Words: 4 k
Published On: 07.06.18
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So, this was actually supposed to be a separate story, but I am putting it up here instead. Some of you may even recognize the first few paragraphs because I'd published it once.
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Language & Content Warning:
Due to the theme of the story, strong language has been used in places along with descriptions of violence, graphic or otherwise. Readers may apply discretion.
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HANGMAN
He stood quietly by the window, looking out absently at the city that always seemed to be running a marathon; his sharp ears were trained at each and every sound that occurred in the background though. His eyes and ears never were in the same place anymore. No rest for the wicked, he thought to himself dryly.
The familiar tread of his partner's footsteps approached the door within which he confined himself on days when he wanted to particularly be left to his devices. The knob turned and the man stepped inside. He was surprisingly gentle for a man of their life and the only person who risked Sasuke's wrath for bothering him when he clearly wanted to be left alone.
He had never instigated it though.
"We have what we need, Sasuke," he quietly informed, already backing away to step out.
Sasuke acknowledged none of it, but his partner knew he'd been heard. He also knew better than to say any more. Besides, if their other partners' bickering wasn't broken up, he feared the Uchiha's anger would fall upon them soon and that couldn't be good for anyone.
He was normally more tolerant of those two, but some days his patience wore thin and one or both of them ended up on the mouth of a loaded gun. Sasuke never did anything though - except the one time he did shoot Suigetsu, narrowly missing his bone to cause any serious damage. Jugo knew it was on purpose. There was a side to that guy he didn't know if his partners saw that well.
It went without saying though, that if one were to get on his bad side, they had another thing coming.
Around this time every year, Sasuke became increasingly quiet and detached, preferring the solidarity of his room over even Jugo's silent company. While some were not well receptive to that, they let him be for the most part. Their two partners were locked in a stalemate as they usually were when they bickered, always at each other's throats, only slightly less so in Sasuke's presence.
At times like these, he wished he had a commanding air like their leader, to silence those idiots with a deadly glance. He settled for reason too though - not that anything Karin and Suigetsu would fight about could ever be reasonable. He sighed and took his usual role up lest they end up before a gun again.
"Quiet down or you'll have it from Sasuke," he warned them in his usual even tone.
"I'm not afraid of that bastard. He can't boss us around," an offended Suigetsu growled. Jugo wisely didn't mention how it was the man's own decision to follow him.
SMACK!
"How dare you insult Sasuke?!" Karin yelled.
The distant sound of a door creaking caught his attention. He wasn't looking forward to being dragged into another one of their idiotic messes. "Take it outside at least. You know what time of year it is."
They both promptly fell silent at that, whether out of respect for their leader or simply in contemplation, he didn't know and didn't care to ask as long as the final result was some much-needed silence. A few seconds later, a quiet figure appeared in the shadow of the doorway. He didn't say anything to the commotion-makers nor stopped to give a command, simply made his way to the table laden with shining new weapons.
It wasn't necessarily a good thing when Sasuke was quiet like that. He picked up the handgun, a 9 mm pistol and examined it with a detached air. He preferred knives to guns and so, there was a special set carefully placed on the side for him. The other members of his team watched warily, waiting for him to speak. He turned around, pocketing the knives and choosing the revolver. "We leave at four in the evening," he said, retiring to his room for the rest of the afternoon.
Multiple relieved exhales were heard as the door closed behind him.
"I thought I was a goner," Suigetsu breathed.
"You said it," nodded Karin.
The noise of violence and disturbance grew louder as more of the road disappeared behind them.
"Sounds like a gang war," Jugo deduced. "Best if we steer clear."
Narrowing his eyes, of course, Sasuke drove right toward its source. "I want to know who," said he. That it was the most they were going to get out of him, they all knew.
From a short distance, perched upon a rock, the sight of bloodshed and death was not new to him. The clearing off the road had become a small battlefield, the soil tainted in red. Truly disturbing was the fact how little it affected him. Just criminals killing other worthless criminals, he thought. It wasn't as if their lives were worth anything.
And he was in the same boat.
Sasuke was about to turn his back and walk away when one of the men caught sight of him. Recognition flashed across his eyes. Damn. Apparently, they were about to join this worthless battle.
The echo of gunshots that was fading now rose once again, blood spilling over the already dirty ground. There wasn't much to take cover here except the trees and the rocks. The civilians were either gone or dead by now and the police would be showing very soon.
Between watching out for himself and firing rounds in the opponents' direction, Sasuke tracked the other three members of his team too. Opponents thought he dully. As if they weren't people. Then again, they weren't; they were monsters, just like he was. He was in the middle of firing the next round when he saw the most unusual thing. The color was an odd presence when everything around was a dreary crimson and he chalked it to, perhaps, a trick of the light.
He didn't have time to contemplate on it though, because the next round fired was aimed at Karin and he watched her narrowly duck the bullet. Cursing under his breath, he made a beeline for her, making it in time to shoot a man right in his chest and pushing her out of the way of another bullet, narrowly missing it himself.
This time, it was there for sure. With the sun setting, there couldn't be that precise tricks of lights, after all, and yet he blinked over and over again, wondering if his tired mind wasn't showing him images. But his eyes found her in the middle of the stained, rotten field. Like a morning sun rising in the night. Like a fresh breeze blowing by a swamp. An out of place masterpiece. That fair pink couldn't be anyone else and when she spun around, promptly coming to a halt as well when she met his gaze dead-on, there was the unmistakable green of her eyes and the familiar stunned parting of her lips.
Time came to a standstill then, the ability to breathe momentarily lost.
His first rational thought was, she wasn't supposed to be there. His second rational thought was that she shouldn't be holding a gun - it just looked ghastly wrong in her hands - and the third only formed after the ricochet was heard, that she was going to shoot him.
Pushing aside the daze from the utter shock of her sudden appearance after years of being cut off from his past, he knew he couldn't get out of the way fast enough. So, it came as a surprise when the bullet didn't hit him. The strangled cry came two feet from him and one of their enemy men crumpled to the ground, very much alive, Sasuke noted with surprising relief - for something he couldn't really name would be lost if those hands ever killed - and blood seeped through the fabric torn at the man's thigh.
Karin was instantly fretting if Sasuke had been hurt while Suigetsu quickly took care of the injured man, swiftly ending his life. Jugo, he noted, hadn't missed the exchange but Sasuke could definitely care less right now. His attention still hadn't moved from the figure who did not belong. The clash was not over yet and perhaps, it was an instinct from his past life when his feet found themselves moving toward her.
She herself stood stock still as if the sight of him had frozen her until he started approaching. He thought she might take it as a sign of attack or even an attempt at capture, but it must have been his instincts developed living this life for all he registered was the flash of utter and broken sorrow in forest green eyes, momentarily making his feet falter until he remembered himself.
"Sasuke," Jugo's voice had a subtle warning in it as he joined. The police sirens grew louder every second.
"Go ahead. Hurry," she told him in a voice so flat, it might as well have been someone else's. "You need to leave, Sasuke."
'What about you?' he wanted to ask, but she was already turning away. He, too, spun on his heel to follow the direct track to their escape vehicle. By the time he impulsively glanced out the window as they sped off, the pink-haired memory was nowhere to be seen and he told himself it didn't matter as he leaned back into the seat.
The rest of the ride went on silently, their car racing down streets under the command of Jugo, losing the police in the dust somewhere along the way. Their destination came into view sooner than he realized and he pushed all thought of the odd encounter behind him. The adrenaline had died down once they entered the warehouse and the tin was lowered, effectively concealing them from the rest of the world for a while.
"What happened today will have repercussions," he told his team on entering.
"For someone who avoids these confrontations, you sure threw us into a showdown real quick," Suigetsu's suspicious voice answered.
"We'd been spotted," he curtly replied.
The wounds endured were minor compared to the damage they had inflicted. Still, as he unbuttoned his shirt, the blood gathered on his sleeve was hard to miss. So he had been grazed with a bullet after all. Speaking of...
He turned on his heel and fixed a stare on his other teammate. Karin looked up from reloading the emptied 9 mm, meeting it with apprehension. The .38 was still holstered to her side.
"I gave it to you for self-protection, not decoration," he hissed. She shifted uneasily, pushing her glasses up and fidgeting warily with her fingers. The absurd reason she had made sense only to her and she dare not voice it to him.
"Next time, don't expect to be saved," he warned Karin, leaving the vicinity to address his wounds.
------
Death was the price of life in their grey world and no one bothered after their corpses; at times, not even their own. Their enemies fell one by one, quietly succumbing to the afterlife from the shadows. Every time a life was lost at his hands, the thought came to him, unfailing. I will one day follow them there. And then, he'd shake it off for more of this carnage because this was what he had chosen to follow.
Chosen was a strong word but, he wasn't so deluded as to think he was forced into this by circumstance.
"What's our next stop?" asked Karin.
"We head south for Oto through Konoha now," replied Jugo. "There is an underground network of information there."
"Konoha, huh?" Sasuke muttered under his breath, memory serving him yet another piece of the past as rain pattered across the window in the darkened night while they traversed through the outskirts of the previous town.
They halted before a small house eleven hours later. A makeshift wire fence lined the boundary of the old structure. Small plants and shrubs grew around the walls and clothes hung from the balcony. It was an ordinary home for anyone, but for Sasuke...
"What's this place?" Suigetsu poked his head out.
... it was where he grew up.
Jugo observed the raven man carefully, his usual blank eyes blanketed by an emotion he didn't understand, but if he had to guess, he might call it nostalgia. It was an almost tender look, one of a child who wished for a sweet that was out of reach. He watched Sasuke's chest rise in a long inhale and fall in a decisive exhale.
The raven figure stepped out of the car, only able to reach as far as the boundary before a frail-looking woman raced out of the house with a blinding smile on her face and threw her arms around him. In the backseat, Suigetsu and Karin gasped, if only because anything resembling affection was something they had never seen on Sasuke for all the time of knowing him. But as the woman buried her face into his chest, they witnessed his arms come around her in return.
"Maa, that's too much food," complained the Uchiha, running his eyes over the sheer quantity of dishes that his mother no doubt cooked in overjoy of his surprise visit. He waited until later that evening to share a good dinner with her. Like any reminder of old times did, it made his chest ache. The kind voice and unconditional love and by the non-existent gods, her cooking. He allowed the ephemeral peace of being home to wash over him, recognizing well in his heart how much he missed it.
In his earlier, almost happy days, he thought ruefully, the only person who he ever brought home was his late best friend. He idly wondered where those days went, shaking his head when the terrible answer came to him. From a med student to a criminal, he'd changed paths quite drastically. His eyes drifted over to his mother who wistfully stared up at the sky from the backyard.
When she saw him, did she also see their failed attempt at him having a normal life?
"I can't stay, maa," he told her quietly.
Mikoto sighed. "I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up for just a few minutes longer." She turned soft eyes toward him. "I haven't seen you in so long, I was worried you'd forget my face."
Sasuke's heart twisted in pain. That entire night he sat awake in the backyard, his mother asleep with her head on his strong shoulder, counting his life backward.
Maa cried her eyes out the day he'd first killed, not for any other reason than her son's fate. She saw the small boy who followed her around grow into a responsible young man who made distinctive life choices that his brother was proud of and eventually saw him fall into the same darkness they had endured to their very last days. But she accepted Sasuke even then, understood his anguish and did her best to protect him until it became too dangerous and he was forced to leave her of his own accord.
Since then, a lot had changed and now he was here. A criminal through and through.
Come morning, they left with a bento each and he held maa's visage close to his heart as her sad face grew distant in the rear-view mirror.
------
Near an old town just before Oto, they ran into the pink-haired woman once more, smoking a cigarette at a cheap food joint. As she struggled with her lighter, Sasuke offered up his own. They smoked together in silence for a long time, each lost for their own words. The shape of her eyes, nose, and lips was all the same, yet Sasuke recognized none of it. She was the same woman, yet was vastly different from her.
"Never thought I'd see you again," she finally spoke up.
"Likewise."
The gun openly tucked at her waist stared at him. Another smoke later, he asked, "What happened?"
She didn't blink or look at him. "I'm not sure." Smoke billowed out of her mouth. It didn't fit with the image of the girl Sasuke had kept in his mind, but perfectly suited the same girl sitting before him. "One day I was a law student, the next day I was in jail for murder."
The cigarette almost fell out of his mouth. The silver gun at her waist looked more red to him than his own hands, for some reason. Possibly because he realized just why she looked so different. Her innocence was gone with the deed she'd done.
"Sakura.."
"It's fine. I don't regret it. You try to hurt my little sister, you pay. Right?"
An invisible shadow hung over them like a rain cloud. The darkness had sucked her in too. Sakura, who had never so much as gotten a parking ticket; who was the only one who beat him in all the subjects; Sakura, who once had once loved him like he had her. Sasuke could barely make space for hatred now, oscillating between indifference and coldness most days. He could no longer relate to the man who'd once dreamed of becoming a doctor. As if those memories belonged to someone else.
Sakura's eyes looked so blank too. Like she was merely a shell. The kindness that once drew him in was curtained - if it was there anymore at all.
"I think your crew's waiting."
"Are you part of one of those crime circles who was fighting that day?"
"No. They tried to kidnap me. You gave me the opportunity I needed to escape. Thanks for that, by the way."
Sasuke scoffed and got up. Neither of them was the same person anymore. In essence, they were strangers. Nothing was going to come out of sitting here and wasting his time. And yet, he wondered...
"You.. don't regret.. anything? Or do you?"
She stopped smoking and finally looked up. "I protected her, didn't I? Just as you protected Mikoto. We didn't fall into this by accident."
Sasuke took the cigarette from between her fingers, put it in his mouth and walked away.
"No, we didn't."
------
Karin didn't learn the identity of the pink-haired woman from Sasuke, unless 'a forgotten past' was to be counted. But it wasn't hard to tell that once, there was something between them. Sasuke had never taken Karin's cigarette, after all. Besides, she wasn't 'forgotten' anymore if they were chasing down Ryuji Saburo because of her now, was she? Sasuke didn't even give them a reason. He mostly never did, but they had absolutely nothing to do with that disgusting pimp.
It didn't help that she could hear their conversation as she tried to sleep.
"Why are you helping me? Thought you were beyond that."
Sasuke snorted, "It's not like I'm going out of my way."
Sakura lit another smoke. Such a colorful, shiny little thing didn't belong with them. Especially not with Sasuke. He needed someone who could relate to his darkness and accept it. His lack of mercy, his reckless plans, and even the blood on his hands.
"Guess its just chains from a failed past," he eventually said.
Though, Karin, too, was as far away from attaining his tattered, locked away heart as she could possibly be.
"And here I thought it was your version of penitence."
"Is that supposed to be a joke?"
Sakura shrugged. For a long time, all that was heard was the inhale and exhale of smoke, until she began, "Do you think..." And then cut herself off. "Nevermind."
"I don't know," answered Sasuke, surprising both Sakura and Karin. "And to be honest, I ain't all that concerned about the afterlife either. What's here is all I know. If I die tomorrow, then that's just as well. Its not like any of this means anything. Not to me, anyway."
"...I suppose not."
Karin's heart twisted in a pain of longing so profound, she could feel it in her skin. How she wished that Sasuke would ever talk to her this way. But he never would. This was the first time she'd ever heard him say anything along those lines at all and her interest in his conversation with Sakura was all but lost. She simply wanted to hear the sound of his voice and the thoughts that he ever so rarely voiced.
"I just wonder what..." he started, then trailed off. A long sigh escaped from his lips and he dropped his head against the wall. "Ah, forget it."
"If you die..." The three words themselves sent a chill down Karin's spine, but not as much as when Sakura finished with, "I'll take care of Mikoto."
Sasuke's eyes snapped open. Surprised and confused, he asked, "Sakura?"
"Chains from my own past, I guess. Maybe. But I'll do it."
He straightened and turned toward her, eyes narrowed. "What the hell do you owe me?"
"True. I owe you nothing. But I do know that a naked sword hangs over our head all the time. If there is something we still have left worth protecting, we should, right? But perhaps I'm pulling at twigs and yanking at chains."
"If this is about me,I don't see anything left for you to protect. You should know that the boy in the white cloak was a hoax. "
"Oh, I wouldn't call him that."
"Yeah? Then what would you call him? A failure? Hah. Apt."
Karin had rarely heard Sasuke speak so bitterly, but there it was. She almost gasped at the realization that somewhere beneath all that the man was, his memories of his old self still haunted Sasuke. Memories of all that he couldn't be.
"He was a dream. And its rather nice to dream, isn't it?"
He scoffed. "I don't need this crap. For all I know, you and I never were. Truth always kept us strangers even then and now, well, the man who once loved you is nothing but a memory. I wonder if he ever even was."
Another ache stung at her heart. He loved her once? Was Sasuke even capable of it? Did it mean more than what was obvious that he was helping her?
"Reality is so twisted now," Sakura quietly spoke. "I don't know if I even make sense to myself anymore. Some days I wake up and its not even me in the mirror. Maybe that's why I'll do it. Its a selfish desire in the end, to want to look after Mikoto. A desperate attempt at hanging on to a reason - any reason. To go on living without purpose is something I was never good at."
Silence.
"...You always have been rather annoying."
Did Karin hear it or was there actually a difference in his usual flat voice?
"You would know."
She could hear Sakura's smile.
*
"Thank you for all your help."
"We only do what Sasuke asks of us," replied Jugo.
The raven-haired man stood by the car impassively with his arms crossed and a cigarette between his lips.
"He's been smoking more often these days," Suigetsu offhandedly commented.
Sakura stood there wondering how much of it had to do with the fact that she was a fragment of his past Sasuke had put behind him.
"Thank you," she whispered, walking up to him.
"Its not like much will change," he shrugged.
"No, but some things will. That is more than I expected."
"Hn."
For some reason, she smiled then.
"See you around," Sakura told him, reaching up and softly kissing his lips.
And just like that, she was gone from their lives. Sasuke wished it was the last of her he'd have to see.
Alas, he didn't write his own fate.
***
Long time no see, guys!
Sorry!! I found so little time and energy to write, it kept getting put off. I wrote about 3-4 short stories, all incomplete. Finally, I decided I would finish writing the one I had started before even this book.
So, here it is.
Part II will be up real soon. I won't be late in delivering that one, I promise.
See ya!