Show me the way

XI: Discovery

Shizuka was appointed Jounin, much like expected, meaning now Kakashi wanted him to join him in meeting the other Jounin. The idea made him nervous. Until now, he had avoided as much contact as possible with everybody he had known before. But if he was to meet with his past, he much preferred it to be the Jounin he had known less than any of the Rookies he had been so close to.

But faith gave him a little time and did so in a cruel manner. Shizuka had rather faced the dread of his past than Kakashi taking on a month long mission, but that is what happened. Gone on a mission with his team, leaving Shizuka to try and fill the endless days alone. Days that only seemed to become longer and more tedious with each passing hour.

Shizuka had asked and then begged for missions to fill his time, but Sarutobi hadn't given in to his begging. What Shizuka wanted were the missions to piece another part of the future together, but Sarutobi found it too risky to sent Shizuka out alone for tasks of that importance. Because of the secrecy another team member was ruled out as an option as well. There were smaller missions, and Shizuka did them with diligence, but those failed to occupy his time long enough to distract him. And without distraction he was left to his own thoughts. And those were loud.

At night it became clear to him just how loud his thoughts were. In the silence of the night he had no escape from his memories that literally lived around him. Memories that were playing out as he layed in bed in silence, staring at the ceiling. Moments he didn't want to remember mixed with moments of precious times, tumbling over each other in his mind and blurring together, making it hard to grasp the right strings to keep himself from falling. He missed those precious times and those people. He missed them so much it hurt.

Then day would break. The world would fill with noise that would slowly break up the turmoil in his mind, drawing him out of his cage of misery and back to reality. Time was unforgiving and lasted too long now. Other moments would come where time would pass too fast. The worst thing was that, even if it felt like an eternity, Kakashi had only been gone a week. It would be at least three more before he would return and Shizuka could only try to hold on until then.

Even during the day his thoughts were too loud, and so he drowned out the world and the passing of time at the libraby at every available moment, digging through books on Fuuinjutsu like he had done in all his free time, but without the restriction of Kakashi, Shizuka had no break on how much he poured himself into it.

And he had found it. His answer. He knew before, but each time his findings led him down the path to this conclusion, he had recoiled from it and denied it. It had been the cold where he was the exposed nerve, trying to avoid it. After all, it couldn't have been. There needed to be something wrong within the seal, but nothing in any of the books he had sought out indicated such a thing. Time and time again he followed a new lead, a new detail that might have led to the disastrous consequences of his actions, but each lead had led him to the conclusion that the seal hadn't been faulted.

He'd read about how one element could work against another, but in all cases he had compensated for it already with another element. He had studied the positioning of the elements to see if that had reacted wrongly, but that lead to nothing as well.

The seal wasn't faulty. He knew this. He already knew this, but still wanted and needed to deny it with everything he had. The bitter truth was that Sasuke had used the seal successfully, unaltered and without proper knowledge about the seal, so there was no denying the seal was valid. His frantic work throughout the nights had let him in all directions, but only one conclusion. A cold and bitter truth that left his core aching and his heart bleeding in a renewed pain. The seal wasn't broken, there was nothing wrong with it. It was him. His fault. His miscalculation in the use of his chakra, destabilised by Kurama and too fluctuating for this delicate seal and intricate webbing of elements.

Despite all the years spent on learning how to control and work with Kurama's volatile chakra, it hadn't been enough to stop erratic chakra from spilling out of him. Add to it exhaustion and the fact he had been tapping into Kurama's chakra more heavily and it should have been clear it wasn't going to go as it should have.

And now he sat in the library, staring at a page that blatantly spelled out for him his guilt and he was in anguish. Tears streaked down his face and his breath came too hard and too fast. His vision blurred from his tears. He had dropped his pen and clutched his hands to his stomach. Not just for the tremor, but also for the nausea that was slowly intensifying. All he wanted to do was rip the book apart, and all the other books that led him to this conclusion and even the shelves they had stood upon.

But he couldn't move. His whole body was tense to a point where every move hurt and as he sat there, the space around his seemed to diminish. Everything was pressing down on him and suffocate him. Despite his elevated level of breathing, no air seemed to make it's way into his lungs. No oxygen was reaching his brain, leaving him dizzy and unable to focus. The world was muffled and far away, yet at the same time, even the ticking of a clock was deafening, each second a bang in his mind making him feel trapped and hunted and only adding to his stress knowing that every second passed was a second closer to the future he despised.

How much time passed he didn't know. Only when someone dropped a book and the sound from that made him jump up did he find himself unable to stay where he was. The library was too small, too pressing and he needed space. In the same hazy mist his mind had been thrown in he made his way outside.

As soon as the fresh air hit his face, he jumped to the rooftops and bolted for the one place that he always fled to when he was younger. The stone head of his father. The moment he sat down he broke down crying, his silent heaves and sobs went unheard to anyone, but the world around him cried with him as the skies broke into a downpour. The bitter cold of the rainwater did little to stifle his sorrow. It just gave him a reason not to hold back. The only thing that repeated in him mind over and over again was that is was his fault.

Sai's death had been his fault. When it was the seal that was faulty, it was more bearable. It required knowledge that wasn't readily available. It was explainable why it failed, since there was no verification. But he should have known his Chakra wasn't suited for the seal. In his own pride he had not wanted someone else to use what took him so long to make, even when they offered. In his selfishness he hadn't wanted anyone to carry the burden if something was to go wrong, even though he was already carrying too much. And in his stupidity he hadn't listened to the worries of others, even though they had been valid. And now he knew without a doubt it was his fault. His fault. His fault. His fault. His guilt, his punishment, his burden. Too much, so much too heavy, crushing him and cutting into his soul.

It hurt. And ached. And burned.

And nobody heard his silent pleas as he sat in the rain with his body slowly going mumb in the cold and his mind unable to work through it all.

It was when his body became so numb his mind had no choice but to follow that he found a little respite. Blackness pushed its way into his mind and dragged him into a bliss, unconsciousness, at least for a while. He welcomed it, let himself get swept away by it, just to escape it all for a moment.

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