After four weeks of half-seriously trying to maim each other, Anko and Sasuke decided they had filled in each other's gaps with all the jutsus they were able and willing to teach. And to celebrate no longer seeing each other on a regular basis, Anko decided to get herself and Sasuke drunk.

This, at least, was Kakashi's interpretation of the situation when Sasuke stumbled into his apartment at roughly half-past midnight.

"You don't smell of enough alcohol to be walking like that," Kakashi told him a moment later, and watched as Sasuke slid into an even pace mid-step.

Not bad, he acknowledged.

"Your sense of smell is better than hers," Sasuke informed him.

Still, he was drunk enough to require a little extra concentration on ordinary things. His shower took him a third longer than usual, and he banged his foot against the dresser when laying out the futon. Kakashi repressed a grin as Sasuke reflexively told his furniture off.

——

Sasuke decided in hindsight that, considering how much he'd been reminded about Orochimaru and the Hidden Sound recently, the dreams shouldn't have come as a surprise. Definitely not enough of one to say some of the things he did to Kakashi afterward, but Sasuke blamed that on personal stupidity and the alcohol.
-

"Don't think because I understand I care," Anko told him the first day. "I survived. You will too, otherwise you'd be dead already."

"I don't want you to," Sasuke replied.

She smirked. "Yeah, I heard about how you're trying to alienate everyone, you cocky brat."

"At least I don't still smell like cloves," Sasuke replied, giving her shoulder a pointed look.

Anko attacked him without mercy then.
-

After Sasuke had been given some food and shown to a small apartment that was to be his for the time he remained in the Sound, a search party was sent out to collect the corpses of the Sound's Four. Orochimaru had been irritated to lose that much power, but Sasuke's body was worth the cost.

Besides, in the end he only lost three.

It was a stroke of luck—if Kabuto hadn't been sent with the group just in case, there was no way Tayuya would have survived long enough to be brought back to the Sound. As it was, she stayed unconscious for three days, and Kabuto exhausted himself healing all the internal bleeding and fractured and crushed bones. He didn't bother trying to get rid of the scars.

The first thing Tayuya asked when she woke up was where the fuck was that Sand bitch, and the second was where was Orochimaru.

Sasuke had been with the man at that time, since Orochimaru was giving him a tour of the main building when he was feeling less tired and less ready to rip his arm off on the slight chance it would stop the constant stinging pain. (He'd only seen the dungeons before, partly because that was where Orochimaru had been when he arrived and partly because Orochimaru had been testing whether Sasuke would run if exposed to the cruelty that the Hidden Sound was built on.)

He had been staring at Orochimaru's eyes while the man talked, despite his better judgment, because that was the only part of his features that Sasuke remembered--it was weird, damn it, he was blond, of all the fucking hair colors he was blond--so he almost appreciated the noise of someone storming down the corridor.

He heard "Get your hands off me, faggot!" and then Kabuto started to say something and then the door was shoved open. Sasuke tensed at the sound even though it had been announced, loudly; everything made him tense here, everything made him suspicious, and he was starting to think he would go crazy by the first month.

"Tayuya-chan," Orochimaru said genially, but his voice was tinged with a faint undercurrent.

Without hesitating, Tayuya stepped into the room and clasped her hands in front of her, dropping the crutches as she did so, and bowed deeply from the waist. Something cracked, and she hissed before stating: "I failed the mission. Kidoumaru and Jiroubou Sakon are dead. I don't ask forgiveness."

There was a long pause. Tayuya didn't look up. Sasuke blinked twice. Kabuto, still standing by the door, looked like he had better things to do than watch a person sign their own death warrant.

"Sasuke-kun arrived here," Orochimaru said at last. "That was all that was required. It's regrettable about those three, but they let themselves be killed."

Sasuke blinked a third time, slower. Tayuya didn't move.

"Hopefully I can find suitable replacements," the man added. "You'll need to train those people at that time. Until then, when you've recovered, teach Sasuke-kun seals so that we won't be defenseless."

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama," Tayuya replied. She dipped slightly lower with another hiss, and then managed to pick up the crutches before straightening and turning around.

When Kabuto made a motion to help her walk, Tayuya jerked out of reach. "Fuck off!" she snapped before clomping back down the corridor.

Kabuto's face was set in a blank expression, but he managed to convey his irritation through the way he tread heavily down the hall after her.

That was the first time Sasuke got an example of Orochimaru's methods, at least for upper ranks of the Soundnins.

It was one of the few times he heard Tayuya speak with any kind of sincere politeness, but it was also one of the few times he was in the same place with her and Orochimaru together.
-

There were three rules for missions in the Sound village: don't die, don't let your teammates die, and complete the mission successfully.

Sasuke had been a little surprised at the order, but later found out the second rule applied only when on a team with other people who had a curse seal. Those were the ones handpicked by Orochimaru and who had come to the Sound specifically because of or for him. The rest of the village was mostly composed of families of people who had nowhere else to go—missingnins, criminals too strong for their villages but not strong enough to work on their own or be approached by Akatsuki, and the like—and if they had to die in order for those with curse seals to survive and the missions to be completed, that was no big deal.

The Hidden Sound did not measure talent by ranks such as genin, chuunin, jounin, or so on, because the village was divided cleanly by the curse seal. There were some who lacked the seal but were still important, like Kabuto and a few other spies who would have been compromised by such obvious marks, but they were clearly pointed out and ordered to be left alone. And there were a few non-shinobi villagers who had drifted in and weren't allowed to leave, but they usually didn't last very long.

Sasuke adjusted.
-

Whenever Orochimaru woke him up hours before the dawn, Sasuke knew he was going to learn another forbidden jutsu. The dark, plus the seals and the illusions used as additional concealment, seemed excessive to Sasuke since Orochimaru always performed hand seals so quickly that he couldn't read them without the sharingan. But he limited his complaints to irritated noises as they moved through the marshland.

Today, Orochimaru cleared away enough weeds to build a small fire, before pulling out an ofuda and tracing the characters on it out slowly enough for Sasuke to memorize them.

The man waved the ofuda over the fire, and when the blood was dry, he tied it to a kunai. "This is called the Impure World Resurrection summoning, Sasuke-kun," Orochimaru informed him. "Now, please pay attention." He waited for Sasuke to shift his eyes to the sharingan before tucking the kunai into his belt and clapping his hands together.

A little less than two seconds later, Sasuke nodded abruptly to indicate that he had clearly seen all the hand seals. He watched as a coffin arose several centimeters in front of the ground where Orochimaru had slammed his hands down, facing away from them.

What use could I have for this? he thought.

Beside him, Orochimaru stood up and pulled the kunai free again. "Do you know, Sasuke-kun, there is something very satisfying in defeating a person you strived after?" he said in the tone that always made Sasuke's fingers tense, and then the lid of the coffin fell away.

After fourteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds, Sasuke had won the fight against his father, and stood swaying on his feet in the middle of the charred marshland.

When Orochimaru set a hand on his shoulder, Sasuke lashed out instinctively, ducking under the grip and aiming a kick to the side of the man's knee. Orochimaru slithered away before it could land, and he grabbed Sasuke's burnt arm. In the fraction of a second that the boy lost to wincing, Orochimaru threw him back.

Sasuke skidded through the mud into a stop, katana already out. He had to force himself to keep it in a defensive position as Orochimaru smiled.

"Excellent work, Sasuke-kun," the man told him. "If a bit longer than a fight should last. Have Kabuto look at those burns when we've returned."

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama," he bit off.
-

He noticed her presence when she used chakra to jump onto the roof behind him.

In the Sound, as in most ninja villages, people generally walked up to one another in a non-furtive fashion—because if they used stealth everyone would automatically assume the worst. Sasuke suspected Tayuya was waiting for him to reflexively attack her one day so she'd have an excuse for a fight.

"Go away," he said, not turning from his view of the sunset.

"Fuck you," she replied, and sat down on the edge of the roof half a meter away.

"You're not supposed to be talking to me."

"I didn't get orders not to," and then, "Besides, you'd like it better if you were alone."

Sasuke ignored the second sentence. "I'm surprised."

Tayuya snorted. "If every idiot got ostracized every time they did something idiotic, half the fucking village wouldn't talk."

Sasuke smirked.

"He's the one who wanted me to teach him the chidori," he replied. "It's not my fault it moves too fast for anyone without the sharingan to see properly."

There had been something intensely satisfying about dodging the attack and slamming a foot into Orochimaru's chest hard enough to crack bone.

He would pay for it in little ways, he'd known that even before he agreed—Orochimaru had already decided there were too many minor issues with the village that were going to take up his time before he left on another trip in a week, so there was no chance for him to teach Sasuke anything more until he got back—but it had been worth it.

Even despite the look Orochimaru had given him as he stood up and licked away the dribble of blood from his lower lip and chin.

It wasn't anger, Sasuke would have preferred anger, it wasn't even irritation or that polite condescension . . . just pure. . . .

He didn't like to think about it. Sasuke glared at the sun until his eyes watered.

"They'll be his soon enough," Tayuya said, pulling out her flute.

"Hn."

He glanced at her hands as she started playing, and noted that the polish was chipping again.

(Tayuya had lost a bet during one mission and wound up having to allow Setona to paint her nails. The five of them had been waiting for the new leader of the country—one of Orochimaru's spies, who'd been moved into place when the old leader was assassinated in a way that convinced the new one the country needed a ninja village—to be finished with a meeting so that they could escort him to Oto. Sasuke had noticed the color was purple and told her it made her hands ugly. Tayuya had been painting them purple ever since.)

The song she was playing was little more than a variation on the chromatic scale. When Tayuya had been brought back from her fight with Shikamaru and Temari, her left index and pinky fingers were broken, but Kabuto had been too busy trying to bring her legs back from their pulped state to do more than quickly set them in a brace.

It turned out that the two fingers had set crooked, just enough that the index finger only half-covered the hole on her flute, making several notes sharp or flat when they shouldn't be and rendering almost half of her illusions useless.

She'd invented a few new ones to make up for the loss, but in the end Orochimaru decided she had to rebreak the fingers and set them again, properly. So now that they were healed, Tayuya was running through basic practices yet again.

Her opinion of the situation was all directed at Kabuto for fucking up the first time. She didn't say a word about Orochimaru's decision.

Sasuke was aware he was going to have to kill the man outside of the Sound village, or he would never escape before the people with more loyalty than hatred got to him.

But that could be managed. When he left, if he made catching himself too difficult for others, eventually Orochimaru would hunt him down personally. And when he won that fight, even if he had to hide for a few months because he'd be half-dead from the overuse of chakra, it would have to be enough to finally attract Itachi's attention. And out of everything Orochimaru was teaching him, there had to be something that would give Sasuke enough of an edge to kill him.

It didn't have to be flashy. It didn't have to be an uncontested difference of skill (as if it ever would), he didn't need to laugh at his brother's blood on his hands or say "This was for our family" or any of the crap that he had used to think was necessary. Sasuke just needed to see Itachi dead. By this point, that could do.

After that. . . .

After that, he'd be free of the debt he'd incurred by being the only one left alive, and he could start over somewhere else. Not in any of the established ninja villages, he'd be known too quickly there and the Hidden Leaf was powerful enough to force an extradition. But he could go to a village that was still in the middle of forming, or work freelance for a while until he'd saved enough money. Then he'd find some woman from a respectable-enough family or at least with enough personal talent, get married, and start rebuilding the clan. Then he'd pass down most of his knowledge to his children and live, until he finally died from a mission or until he succumbed to the sharingan. Either of those fates would be acceptable, but he found something debasing in the thought of retiring.

Eventually. There would be time to work out the fine details later. He had another year and seven months that he could remain training in the Sound, and there was no reason to waste the opportunity he'd paid so much for.

Tayuya changed to a new song. Sasuke watched the sun set.

She left after it was gone.
-

One of the key elements of the Sound was the anonymity. Unlike the Leaf, when the Sound shinobi were on missions they all wore the same uniforms, so that this ninja couldn't be told apart from that ninja or that ninja over there or a dozen other ninjas to the left, except by certain physical characteristics like height or skin color. The Sound's new Five had different uniforms, but they still matched. Small objects like jewelry or different shoes were acceptable, and the Five could wear their hair however they wanted. Those things were just considered minor bits of defiance.

A certain amount of insubordination was inevitable, since many of the most powerful ninjas Orochimaru had collected had arrived as a result of their headstrong attitudes. It was actually expected by him—his second-in-command was still Kabuto after all these years, and only a blind person couldn't notice that the younger man manipulated everything placed under his power—and tolerated to a degree.

But there was a line that couldn't be crossed. Trying to leave the Sound was very, very far over that line. Contacting an enemy village (and they were all enemy villages in the end, even the allied Hidden Mist) to do so was also frowned on. And Junji only made things worse for himself by trying to go back home to the Sand, the Leaf's closest allies.

Yesterday afternoon, Orochimaru had called Sasuke, Tayuya, Kazuo, and Koushun into his library in the main building, introduced them to Setona, told them that the teenager was going to be their new teammate, and then requested they do something about Junji.

Late this morning, they picked Junji up from the medical center. After they had informed him of their decision, Kabuto had severed Junji's hamstrings, broken all ten of his fingers and tied his hands together, and for good measure cut out and cauterized his tongue. He left the three of them to tie up the teenager in the net themselves.

They then walked through the main street, because this part was a display for the village. Kazuo and Koushun dragged the net, so Tayuya and Sasuke carried their shovels as well as their own. Setona trailed after them, not sure where to look. Junji screamed what were probably supposed to be obscenities at them for a while, until the dust started choking him.

The pit was outside the village—Sasuke and Kazuo had put their students to work digging it yesterday evening. Kazuo and Koushun threw the net in before taking back their shovels. Junji started screaming again.

After the first dozen shovelfuls of dirt had been throw in, some on Junji's face, and the teenager was still screaming, Kazuo picked up a rock and threw it at his chest. When Junji curled in on himself, Kazuo said tonelessly: "Orochimaru-sama makes the promises that no one else will. If you were afraid of the price, you should have rotted out there with the rest of the trash."

Junji choked out something incoherent and began crying.

Tayuya glared. "Fucking coward traitor. . . ." She turned to Setona. "This is what'll happen to you if you wuss out. The same goes for everyone," she added, looking over at Sasuke.

"Don't speak above your place, 'Tayuya-chan'," he replied.

Sasuke had decided that it could be useful to know how to sound like Orochimaru. The mimicry wasn't exact—some syllables just required the man's tongue—but it was close. Everyone was silent for a moment, and Setona gave him an analyzing look.

Then Koushun crouched near the edge, staring down at Junji with an arm resting on his shovel. "Hey," he said, looking up at Sasuke, "doesn't this seem a little excessive to Sasuke-san?"

"If it prevents any other acts, it isn't excessive," Sasuke said, throwing another shovelful of dirt in. He looked over at Setona. "You. You've got a shovel for a reason."

"Right," Setona said, picking it up and moving closer to the pit.

They only filled it to half a meter above Junji's body. Then they sat down and played cards for an half an hour. Then Sasuke noticed that Setona was cheating with some impressively quick handwork, and killed another ten minutes sparring with him.

Then they dug Junji's body back up and examined it.

"He's dead," Kazuo determined, after feeling for a pulse.

"Kazuo-san should stab him anyway," Koushun spoke up from where he was dozing lizard-like in the sun.

Sasuke shook his head. "That'll leave blood."

Kazuo looked at him over the edge of the pit. "What about snapping his neck? They'll see the dirt well enough."

"No. I want it clear he was buried alive."

Kazuo shrugged. "What if he's faking it, managed to live?"

"There's five of us," Sasuke said, folding his arms. "We can handle one weak ninja in a net."

"Throw him out already," Tayuya snapped. "This is a waste of time."

They dragged the net back through the main street, before dropping it off at the crematorium and breaking apart for lunch.
-

Koushun was by far the politest of the Five. Tayuya had bullied him mercilessly when he'd first been placed in their team, and neither Kazuo, Junji, nor Sasuke had been able to figure out what the fuck Orochimaru saw in him—until their first fight against an enemy, when they met his other personality.

The only downsides of the other Koushun were that he didn't distinguish teammates from enemies, and he didn't register pain. Even using the sharingan, Sasuke found he and the others had to almost kill the teenager to keep him unconscious long enough to revert. It was annoying to have to drag him back to the Sound, but the only time Sasuke really hated dealing with the guy was when there were other people involved.

They'd gotten back from another escorting mission, as boring as usual though Kazuo had killed one would-be political assassin, and gone out for dinner as soon as the spy was in the main building. Junji had split apart from the rest of them and already headed to his apartment.

"He's hiding something," Tayuya said flatly, biting a piece of chicken off the skewer. "We should beat it out of him."

"Orochimaru's letting him get away with it," Sasuke replied. "Leave it alone."

Tayuya tore off a cherry tomato with more vigor than necessary. In the lull, they heard someone at a table on the opposite side whisper: "—hear that? Not even respected among them, we—"

The voice stopped abruptly, and the lull turned to silence. Kazuo, Tayuya, and Koushun stood up.

The man who'd spoken shoved his chair back, instinctively moving away. The other two at the table with him were gauging the distance to the door. "I didn't mean—no! It's not—"

Sasuke pulled a kunai from his pack and threw it into the man's forehead. The remaining two men immediately backed away.

Tayuya looked down at him with disgust. "You're a damn bleeding heart."

"I don't waste time fighting people that much weaker," Sasuke replied, picking up his tea.

"It's not about fighting," Koushun said, and popped his neck, "it's about ripping out their guts and stuffing them down their throats."

Sasuke, Tayuya, and Kazuo shared a look.

They got Koushun down and unconscious in under four minutes, because practice was making them faster.

Tayuya was burning away the barrier ofuda she'd thrown onto the corners of the walls, while Sasuke untangled the wires from around Koushun's body. Kazuo was picking through the wreckage and checking the bodies.

"Any important ones?" Sasuke asked.

Kazuo nudged a child's body with his toe, then crouched down to check the pulse. "This was one of my students. He was really starting to excel in ninjutsu."

Sasuke made a noise in the back of his throat that could be interpreted several ways. He started winding the wire up.

Kazuo shrugged and stood. "Most of them'll live. Tell someone to get the medicnins."

"Move it!" Tayuya yelled, and three people broke away from the crowd outside and darted towards the medical building.

Sasuke saw Koushun's movements before the other teenager fully regained consciousness, and realized he hadn't let the sharingan slip back yet. "Hey."

Kazuo stepped closer. Tayuya picked up half a broken table and brandished it.

Koushun sat up. He looked around the restaurant, and then pressed a hand to the bleeding side of his face.

"Ah," he said. "Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone."

Tayuya muttered something and dropped the table. Sasuke kicked him in the back.

"Go home," he said. "You're irritating."

"Good night," Koushun agreed, before limping out of the building.

As the three of them left as well, Tayuya turned to the owner and said, "Since we took care of that trouble for you, the meal was free."

"Of course," the man replied, bowing slightly. "Thank you very much."

When Sasuke walked past the restaurant before dawn the next morning, on his way to train in private for an hour, he saw that the lanterns were still lit and the owner's family was still trying to clean blood out of the cracks in the floor and walls.
-

At fourteen, Sasuke found himself responsible for teaching the children of the first generation of Soundnins.

He and Kazuo were the only ones in the group who were teachers. Tayuya was training one girl who'd displayed spiritual powers in onmyoujutsu, but that was all; and Junji had been put to work elsewhere a month ago, and Koushun had been removed from teaching duties the day after he snapped and killed three students before Sasuke and Kazuo could get to him. It was irritating to deal with eight-year-olds who couldn't hit targets as precisely with their kunai as he had been able to, but Sasuke put up with it until the first set of tests.

The day after he'd turned in the papers, he noticed that the lowest overall scorers were no longer in the class, and on his desk was a little note in the administrator's handwriting saying to encourage those that had shown talent in one specific area but were lacking in the others to work harder.

After half a day, Sasuke dismissed the class and demanded to be moved to teaching those old enough to at least know how the hell to teleport and produce effective clones.

After the deliberate lapse of two days, he was transferred to the graduating class, where the weeding-out process was already completed.

The graduating class was good. The majority of them were average, and "average" in the Hidden Sound was equal to "above-average" in most other places. Some of them were above-average, and Sasuke knew they were destined to become experiments, so he kept more distance between himself and them than the others. There was one boy who'd shown an excessive amount of talent, but he had already been noticed and was receiving personal training outside of daily classes. Another girl had been apprenticed under Kabuto, but Kabuto had a way of losing apprentices like other people lost splinters, so Sasuke didn't expect that to last long.

The day before graduation, Sasuke had looked at the room and reminded himself that most of the students were only two or three years younger than him.

They were also a whole two and three years younger. Life in Oto produced an early hardness that life in Konoha hadn't, but still, they had yet to kill anyone, or fight against anyone outside their village, or even to pass the genin survival tests.

Kids, Sasuke thought, and said, "Graduation is tomorrow. You'll be receiving your assigned teams that day or the next. Your teammates are going to become the most important people in your lives for the next few years, at the least, so don't complain."

Most of the class nodded without speaking, so the snicker from the left corner was even louder than intended. Sasuke looked over. "What is it? Akino."

"The 'most important people'?" the boy repeated. Then he added in an apologetic tone, "I'm sorry, Uchiha-sensei, I forgot—you came from the Hidden Leaf, right?"

There was complete silence in the room. Sasuke's purpose to Orochimaru wasn't known outside the immediate circle around the man, so while the rest of the village saw and imitated the deference given him by the upper-level shinobi, they didn't know what it was for and generally assumed it was because he was one of the Five. And Akino was one of the few people who lacked respect for those with the curse seal, despite being badly beaten up for it several times.

Sasuke tapped a finger on the desk. "It's not a matter of personal liking—you kids are assholes, and few of you are going to get along. But your teammates are not just people you'll be training and going on missions with. They're going to be the only ones in this village you can ever dream will watch your back."

He let his gaze sweep the room as he continued. "Most of you were born in Oto. Some of you are orphans, some of you are bastards, a lot of you only have one shinobi parent. All of you are going to die from the Sound, either for it or by it. After you graduate and prove you're not tactically useless through the genin training, you're going to join the lower-level trash and spend your lives fighting well enough to keep your forehead protector while not standing out enough to wind up as experiments, until you get killed." He stopped scanning the room at those words and focused on Akino. "And your teammates might give a damn, if you haven't been too much trouble to them."

Sasuke stopped tapping his finger and studied the room again. "So try to avoid overt animosity, and don't kill each other. Understand?"

A few kids nodded silently. Most of them were staring at the floor, or the wall, or the windows, or anything that wasn't him.

"Then class is dismissed," Sasuke said. "Get out."

He disappeared from the village shortly after, and when Orochimaru finally sent several snakes to locate him a little before three a.m., they found Sasuke dozing in a tree on the outskirts of the forest.

The adder that found him later complained about being thrown roughly to the ground. Sasuke told it not to drape itself around his neck, because he couldn't be responsible for his reflexes. Orochimaru suggested he apologize and not be caught sleeping again.
-

Not long after Sasuke managed to start hitting Orochimaru in their fights, a new child arrived at the Sound. He was placed in Sasuke's class soon after, and the teenager never figured out whether it was meant to be a warning or if Orochimaru just thought it was amusing to have them together.

He recognized that the boy was his spare immediately. That was one of the few times Sasuke had smiled while he was at Oto; Ichiro's presence meant that Orochimaru acknowledged there was a possibility, however slight, that he might escape before the three years were up.

That pride was part of the reason he agreed to the order to teach Ichiro a few of his personal jutsus. Most of the reason was more fatalistic than Sasuke would ever admit to being—if he did fail to escape, he wasn't going to let everything about his clan die out.

"Pathetic," Sasuke announced when Ichiro failed to perform the Great Fireball jutsu on the first try.

"Fuck you," the boy dared to reply because they were alone, and attempted it again. Sasuke folded his arms. After the fourth failure, he snorted derisively and walked away, leaving Ichiro in the marsh.

Two days later, there was a banging on his door hours before dawn. Orochimaru was never so graceless—Sasuke took the katana with him when he went to open it.

Outside he found Ichiro slouching against the frame, bandages taped over his burns, fingers completely wrapped, and wearing a smirk. "I mastered it."

Fast, Sasuke acknowledged. Outwardly he gave the boy a bored look and said, "It took you long enough."
-

Orochimaru was the one who told him about Naruto being the fox demon's container, though he did so indirectly.

Sasuke had arrived at the man's library at the time stated in the message, only to find he wasn't there. A medium-sized scroll tied with a delicate silver cord was sitting on the middle of one of the tables.

Sasuke waited for half an hour, tapping his foot slightly. When Orochimaru remained absent, he pulled a chair up to the table and checked the scroll for all the dangerous sealing jutsus he knew the man used. There had been only a low-level one on it, but later Sasuke decided Orochimaru had decreased the protection for that particular day.

When he opened the scroll, he found a perfect copy of the Fourth's sealing method for the fox demon, in Orochimaru's handwriting. The Third had destroyed the original scroll, worried about the consequences of Naruto or any of Konoha's enemies finding it, but not before a young Kabuto had managed to sneak into the Hokage tower, steal it, take it to Orochimaru and bring it back unnoticed.

Sasuke had stared at the scroll long after he was finished reading it, and he didn't notice Orochimaru's presence in the room until the faint scent of cloves reached his nose.

"Why did you want me to read this," he said in a low voice.

"I thought you might be curious," Orochimaru replied. "But, I suppose you're right . . . it doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

Sasuke's grip clenched around the paper. Orochimaru leaned over his shoulder and opened his fingers, before setting his hand on the table.

"This is a valuable scroll, Sasuke-kun; please don't ruin it."
-

"I don't get it," Setona said one day, as he watched Tayuya and Sasuke walk off, ignoring each other. The Five had just broken apart after returning from a mission scouting the Hidden Mist—the tortured corpse of a high ranking jounin had been found there, and rumor had it that the Hidden Leaf was responsible, which meant Konoha had likely learned about their alliance with the Sound.

"Stop staring or you'll get a broken arm," Kazuo replied, starting to walk away. "Just take one of the trash or the villagers. They're not allowed to say no."

"It doesn't make sense," Setona replied, falling in step with him. Koushun followed them. "I mean, why the hell . . . of all the people. . . ."

"She's a girl," Kazuo said sagely. "And he's too sentimental."

Setona raised an eyebrow. "'Sentimental'? That cold bastard?"

"I heard Sasuke-san came here just so he could get the power to kill the man who killed his family," Koushun said.

"He did," Kazuo affirmed. "And if that's not sentimental, what the hell is?"

"Huh." Setona looked over his shoulder again.

Kazuo glanced at him. "Seriously, stop staring at him. He'll let you die on a mission. And Orochimaru-sama will let him get away with it."

Setona looked forward again.
-

Tayuya and Setona had had issues with each other for a while, and for a long time Sasuke thought it something to do with them both being genjutsu users and feeling threatened by each other. Or that Tayuya thought Setona was trying to steal her jutsus. Since Setona had been living as a thief before Orochimaru found him, and because he expressed a little too much interest in Sasuke's ability to copy others' techniques, Sasuke could understand the latter. But either way it meant that he had to keep breaking up their fights whenever they got too deadly or started using their curse seals.

Setona usually backed off when Sasuke threw the two of them apart, but Tayuya just shifted her target from the other teenager to him.

They always managed to walk to the medical building on their own afterward, if only because they lashed out whenever Koushun tried to help.

Kabuto was out this particular time, so Sasuke pulled himself onto a cot and fell asleep to recharge. He woke up when the door opened, but kept his breathing even.

Kabuto made an irritable noise at seeing the two of them in his rooms yet again, but he started rattling through the cabinets for bandages and ointments and an icepack for Tayuya's face.

"Your flirting is working me to death," he commented, just loud enough that it wasn't under his breath.

Sasuke's foot twitched imperceptibly.

". . . I'm not flirting with that shithead," Tayuya snarled. "I would never touch Orochimaru-sama's property, I'm not a disloyal bastard like you."

"True, Tayuya-san," Kabuto replied. "I shouldn't have assumed . . . after all, you never struck me as a girl who was interested in doomed romances."

There was a loud crash as something heavy and metallic was kicked to the floor. Tayuya slammed the door when she left.

After a moment, Sasuke opened his eyes to see Kabuto picking up various medical supplies scattered around an overturned cabinet.

"Pathetic," he said, closing his eyes again.

"Who is, Sasuke-sama?" Kabuto asked politely.

Sasuke left while Kabuto was still cleaning up. He limped back to his apartment and fixed his wounds himself.
-

The one time Sasuke didn't interfere between Setona and Tayuya's fights was when he overheard Setona call her a cradle-robber. That time Kazuo finally stepped in when Tayuya started to summon a shikigami; and when he managed to force them apart, Setona had three broken ribs and a broken cheekbone, Tayuya had a punctured lung, and Kazuo got two shurikan lodged in his spine for his efforts.

When Orochimaru questioned him about it later, Sasuke said that he had decided it would be better for the two of them to work out their aggression once and for all.

Orochimaru had been displeased, but Setona was much slower to pick fights or take the bait afterwards. Kazuo didn't speak to Sasuke for a week.
-

He jerked away from her at the comment, as far as he could go without falling off the stool. "I didn't sleep with him."

Anko just smirked and gave him a clearly disbelieving look. Sasuke glared, hand tightening around his glass.

Anko tilted her head to the other side and shrugged her shoulder with a little sway, before pouring herself another drink. The curse seal under her fishnet—the one that still hadn't faded yet after three years, the one exactly like Sasuke's (a fact he hadn't missed and which kept him from underestimating her)—was emphasized with the motion.

"You missed out," she said, tossing the drink back.
-

By the time he lost the fight, he was so exhausted that the anger at letting himself be caught was almost less than the relief that it was over for the day.

One of his arms was trapped underneath him, and the other was pinned to the ground just far enough out that he couldn't reach any of his remaining weapons. One of his legs was free, but the other one was twisted out at the knee, straining his muscles badly. He could have shifted so that it wasn't so painful, but he would have had to be able to push himself up slightly for that, and Orochimaru was kneeling on his chest.

The man tsked. "You're still not good enough, Sasuke-kun. Itachi isn't going to be bothered with killing you until you can keep his interest." Orochimaru smirked faintly. "At this rate, you won't even manage to run from me."

Sasuke glared, because he didn't have the strength to throw the man off and continue the fight. Orochimaru's smile widened a bit, and he stood.

Sasuke was glad to see him favor his right side as he did—it meant Orochimaru hadn't deflected all his attacks. He was getting better.

He would get better.
-

There was still a hand on his arm.

—

The sharingan warned Kakashi that Sasuke was going to move a half a second before the teenager was up and attacking. He pushed himself back out of reach while he could.

He caught the first kunai in his right hand, the second in his left, deflected the third with the one in his right, deflected the fourth with his left, and the fifth one slipped through the gap and grazed his ribs.

Part of Kakashi wondered Where is he keeping these? while the rest of him threw the two kunai in his hands to the side and shoved himself up. He flipped over the leg that Sasuke kicked at his chest.

When he landed, while Sasuke was turning around, Kakashi turned as well and lashed out, slamming his forearm into the side of Sasuke's neck. Sasuke bent partially at that, and it gave Kakashi enough of an opening to grab his right arm.

Sasuke reflexively swung his left away, but Kakashi had a longer reach and caught it as well. He jerked both of Sasuke's arms to their opposite sides, pulling just enough that the shoulders were ready to dislocate.

"Sasuke."

He froze at the sound of Kakashi's voice. The room was silent, except for the sound for their breathing and Sasuke's heart beating much too fast for such a short fight, even if it had been a surprise.

Then Sasuke's hands clenched and he tried to pull his arms back to their proper sides—not with the smooth motion of a ninja, but with the jerky struggle of a teenager caught in a stronger man's grip. Kakashi let go and settled back on his heels.

"You." Sasuke was shaking faintly. "You—don't do that. Don't. You know be—"

When Sasuke cut himself off, Kakashi said quietly, "Right."

Sasuke didn't turn to look at him. The teenager set his hands firmly on the floor and stayed in his crouch.

When Sasuke stopped shaking, Kakashi explained, "You were talking in your sleep. I called your name. . . . But I'll throw something instead next time."

Not surprisingly, Sasuke had tensed up again. Kakashi stood, almost making a noise at the sting from his ribs.

Almost was enough. "Did I hit you?" Sasuke asked.

Kakashi answered because the question seemed more concerned—or at least disturbed—for him than curious about whether Sasuke had gotten past his defenses. "It's just a scratch."

It was a little deeper than a scratch, he noticed when he cleaned it up in the bathroom, but not bad enough to need bandaging. The more annoying thing was having his shirt ripped.

He didn't hear Sasuke picking up the kunai, but when he returned to the room they were all hidden and Sasuke was sitting on the futon, staring at the floor. Kakashi walked past him to the bed and pushed the blankets down.

"He never laid a hand on me," Sasuke said abruptly.

Kakashi's hand stilled for a moment. Then he shoved the blankets further back and sat on the bed. "Okay."

"He didn't."

"I believe you."

Sasuke snorted, but he was still glaring at the floor. "Anko doesn't. And Naruto said . . . about the. . . ." Sasuke clenched his jaw for a moment. "But he never touched . . . that wasn't how he did things. He just promised whatever you want the most and waits for you to accept it on his terms."

Kakashi paused again when Sasuke lapsed into the present tense. After a minute passed slowly and the teenager didn't speak, he cleared his throat. "Perhaps . . . since you've got the reflexes of someone living in the middle of a war. . . ."

"That's the kind of training I requested from him," Sasuke replied. "Being off my guard was unacceptable."

Kakashi could better believe him now—he knew how masochistic Sasuke would get in his training if left to his own devices. "That's not a good way to go if you don't have to," he said mildly. "The exhaustion catches up to you too quickly, and in the end you're never fighting at your best."

"I got plenty of sleep when I learned to conceal myself well enough," Sasuke replied.

The pitch of his voice had changed slightly, and Kakashi could tell that Sasuke no longer wanted to be talking about Orochimaru, no longer wanted to be talking about anything to do with the Sound, didn't want to be talking at all.

"Hm," Kakashi said, before lying down and pulling up the blanket. Several seconds later, he heard Sasuke do the same.

—

The next morning, Sasuke avoided Kakashi with an amazing amount of skill, considering it was a two-room apartment. He ate dinner with Naruto and didn't return home until Kakashi had long pretended to go to bed.

The day after that, Sasuke began looking at available apartments.

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