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Entropy	By : ersatzbeta Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1332 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor do I profit from writing this or any other fanfiction.

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Chapter Twenty Three
When Kakashi rose again, it was nearing noon. He dragged himself to the shower and fought his way into clean clothing afterward. While dressing, he wondered what Sasuke might have made for lunch: something good, no doubt, though whether it could be construed as a thank you or as an apology, Kakashi couldn't begin to guess. He went downstairs.
To his surprise, the kitchen was devoid of anything resembling lunch. And, now that he opened his awareness, he realized that Sasuke wasn't even in the house. He was out in the woods somewhere. Far out, maybe even beyond the boundaries of their training grounds. Kakashi sighed. Apparently, Sasuke had no intentions of making lunch today. Kakashi inspected the fridge and half-smiled at the note there, two bare words neatly lettered in the middle of a piece of paper.

"Eat leftovers," said Kakashi. "Okay then."
He opened the refrigerator, selected a plate that looked edible, and ate it cold while standing in front of the sink. He chased a few stray grains of rice around the edge of the plate, and then he rinsed his plate and left it in the sink. Kakashi muffled a yawn. It hit him at that moment, really, truly hit him, why he was so tired. He was launched into an uncomfortable state of alertness. The events of the night before were like a bad dream. Kakashi scratched his head. They were, in fact, a bad dream, and what had been muddled just minutes before now formed with great clarity in his mind. Sasuke had been ...
The food sat in Kakashi's gut like lead, an unyielding lump, as he again pushed his senses outward and sought Sasuke's chakra. What he found was cause for concern. Sasuke's chakra was disturbed. It should have been smooth and flowing, responding to demands on it as Sasuke performed jutsu. Instead, it was ragged. It fluctuated, spiking without warning one moment and dropping down to practically nonexistent the next. No exercise Kakashi knew would require such action, which suggested the trouble in Sasuke's chakra was involuntary. Kakashi frowned. This was bad and unsettling, but even in this unstable state, Kakashi was sure Sasuke had done nothing dangerous. Yes, his chakra was woefully out of control, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. People had chakra fluxes all the time, didn't they? He forced himself to try to put aside his worries.

A knock came at the door. Kakashi went to answer it, his hands held tight against his body. He padded across the living room to the front of the house. Opening the door, he found Neji standing there.
"Hatake-sempai," said Neji.
Neji looked as collected as ever, not a hair out of place, pale eyes as unreadable as the last time Kakashi had seen him.

"Neji," said Kakashi. "What brings you to our neck of the woods?"
There was something off about this. visit. Kakashi decided. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. It was too convenient, too pat that Neji should show up just when Sasuke was having trouble with his chakra.
"I thought I might visit with Sasuke," said Neji. "Is he available?"
Sasuke's chakra spiked again somewhere in the depths of the woods. Neji's eyes flicked, just for a second, and Kakashi's suspicions were confirmed.
"I'm afraid he's out training," said Kakashi.
He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms.
"Well then," said Neji. "My apologies for disturbing you."
With a polite bow, he took off into the woods. Kakashi wasn't surprised that he headed straight for Sasuke's position.

Closing the door behind him, Kakashi came outside. The sunlight was thin today, no match for the chill, early December air. He stared out after them, as if it were possible to see Neji running through the trees, if he looked hard enough. He gazed upward at the grey clouds driven across the sky. The tree limbs looked black against them, and Kakashi felt goosebumps rise on his arms when he thought about how similar this day was to the night he'd tried to intervene and stop Sasuke from leaving. He shook his head. He reminded himself that this wasn't the same at all. It wasn't the same tree, wasn't even the same season.
Kakashi sat on the edge of the porch and continued to monitor Sasuke's chakra. It was so erratic that he couldn't tell what Sasuke was doing: assuming, of course, that he was doing anything at all. It was impossible to know at the moment. He sighed and fished a book out of his pocket. Kakashi flipped through a few pages before settling to read. The wind soughed through the trees, bringing the scent of far-off snow to his nose. He surveyed the clouds again and wondered if he ought to lay a fire, inside, for when Sasuke came back. Come to think of it, he probably should have done that as soon as he'd gotten up. Kakashi sighed. Today was so beyond the scope of routine that it was almost funny. Restlessly, he turned another page in the book.

Sasuke's chakra continued to saw at his awareness and then it stopped, cut off in mid-flare. Kakashi dropped his book and scrambled upright. He stood a little straighter, tensions he hadn't even been aware of suddenly easing. Kakashi frowned despite this. He had suspicions, but he wouldn't be able to confirm them until later, when Sasuke came back. Kakashi was tempted to chase after him and see what was going on, but he knew neither Sasuke nor Neji would thank him for his concerns. As his whole body attuned itself to listening, senses on tenterhooks, Kakashi read the same paragraph over and over. His patience and hearing strained as he waited for Sasuke.
Hours later, Sasuke came out of the woods. Kakashi was taken aback by the glaring wrongness of it. He set his book carefully to one side, even as his heart started to race. Sasuke was walking. Sasuke never walked when he came back from the training grounds; he flew out of the trees, propelled with chakra-enhanced legs, bouncing from limb to limb and coming to a halt in a cloud of dust and kicked-up leaves. But here Sasuke was, for all the world an ordinary pedestrian. It wore on Kakashi's last nerve.
Sasuke walked up to him, not meeting his eyes ... and Kakashi grabbed him. Sasuke winced under Kakashi's grip. Kakashi rolled up Sasuke's sleeve. Bruises dotted his arm. Kakashi made to check the other, but Sasuke pulled away and, without a word, stripped to the waist, his shirt billowing out behind him. Kakashi drew in a breath far too quickly and noisily for his liking. Sasuke shivered in the wind.
Sasuke was bruised all over: tiny, evenly distributed bruises followed his chakra coils. Kakashi was willing to bet that the spots were all over his body.
"He hit your tenketsu," said Kakashi. "It's a dangerous thing to do, hitting all of them at once."
He struggled to keep himself conversational. He couldn't properly convey. what he felt with those few words. He was angry, yes, very angry that Neji had laid a finger on Sasuke--and really, a finger would be all it would take to permanently harm or even kill, with Neji's particular skills.
"I asked him to," said Sasuke.
This explained nothing that Kakashi wanted to know.
"Oh?" said Kakashi.
His jaw clenched. He forced his breath to be even and slow.
"Yes," said Sasuke.
He frowned, hesitating, clearly trying to articulate his thoughts. Kakashi didn't know if he could be patient enough to wait for Sasuke's explanation.
"I'm feeling better now," said Sasuke.
It was a peace offering, and Kakashi knew it, but he couldn't accept it, not entirely, not when the adrenaline was trickling into his blood and his hearing kept filling so that he couldn't understand what Sasuke was saying. His heart was too loud and he wanted it to slow down, be quiet again.
"And when your tenketsu heal?" said Kakashi. "You know the ANBU will report what happened."
What he didn't say was how terrible the idea made him feel, how helpless he was to stop something bad from happening, should the Hokage decide Sasuke was a clear danger.
"I'm supposed to meditate," said Sasuke. "Neji is confident that, with daily meditation, I will regain my former control within a week or two."
Sasuke's jaw worked up and down and his hands tightened convulsively at his sides. His eyes were shadowed. He looked everywhere but at Kakashi. And then Kakashi understood. He stepped forward and, mindful of the bruises, put his hands on Sasuke's shoulders, rested them gently on him, and pulled him forward an inch.
"It's not your fault," said Kakashi. "Whatever happened to cause this wasn't your fault. And it can be fixed, so that's something."
"Right," said Sasuke. "It can be fixed."
But he still looked down, away from Kakashi, as he went inside.
Kakashi's palms burned from the coldness of Sasuke's skin. The mix of anger and fear Kakashi felt worsened as he sat again on the porch for a minute. He exhaled, trying to calm the roiling in his stomach. He closed his eyes. Nothing had gone wrong. Nothing would happen to Sasuke because nothing bad had happened. He focused on his breathing, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Steeling himself, Kakashi opened his eyes and stood. He followed Sasuke into the house. His hands were still cold.
A/N: Sorry I couldn't get this up before Easter as I had hoped to do. The weekend came much sooner than I had anticipated!
If you notice any weird errors in this chapter (like, say, words that have weird characters or periods out of place or something) please let me know. I had a major, major, major computer problem yesterday and was forced to scan in a paper copy of this chapter. The OCR software that reads the text from the printed/scanned page and converts it into an editable document is mediocre at best and, despite my best efforts, I probably missed some somewhere.
I have bad news, I'm afraid. Because of the computer stuff that happened yesterday, I cannot continue the regular update schedule until the computer is fixed. I happen to be on my backup laptop at the moment, which is just as ancient and cranky as my desktop. The laptop will not work for more than half an hour at a time before it overheats and dies. (The only reason I have this update for you now is that I was almost done editing when the desktop had problems.) I am working on fixing the computer I normally work on, but it is painfully slow and difficult. I have no idea when it will be fixed enough for me to be working on the stories again.
This is not to say that I am giving up writing! It just means that I will have to be even more thoughtful about when I work on stories, to best take advantage of the half-an-hour-on, hour-resting-off schedule that my laptop currently demands. I will update again as soon as I can, and hopefully I will have a clearer idea of when/how/etc. I will be getting more chapters done and posted.
Thank you all for reading! See you again soon, I hope!
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Entropy