously lacked any idea of what revenge entailed. Both of them were still too naive to really be shinobi, let alone to even try to take up the mantle of vengeance. Kakashi should have been helping them learn that, damn it, not trying to encourage their ridiculousness --

But Sasuke was too tired now to call the man out on it. There was another pause while he tried to work up a suitable explanation for why Itachi's death didn't mean he could take another try at that beautifully impossible world Kakashi kept dangling in front of him, but he couldn't work his mind around the right kind of words and the right kind of tone. And in the end he sat again, sinking into the chair as if pressed down by an invisible force, exhaling a slow, exhausted breath.

"What do you want from me?" Maybe, if Sasuke was really lucky, Kakashi really did have an agenda here, and if Sasuke could just appease it, both man and lies (regrets, but Sasuke refused to have those) would go.