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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.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
A/N: For those of you looking for a spectacular fight scene, I'm letting you down gently. Fight scenes are not my strong point, so I tend to cut from the beginning to the outcome. Still, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Chapter Four
Kakashi was unsurprised when Sasuke displayed the same lack of finesse he'd struggled with as a genin. Sasuke must have been more bothered than he'd estimated for him to charge like that, telegraphing his moves and ignoring basic strategy. Kakashi dodged, still on the defensive. Sasuke swept past and skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt. Pebbles spattered to the ground. Sasuke never had been good with strategy. He had power and skill and natural talent, but he didn�t think far enough ahead. Sasuke came at him again and his knuckles grazed Kakashi�s forearm--it would have been a painful punch, had it not landed at a bad angle. Sasuke had wasted his free hit and Kakashi was now free to counter. He grabbed Sasuke�s outstretched arm and threw him over his hip. Sasuke was halfway across the clearing before he recovered. Kakashi watched Sasuke crash into the bushes and push himself up, out, and into another straightforward attack.
Really, Sasuke would have done better with kunai in his hand. Sasuke had grown tall over the years, but Kakashi was still taller and heavier. It was always smarter to wound or disable from a distance before going head to head. Sasuke�s eyes locked into Sharingan, and Kakashi focused, his left eye warming up as he tracked Sasuke�s next move. He hoped Sasuke had enough sense not to really try to kill him, but Sasuke wasn't always a sensible person. At their respective levels, a sparring accident could kill. It wouldn�t be hard to mask less-than-friendly intentions under the guise of an accident, and Kakashi was counting on Sasuke being too emotional to be so clever. Kakashi shrugged, neatly avoiding a flurry of shuriken in the same movement. At least he�d get a decent workout.
An hour later, Kakashi had Sasuke sunk into the ground and pinned under a large rock. Kakashi could feel a migraine nipping at him from Sharingan overuse, and he suspected the pinched look on Sasuke�s face had less to do with losing than with strained optical nerves and overheated chakra pathways. He slid his hitai-ate down with a sigh of relief. It was almost a pity that Sasuke couldn't follow suit.
�You�ve improved, Sasuke,� said Kakashi.
He sat on the boulder and received a small grunt in return. Really, Sasuke had gotten better. Kakashi could feel the tingle of Sasuke�s chakra even now, helping to stay the stone�s weight from crushing him. He had to have been downright economical with his power to have that much left after the way he'd laid into Kakashi with technique after powerful technique.
�You even surprised me once or twice. I didn't know Orochimaru's teaching was so versatile.�
Sasuke didn�t reply.
Kakashi heard a hitch in Sasuke�s breathing. Hmm. Probably time to let him up, though Sasuke could simply have been nervous about revealing original jutsu. Kakashi hopped down and pushed the rock off him. It had been carefully balanced and stabilized with chakra. If Sasuke had been able to shift the massive rock at all, it would have collapsed on him. He would have crushed some bones at best. He might have even killed himself that way, although the ANBU lurking in the trees would have gotten him to the hospital fast enough that he wouldn�t die. Probably. Kakashi wasn�t sure who was on duty, but not all the ANBU took their orders seriously. Impartial guards didn't exist, not with the village still healing from Sasuke's attack.
As soon as the boulder was to the side, the ground around Sasuke cracked and crumbled. He pulled himself out of the hole and dusted himself off. Kakashi wondered if a talk about wardrobe choice was in order. Wearing white was just a stupid move. Basic ninja blacks were really the way to go: dirty or not, they still would look better than Sasuke did. He would never be able to get all the dirt out of his shirt now�or would he? Kakashi watched as Sasuke activated a strange, low-powered lightning jutsu. All the dirt fell out of his clothes.
Kakashi looked closely and smothered a smile. Fine hairs of static electricity pushed through the fibers of the cloth, knocking the dirt out at the same time. When Sasuke reached for a kunai jammed in the ground, the energy dissipated with a crack. Sasuke shook his hand and flexed it. Kakashi could see he fought the urge to suck on the finger that had touched the metal. His hair was starting to float upward, still full of static. Obviously Sasuke hadn�t polished his technique enough. Kakashi filed the idea away for later-- maybe the energy could be encouraged to go up into a cloud, like real lightning?
No matter. Kakashi was impressed with Sasuke�s finely controlled use of chakra. This was nothing like what was needed for a fireball, or even the Chidori. Sasuke had taken his normal brute force and split it infinitely to be able to remove grains of dirt without destroying his clothing. Kakashi wondered where he had learned it. He tried not to think about what practicing the jutsu had involved. No need to think about Sasuke disintegrating his shirt by accident. Really.
�So,� said Kakashi. �Is that jutsu an Uchiha original as well? It must have taken a lot of practice.�
He stroked his chin thoughtfully and tried not to act too interested. Sasuke stiffened and started to gather more stray kunai from the ground. He made a careful circle around Kakashi, never exposing his back. He refused to meet Kakashi's eye.
Kakashi sighed. Picking up kunai was a fair enough excuse to not look up. He chose to let it rest. He started looking for shuriken, always mindful of Sasuke�s position and never leaving the inner circle of space Sasuke was avoiding. After a few tense minutes, Kakashi allowed his back to face Sasuke. Hopefully, giving him the tactical advantage would help him to talk about whatever it was he was tiptoeing around. Kakashi had a sneaking suspicion that he already knew what it was.
They piled up the weapons and sorted through them. They were figuring out whose were which when Sasuke coughed: it was a clear preamble to starting a conversation. Kakashi silently approved. It was smart of him to wait for the ANBU watchers to disband. Kakashi had known, a short while before, when Sasuke had decided to talk: he had straightened up and slowly stopped circling Kakashi. Keeping casual until the ANBU had left had been the hard part.
�You�ve seen the reports, I assume,� said Sasuke.
His voice was subdued, the lack of inflection telling Kakashi that he was trying, and failing, to put distance between his words and himself.
�I�ve read all the reports," said Kakashi. "You mean the prison ones, yes?�
The air under the trees was heavy and green and quiet. Sasuke breathed it deeply into his chest. Kakashi swiped a rag at the kunai in his hand, waiting.
�Yes," said Sasuke. "You know what they did to me.�
Sasuke stopped for a moment. He stared down at a shuriken in his hand, as if this was the first time he'd ever seen one. He turned it over and over, trapping it flat between thumb and palm.
�What they felt they had to do," he said. "It wasn�t �directed at me personally.�
Kakashi could tell that Sasuke had been working this thought over for a long time, forcing logic onto it and fighting the instinct to blame his jailers. Kakashi dropped the kunai into his pouch with a clank. He leafed over the reports in his head. Sasuke had been shackled and sealed and drained of all but the smallest amounts of chakra. The administration had found him to be too difficult to handle otherwise.
Kakashi continued to wipe down kunai. He noticed Sasuke had stopped working. Or had never started. At this very moment, he wasn�t sure if he should encourage him to talk, or, for that matter, if he even wanted Sasuke to continue. Kakashi wished that he hadn�t said anything in the first place.
A bird flapped noisily nearby and Sasuke startled, throwing a kunai in its direction. A vaguely guilty expression flitted across his face.
�Don�t worry,� said Kakashi. �You didn�t hit it.�
Sasuke frowned.
�I meant to,� he said. �And I should have. All that time�there. I fine-tuned my physical control too, not just my chakra.�
Sasuke hunkered down over the pile of weapons again.
Kakashi was quiet for a few more minutes. He wished that Sasuke could have learned to control himself some other way in some other place and time. Kakashi watched the leaves in the canopy up above as they moved and showed off little bits of the sky now and again as a breeze rose and fell. Then his attention fixed on a beetle. It trundled along in the dirt, coming from one direction and going another, its hard shell shining even in the diffuse light on the forest floor.
�Time to go,� Kakashi said.
He stood and stretched. He shoved the rest of the weapons, the ones they hadn't gotten to, into a different bag.
�We�ll take care of these when we get back,� he said.
Sasuke got up and fell in behind Kakashi. Kakashi didn�t like having him at his back, but it was necessary. For the time being, Sasuke was still too paranoid to allow anyone to walk behind him.
Before Kakashi had taken a single step toward Konoha proper, Sasuke cleared his throat. Kakashi didn�t turn around. He'd half expected Sasuke to do something like this, to make one last confession.
�When they came to take me out of my cell, at the end,� he said.
Sasuke�s voice wavered. He coughed and continued, voice softer than before.
�At the end, they actually looked inside the cell," Sasuke said. "Nobody, not one of them, could figure out how I'd managed to scorch the walls.�
The old Sasuke would have been smug about this, Kakashi knew. This Sasuke, though�this Sasuke sounded tired and a little bitter. He had suffered, and it showed. Kakashi knew suffering too. He shook his head. He couldn't afford to feel anything for Sasuke that might blind his judgment of right and wrong. Kakashi needed to be alert and aware in case Sasuke went rogue again. He had to keep empathy out of his mind.

Both men were silent on the way back to Kakashi�s apartment.
That night, Kakashi�s dreams resonated with Sasuke�s painfully concise footnote about his prison sentence. He dreamed of dark places, of past capture and interrogation. White Fang. He dreamed of his time in ANBU. A dizzying maze of corridors and shadows and silence. Flickering torches everywhere. The heavy footfalls of pursuing nin. Dripping water echoed. Or was it blood? Moldering stone passageways blocked by the dead. Obito. Konoha burned and burned. The ashes stung his eye as Sasuke left for Sound. He had to stay quiet! No one could know he was here. He ground his teeth every time a patrol approached. This time, this time the enemy nin would kill him. His fingernails broke on the stones and still he clawed. He had to get out of this place.
When Kakashi woke, covered in sweat and biting back any noise he might have made, he had a thought, spurred on by the dangerous place the dreams had left him. He and Sasuke could build a house. They would be safe if they had their own house. Kakashi considered getting out of bed and waking Sasuke up, but he was still trembling from what he�d seen in his sleep. He had to be rock steady with Sasuke, couldn�t show weakness. The house would keep. Sasuke, sleeping on the couch, could wait. Kakashi lay waiting for the predawn light to turn into day, counting each breath, making them as deep and steady as possible.
And, even as he heard Sasuke toss and turn, gasp for air, wake and fall back asleep, Kakashi stayed as still and as quiet as he could and made no move to comfort him. It wasn�t his place now, probably never had been, even back when team seven was undivided by experience and time. Sasuke could deal with his own nightmares, and Kakashi would tend to his.

A/N:
And so we have the bare bones of Sasuke's five-ish years in prison. Not pretty, is it? The bad events in Sasuke's life have had such influence in shaping him as an adult... (I suppose this may be because he has had very little good with which to leaven the dark stuff. At least, that's how I'm seeing it.) The ugly is undoubtedly going to keep cropping up.
When I went back through this chapter for another edit, I felt their post-fight conversation was a bit muddled. I tried to make Kakashi and Sasuke's motivations and implied statements and unspoken thoughts more clear. I think it was especially hard here for two reasons. One: Sasuke is stuck inside his own head. He's never been a particularly verbal character, but rather he stews in his own angst. Two: We, the readers, are receiving all our information from Kakashi's perspective. I don't think he's quite on the level of the dread Unreliable Narrator type, but he does tend to say one thing and use it as a cover for what he really means. Still, if you look carefully, you can probably see underneath the underneath.
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Entropy