#i never draw fanart unless i am absolutely fucking fixed on them

[softavasilva]

drawing wn art while listening to my avatrice playlist…ive reached my peak obsession u guys

[the-roadkill-cafe]

Throwing a Stone in a River Part 5

Summary: When Sakura graduates from the academy, she suddenly finds her head invaded by the ghost of Uchiha Shisui. Her inner is gone, but not forgotten, and she struggles with impulse control more than ever before. But also, Shisui gives a lot of unsolicited advice - useful and otherwise - and does not shut the fuck up. He’s not thrilled about current events.

Rating: T

Characters/Pairings: Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Shisui (not Shisui/Sakura or SasuSaku)

Word Count: 3.5k

Chapter Warnings/Squicks: graphic torture, severe eye trauma and torture, body horror, violence

Author’s Notes: Firstly, please take the warning seriously for this chapter. If you would like to skip the scene where these apply, this is the very first scene. Jump to the scene break, which has the opening line “Sakura woke up with a gasp.”

Secondly, I would like to give an enormous thanks to @jaycrowind for betaing, @thriceandonce for being an excellent cheerleader, and @stormwind13 and @hiruma-musouka for talking me through the difficult parts of this chapter (which was basically everything after the opening scene, ha).

Also, I would like to remind everyone that I have no plans to discontinue any of my fics at this time. Please do not send any comments/asks/reviews/messages either asking me if I have or implying that I have. If I do come to such a decision, I will make a public announcement.

Finally, I am now available on twitter! My handle is _roadkillcafe_ . I also have given an official blanket statement for anyone wishing to do podfics/translations/remixes/fanart/etc of my fics. Just leave me proper credit for the original fic, and send me a link for me (and others) to enjoy! Thank you very much :)

Previous Part: Part 4

“Shisui, please.”

Ragged breathing filled her ears. There was a burning ring around her wrists and when Sakura glanced up, she saw that she was chained in too tight cuffs that had rubbed her wrists bloody. Even before she could catch her breath her heart was already pounding in her chest with fear.

“Please,” the voice broke into a sob. “I can’t take this anymore, just kill me. Don’t let them have my eyes, Shisui, please.”

Sakura’s head turned without permission and every iota of her being rebelled at what she saw.

A young shinobi was literally pinned to a chair, stakes driven through his hands and arms to the chair. Below, his ankles and legs were similarly staked. Blood dripped everywhere from him, but the most horrific part of the scene was his face. Her eyes were unwillingly drawn to the eyeball that dangled freely from the socket, only connected by a strand of nerves. Dimly, Sakura realized that the boy was a Hyuuga.

“Nikkou…” Her voice was raspy and yet familiar to Sakura, despite not being her own. Shisui. She was reliving Shisui’s memories.

“Nikkou, I can’t – there’s no way out of this. I’m sorry.”

“C’mon Shisui, you’re a genius, you’ve gotta think of something. Anything, I don’t care, just don’t let them take my eyes, please.” Nikkou’s remaining good eye rolled wildly in his head. It occasionally fixed on Shisui, teary and wide eyed with terror and pain. Sakura struggled to look away from the sight of his bruised face, but Shisui’s gaze remained focused on Nikkou and his ruined eye, and so did Sakura’s.

Before Shisui could reply, the door to the cell banged open. Both of them startled badly, Sakura’s heart beating a sharp staccato rhythm in her chest.

A Kiri shinobi strode into the room. He was older than Shisui and Nikkou, with the beginnings of craggy lines on his face, and his hair styled into something resembling a fin. Sakura had no idea who he was, but there was a foreign swell of resignation and fear and hatred in her chest.

She watched him circle around the room like a shark, slowly closing in on Nikkou. Nikkou’s breath escaped him faster and faster until he was almost hyperventilating, his good eye hyper focused on the foreign shinobi. On his hands specifically, which held clippers. The shinobi considered Shisui.

“Well, Konoha? Do you have anything to say yet?”

Nikkou’s eye snapped to her. “Shisui, tell him something! Tell him what he wants to know! Please!” When she remained silent, Nikkou tried again, his voice becoming a ragged scream. “Shisui, please!”

Her mouth moved. “I will not betray my village.”

The Kiri shinobi smirked. “I didn’t think any of you Konoha shinobi had it in you.” He jabbed Nikkou in the shoulder with his elbow in a seemingly friendly gesture. “Too bad for you, kid.”

He reached forward to grasp Nikkou’s dangling eye. When his fingers made contact, Nikkou began screaming, the sound echoing in the cell.

“Not my eye! Please, not my eye! Take anything else, please!”

Revulsion rose, with Sakura unable to tell if it was hers or Shisui’s. There was a layer of understanding that Shisui had that wasn’t hers; an understanding of the fear of losing an eye. The hatred was turning to outright loathing as the shinobi pulled the string of nerves taut and brought the clippers close to the end where they were attached to Nikkou’s skull. He took his time, drawing it out, stroking the blades along the length of nerves. Nikkou was wailing and Sakura was unable to look away when, with a quick snip, the shinobi took his eye.

Her upper lip curled with a rage such that she had never known. She memorized the way the Kiri shinobi casually dropped the eye and its attached nerves into a sterile bag. Nikkou sobbed brokenly, defeated.

“Thanks for the eye, kid. It’ll come in handy. I’ll come back for the other one later, unless your teammate here decides to talk. See if you can convince him while I’m gone.” The shinobi spun the clippers around his fingers in a goodbye, and left them alone once more. Sakura tracked his movements the entire time.

If it was the last thing she did, she would kill him.

Sakura woke with a gasp. Before she even fully understood what she was doing, she was moving, ripping her blankets off her body and stumbling to the bathroom. She made it to the toilet in time to vomit her dinner violently. Her stomach heaved over and over, even after there was nothing left, and only strings of saliva and bile clung to her lips. She barely had the strength to spit into the toilet. She pressed her face against the cool porcelain and wept.

When her shoulders had stopped shaking, enough time had passed that Sakura could address the silent presence in her head.

“What the hell was that?”

Shisui was silent for a long time, long enough that Sakura started to doze with her face on the toilet. And yet every time she drifted off too much, the image of Nikkou’s eyeless socket surfaced. With the image came the foreign tangle of emotions that had to be Shisui’s association with that memory. Sakura had certainly never hated someone so much in her life.

‘I never would have wanted you to see that memory,’ Shisui said at last.

But I did, Sakura thought to herself, and felt Shisui’s slight flinch when the stray thought reached him.

She stayed silent, and so did Shisui, as she struggled to process the nightmare. She didn’t even know what she wanted to ask Shisui first or if she even wanted to learn more about it at all, and as she thought, his words from before floated across her mind, I was on the Kiri front during the Third War.

There was the unspeakable horror of Nikkou staked to the chair and the Kiri shinobi clipping out his eye while Shisui watched. There was Shisui’s absolute, resigned refusal to give over any information to the interrogator. There was the question of how he escaped. There was the niggling wonder of why the hell bad things happened to eyes around Shisui. But most of all…

‘What happened to Nikkou?’  Sakura asked at last.

‘He’s dead.’

Despite her exhaustion, the images from the nightmare - Shisui’s memory - drove Sakura out of bed to avoid enticing their return. Which is how she ended up running laps in Konoha before dawn, before pre-dawn even, the sky still blanketed in stars. She had several canteens of water buckled to her waist as the only things weighing her down. When her lungs burned for air and her legs felt limp, she stopped to drink. All too soon, the vivid images would return and spur Sakura into continuing her laps.

Sakura turned towards home once the sky began to lighten. The first rays of dawn once again swept away the worst of the night terrors until she felt almost normal again. At least, normal except for the dead jounin haunting her. She kicked off her shoes and made her way towards the shower to wash away the sweat and the remnants of the sickly feeling from vomiting.

Showering led to redressing, which led to breakfast. By now Sakura was ravenous and dreading the day’s work. What had she been thinking, running laps for hours? How was she going to be able to train? How was she going to complete the mission?

‘Oh, relax,’ Shisui said in the face of her fretting. ‘Training should always push you to your limits. The run was good for you. You should do it every morning.’

‘I should’ve known you would suggest more running,’ Sakura grumped. She hated doing laps. And yet, this was the second night in a row she had nightmares from Shisui’s memories. She would have to do something to keep them from lingering. At least running had long term benefits. ‘I’ll think about it.’

It wasn’t long before Sakura was ready for the new day. She eyed herself in the mirror. There was no outward hint of the nightmare she had suffered last night, nor of her ghostly tenant. She just… looked like herself. Sakura leaned forward so she could peer at her eyes. They did say that eyes were the windows to the soul. But there was nothing.

She shook herself. At this rate, she was going to be just as obsessed with eyes as Shisui was. She needed to get to training. Hopefully it wouldn’t be as bad as it was yesterday.

When she arrived, Sakura found that she was earlier than any of her teammates. It was a pleasant change from being late the day before. It also gave her time to sit and relax. The weather was warm and breezy, but thankfully not humid. All in all, a good day for training. If only Sakura had any idea of where to even start.

‘I can help guide you through a few things. You should work on your conditioning and basic taijutsu and weapons skills before you think about fancy ninjutsu or genjutsu,’ Shisui offered.

Sakura narrowed her eyes at the sky. ‘What’s in it for you?’

‘I don’t die again because of a genin’s stupid mistake,’ Shisui said dryly.

That sounded believable, especially after his insistence yesterday that he wouldn’t teach her anything.

‘You start with conditioning first, to prep your body for the strain of jutsu, right?’ she asked.

‘That’s part of it. But there will always be a time when you don’t have enough chakra for any jutsu, and how well you know basic taijutsu can save your life.’

Sakura looked down at her hands thoughtfully. ‘Alright, I’ll listen to what you have to say. But nothing too hard! Who knows what kind of training Kakashi-sensei is going to make us do.’ Sakura said.

‘That’s the spirit. Now get up. There’s no time like the present.’ Shisui urged her.

Sakura rolled to her feet. There was a moment’s pause when she pondered what exactly she should do to condition herself. Then, with hesitant strikes, she began working through the Academy practice routine. Neither of her parents had styles to call their own, not like clan children. They had always encouraged her to make the best of her intelligence and what the Academy taught her. That had been enough to get them to chuunin, after all.

Shisui didn’t speak, or even give any indication he was paying attention besides a sense of watchfulness that Sakura couldn’t explain. Since he didn’t stop her, she continued with the series of simple katas that she knew. The style was mostly built around redirecting a stronger or faster enemy’s force, under the assumption that the user was smaller and less experienced. Sakura definitely counted as that.

As her routine came to a close, Shisui began to offer her pointers. They were, to Sakura’s relief, far more useful than the ones he had given her yesterday.

‘Your stance weakens when you punch with your left hand. Watch the placement of your feet,’ and ‘Lead with your opposite foot to strengthen that strike,’ and ‘If you follow through, you can turn this kata into a hold,’ were all patiently explained to her. It was at odds with his patronizing attitude the day before. Sakura couldn’t decide if it was because Shisui was, contrary to first impressions, actually a good teacher, or if he still felt bad for the nightmares his memories had given her. Either way, she didn’t question it.

Shisui hummed thoughtfully. ‘Your grasp of the Academy basics is solid, though you do need lots of conditioning. But I only know how to teach speed.’ Sakura got the impression of a shrug. ‘So I will teach you what I know. My style is far different from the Academy’s. At its most complicated, it is a very fluid style that requires a lot of flexibility and makes equal use of every part of the body. I combined it with my speed to dispatch enemies as efficiently as possible. At your level, you will need to do the same.’

‘Okay, makes sense. So where do I start?’ She was tired and her thighs weren’t exactly happy after her impromptu morning run, but she also wasn’t bone dead exhausted. She could do this.

‘With stretches. Lots of stretches,’ Shisui said. From there, he talked her through several exercises that were new to Sakura, and that were barely even the beginning of Shisui’s personal style. There was a lot of ground for her to cover, and not much time to do it in. Training wasn’t going to be something she did just with her team, but a new hobby that she did constantly.

That morning, Shisui only had time to teach Sakura one of the beginning forms. But combined with the other stretches and his advice on her use of the Academy style, it was enough. She even felt ready to go another round with Kakashi. There would be no way that she would win, but she wanted to try out what she had learned against an unsuspecting opponent.

Sasuke soon arrived at the training grounds as Sakura finished her stretches, and then Naruto showed up five minutes later. She had timed it so that her teammates wouldn’t spot her. She had no idea how to explain to them how she was suddenly learning non-Academy forms. Besides, this way, if Kakashi was anywhere near as late as he was yesterday, she would have plenty of time to rest before more training and possibly another mission.

Sakura peeked under her lashes at Sasuke. He looked so cool, leaning back against a tree, the sun catching his pitch eyes just right so that the pupil was discernible from the iris. She felt her heart flutter against her ribs. He was so smart and talented, sure to be the brightest star of their generation. Heat rose to her face.

‘So...what do you actually know about this kid?’ Shisui asked.

Sakura startled out of her musings. ‘What?’

‘Well, you keep going on and on about your infatuation with him. So you must know a lot about him, right? What is it that you like about him besides his talent? Konoha has plenty of talented and skilled shinobi,’ he elaborated.

‘Well…’ Sakura paused to organize her thoughts. ‘He likes tomatoes, I think. They show up the most consistently in his lunch. He’s not very cooperative on teamwork tests at the Academy, but that’s only because he can do everything himself! And…’

She frowned. What did she know about Sasuke? Why had she started crushing on him? He wasn’t always such a loner. In fact, a few years ago, he had been...friendly. Competitive, certainly, but outgoing and playful. She had liked him because he had never bullied her or avoided her. He didn’t go out of his way to talk to her, but he had never been cruel, not even in the thoughtless way that kids could be. And then Sakura found out that Ino had liked him too, and that was the final straw.

Sakura shook herself. Things about Sasuke. ‘He says he doesn’t really like or dislike anything, or have any hobbies. He doesn’t have a dream, but an ambition. To kill a certain man, he said, and restore his clan.’

‘That’s ominous.’ Shisui’s presence seemed to ripple a bit. It felt weird, like her brain was tingling.

‘It is,’ Sakura agreed, subdued. She wondered why Sasuke wanted to kill someone so badly. What was it that this person did that made Sasuke think only of killing him? What did it take for a person to feel that way?

‘Clearly, you need to train more,’ Shisui interrupted, his voice lighter now. ‘And learn more about what happened. And then you can go along with Sasuke on his little field trip to kill this man. If you’re actually serious about your crush on him, that is.’

Sakura narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Why do you care if I get a chance with Sasuke-kun?’

‘I don’t,’ Shisui said flatly. ‘But it just so happens that training kills two birds with one stone.  You get to impress your crush, and I get to stay in a body that won’t die on the first C rank mission it goes on.’

‘Does it really matter if you’re already dead?’

‘Who doesn’t want to stay alive a little longer? This is my second chance. Besides, I’m a ghost, and like all stories about ghosts, I have some unfinished business that I’ll probably need your help with,’ he said.

‘What kind of unfinished business?’ Sakura perked up. This was interesting. She hadn’t had anyone to gossip with since her friendship with Ino became a rivalry.

Shisui huffed. ‘The kind you don’t need to know about yet.’

Sakura fidgeted with the hem of her dress, feeling a bit like Hinata all of a sudden. ‘Does it...does it have anything to do with Nikkou?’

He hesitated, and Sakura got a brief flash of quick thinking on his part. Maybe deciding how detailed he wanted to be, though after that nightmare, she didn’t see why it mattered. ‘I...yeah. That Kiri nin, he’s still alive. His name is Ao. And I’m going to kill him.’ There was a rush of hatred and intense focus, almost obsession. Shisui wanted to avenge his mutilated teammate and bring home the last part of him that never made it back.

Nikkou’s screams echoed in Sakura’s mind again, causing her gag reflex to rise. She swallowed down the bile. Shisui didn’t even have to ask.

‘Of course I’ll help you kill him.’

Sakura easily committed Ao’s face to memory. Blue hair styled into a fin, slightly craggy face, Kiri fatigues. She would know him the next time she saw him.

“Wow, Sakura-chan, I didn’t know Kakashi-sensei being late made you this angry.” Naruto’s voice jolted Sakura out of her head.

Sakura glanced around. She had forgotten that she was at training with her team, waiting for Kakashi to show his face. While she had been talking with Shisui, her gaze had focused on a far off tree, and her face had done little to disguise her emotions. Even Sasuke was looking at her with a little interest. Sakura flushed. Just what had her expressions revealed to them?

“Well,” Sakura blustered. She seized upon the excuse Naruto had gift wrapped her. “Well, it’s rude! And a waste of our time! What’s the point of meeting so early if he isn’t going to be on time to help us train or supervise missions! He’s so irresponsible. We all managed to be here, didn’t we?” She gestured redundantly.

“I know!” Naruto exploded. He was suddenly in Sakura’s face, expression animated. “I could be learning a super cool jutsu! Or, or, protecting a castle from a mutiny! Not just hanging around here waiting.”

“You sure you’re up to protecting a whole castle?” Sasuke said. The fact that he was drawn into their conversation spoke volumes about how bored he was. Luckily, it had the advantage of not only getting his attention, but pulling Naruto away from her.

“Of course I am. I’m gonna be the Hokage, you know.” Naruto posed proudly. “Do you even know what you’re gonna be?”

Sasuke folded his arms. “I’m going to be an elite jounin of a village, and bring honor to my family name.” His tone made this sound like it should have been obvious. Sakura nodded along. And it should have been. Sasuke was the best.

To her surprise, they both turned to her next. After yesterday and the way they so got caught up in their rivalry, and Sakura being lost in her thoughts with Shisui, she thought they would ignore her.

“Ne, Sakura-chan, what about you? What are you going to be?”

Sakura licked her lips. Her eyes wanted to dart to Sasuke, but he had nothing to do with her being a shinobi. She had, after all, joined the Academy two years before she even started to have feelings for him.

“I…” she clenched her fists with embarrassment. “I don’t know what I want to be.” She glared down at the ground. Sakura didn’t want to see the expressions on her teammates’ faces.

‘We all start somewhere, kid. Chin up.’

She breathed out through her nose and ground her teeth together. Shisui was right. She was brave enough for this. She looked up. Sasuke and Naruto were still waiting for her to finish.

“But I am going to be strong! And useful! I won’t be someone’s tag along or left behind.” Sakura nodded decisively. It was too soon for her to tell what she would specialize in, or what she would like best. Maybe she would be a chuunin like her parents, or an elite jounin like Shisui or Kakashi. Maybe she would go into Intelligence, or the Academy, or Research and Development. For right now, she was a genin. She had time.