(closed) everything you feel, and everything you think

[chokuto]

WHO: Uchiha Sasuke & others.
WHERE: Around Stygia.
WHEN: Month of October.
WHAT: Catch-call for event prompts / other scenarios.
WARNINGS: None atm, will updated if needed.


[ ooc — plotting comment for the event here, comment for the general CR meme here. flexible to do things outside of the event as well!]

Comments

[craters]

（ the lack of push-back against her assertion and assessment has her feeling a bit like she's stepped over a cliff, the unsettling jarring twist in her gut as she starts to fall and the wind rips past, curling long fingers in her hair. she is still learning how to react to anyone taking her opinions seriously — but with sasuke, it's a whole other beast. years of ingrained reactions splintering and breaking apart like temple glass.

but at the same moment she feels dizzyingly out of her depth — unselfconsciously, unknowingly — she does respond to that challenge. she lifts the point of her chin in something very like defiance, and there is a rush as it bruises through her — intoxicating and heady as a drug. it feels a little like the first time sasuke has ever actually looked at her. not with the tenderness she's yearned for nor with the adoration she hoped might one day be returned, but with the faintest susurrations of respect.

it's as if it flips a switch she didn't even realize she had — and it occurs to her, belatedly, that she wants that more than all the rest of any emotion she could ever desire from him. ）

I'll do it. Just hold still.

（ the cape gets pushed back over her body's shoulder, and the shirt drawn up. she is very carefully not thinking about sasuke's hands on her body, for all that it's something she's dreamed of for so long — that thought is pushed firmly from her mind. she is a doctor, and regardless of the body she's in, there is a patient beneath her hand that requires her attention.

sasuke's chakra is a dark, boundless pool, but instead of still water it's rather like a net of energy, constantly crackling, roiling with power and sharp points of violet light. there is nothing of healing in it, from the highest peaks where its brilliance shimmers like a lattice of stars, to the lowest depths where everything tastes of rust and the muddied, dusky taste of a gathering storm.

it sends a shiver through her. it's difficult to say whether or not it's different than how it felt when they were children, or if it's his experiences that drew the darkness to the surface and eclipsed the rest, but it takes her a long, long time to find echoes of the boy he had been in the tangled web of electric essence. she felt she had known him then, even if she's realizing she never had at all.

she finds what she is looking for eventually. a little spark. something almost like hope. that's what she pulls from, and when she opens her eyes again her hand is awash in the soft blue of healing chakra. she can see it differently, through the rinnegan. chakra isn't normally visible like this — one senses more than sees it, but it's not a surprise the dōjutsu can piece it apart like this. she finds herself making clinical notes in the back of her mind, parallel to her work to heal the injury. she'll never get this chance again, after all, and it may improve her own precision.

the skin is split where she'd stitched it shut, and she peels the bandage carefully back. it feels like an indulgence to be using chakra to heal herself — but she'd rather sasuke not deal with any ill effects. dead blood beneath the skin has left a patina of wild colours painted against her skin, sickly yellows and greens blooming into violet-black, a livid red from where she'd landed the blow that drove him away.

healing it is a clumsier, slower affair than usual. but, by degrees, the bruises hollow out, the lividity fades, the skin knits together, pushing out the catgut stitches she'd used a clone to gather the edges of the wound together. the bones of the ribcage are trickier, but manageable, and she's aware of the fact she's pushed his body's tolerance for this manner of work by the fact she can feel sweat gathering on her brow.

it's going to scar, she thinks ruefully, thumbing over the jagged crest of the fading mark. she only has a few, more pride in her ability as a healer than vanity as a woman, as she doesn't consider scars to be anything but a sign of what the body has survived. there's a part of her that thinks he might judge her for that, for the lack of skill it suggests not to be able to completely erase it, but that clamouring voice is choked down. surely even sasuke must recognize that the way stygia affects chakra, coupled with her being in a foreign body will impact how efficiently she can heal.

she rocks back on her heels, balancing strangely with only one arm, and nods vaguely towards the injury. ）

How does that feel now?

[chokuto]

[The number of times Sakura has healed him beneath her hand is less considerable than someone might imagine as teammates. Prior to the day he left Konoha, still a member of an intact Team 7, the majority of their low-rank missions hadn't required treatment — and Sakura's skill paled in comparison to the breadth of her ability as her current self. He remembers lying on that rock in the sun, in the Valley of the End, cognizant to Sakura above him, mending the severed flesh of his left arm. The feeling of that healing chakra flowing into him, cool and fresh as spring water as it gathered within every crevice of pain his body held. The vulnerability of it too, and how he'd been driven to apology as a result, cracked open on the core of his own regret with Naruto at his side the whole time. Washed clean.

Now, the ordeal is turned on its head given their traded positions. He has rationally understood the need for medical ninjutsu as a shinobi. Wounds require care; certain individuals are trained to provide that care from an ancillary role on a team. He'd utilized Karin's ability for that reason, but their exchanges were an impersonal transaction. There was a time he was willing to let her die — willing wholeheartedly to kill her himself — in the path to his goal. She was more tool than teammate to the person he was then.

It doesn't feel the same now. He hadn't needed to tell Sakura of her injury; he could have suffered it until returning to himself. And the strangeness of this vulnerable position, in a body that is not his own, is magnified exponentially. The only other person he'd allow beneath his guard in this state is Naruto. So predictable, the two of them, anchoring him to the world once again.

He holds himself stiffly as the shirt is lifted, head turned aside. There's a surreality to looking into his own eyes, one that risks disassociation. Or a worse imagining of someone else whose brotherly resemblance would be too cruel to consider. Seeing Itachi in himself...

Skin begins to mend slowly. He can tell the difference of chakra, how Sakura's touch is cold and sharp compared to the Valley of the End, an icy static in the flow, almost oppressive enough to make him hold his breath. She demonstrates her expertise to be able to do this at all, he knows. And there is some marveling at that. Because he was wrong, and perhaps he could never have done it so efficiently even in her body. Would it be worthwhile to learn a bare minimum of medical ninjutsu? He's never entertained it before. Strength went only in one direction in his mind.

The pass of a thumb across the mark causes Sasuke to flinch, less with pain than surprise. His chin jerks back, and their eyes meet, her own pale green wide with a naked look that soon shutters back into resilient composure in a heartbeat.]

It feels fine. [Clothing yanked inelegantly into place, he also stands, frown freshly affixed.] Thanks.

[...awkward silence...]

[craters]

（ she thinks she can count on one hand the amount of times sasuke has ever thanked her for anything, and her expression is briefly swathed in naked shock, quickly overridden by something better resembling sasuke's usual stoicism. she stands up and turns away from him. ）

It's nothing. What are teammates for?

（ she doesn't give him room to answer that, instead briskly moving on. she doesn't want to give him a chance to deny they're teammates at all. she rolls her right hand, feeling the tendons crackle as she works it in a circular motion. when she speaks, it's with a doctor's surety and authority. ）

There's a lot of damage to your body that hasn't been tended to by a healer. （ 'damn girl, you live like this?' ） So if you would ever like me to fix it, I will. Some things will need to be rebroken to mend properly.

[chokuto]

[He hasn't corrected her on the claim of teammates, although it isn't the first time she's mentioned it. Team 7 was never reformed under any official basis as far as he is aware; he knows that he was replaced by that other shinobi, Sai. And he knows, too, that at least Sakura has graduated past the status of genin.

So what are they now?]

It doesn't bother me. [Discomfort is hardly some new phenomenon to shinobi.] Wouldn't it be more of a hassle to deal with after all this time than to leave it alone? It isn't affecting me.

[craters]

Sasuke-kun...

（ it sounds strange to say that in his own voice, and it's punctuated by a sigh as she drags a hand through his hair the way she would her own. even the texture of it is different — silkier, but less soft without the products she uses — and the varying lengths give her muscle memory a brief twinge as she comes to the end of his bangs expecting there to be more. ）

It's painful. I can feel it. Just because you're used to it doesn't mean you should have to live with it.

（ but it isn't as if she can force him to listen to her.

it isn't as if she could ever get him to do anything she wanted at all. he's neveɾ listeƞeɗ tσ ɦeɾ, ƞeνeɾ cɑɾeɗ ɑbσut ɦeɾ, ƞeνeɾ wɑƞteɗ ɑƞʮtɦiƞg tσ ɗσ witɦ ɦeɾ except wɦeƞ sɦe wɑs useʄul tσ ɦiɱ, ɑƞɗ tɦσse ɱσɱeƞts weɾe ʄew ɑƞɗ ʄɑɾ betweeƞ eνeƞ ɑs cɦilɗɾeƞ. ɑƞɗ ƞσw?

tɦeʮ'ɾe still stɾɑƞgeɾs, ɑʄteɾ ɑll tɦis tiɱe.

iʄ ɦe wɑƞts tσ be iƞ pɑiƞ? L̵̞̣̈́Ȩ̵̛̗͉́T̷̫̘̋ ̶̩̈́̕Ĥ̷͉̲͖̈͑Ǐ̴̞̰͒M̵̙͙̉̊.

a sudden wave of bleak, roiling dizziness washes over her. she presses the heel of her palm over the rinnegan, sways with what feels abruptly like the complete severance of her chakra, and the world around her abruptly shifts. changes. from the small wellhouse to the acrid smell of burnt flesh, and she's sprawled on the ground with no honest idea what's just happened.

she's never been through one of sasuke's portals, and it leaves her sprawled flat on the ground, stirred quickly up to action by the distant, echoing sounds of screams. the air is thick and acrid, burning her nose and throat so badly she's immediately pulling sasuke's shirt up over it, suppressing the urge to choke on the air.

—

when she emerges from the cavern what seems like an eternity later, she makes a line right for her clinic. she can't hope to find sasuke like this, worn down and nearly out of chakra from the healing, the use of the rinnegan and choice amounts of shunshin to escape notice in the underground, and she can only trust he'll know her well enough to seek her there as well. ）