SECOND COMING OF THE DEMON !!

❛ well, ain’t like i’ve got much of a choice. s’the world we live in, yeah? ❜

suigetsu tuts, sucking his teeth, and takes another swig from their shared bottle. yeah, this was the world’s problem, not suigetsu’s. he’d been raised in kiri, grown up in a series of otogakure labs, and followed his savior right into a still-raging war. it wasn’t exactly the kind of life that made for cushy, pleasant bedfellows. besides— suigetsu’s a violent guy. had to be, life he’d lived, and— well. like attracts like, yeah? birds of a feather. there’s something to be said about taka in that, but suigetsu’s not a poet. leave that shit to sasuke, when he’s not levelling battlefields.

❛ like you can talk, anyhow. you’re following the same guy i am, aren’t you? don’t psychoanalyse me, lady, i’ll psychoanalyse you right back with a cherry on top. ❜

the retort might be their standard brand of hostile in wording, but his tone lacks the bite it once had when he spoke to karin; if anything, it’s said with a slight, tired grin. their rivalry’s more of a comfort to suigetsu now than anything else; with her, at least, he knew what to expect. probably why he goes running to her whenever sasuke’s a little too much these days. (cowardly. hiding behind karin’s skirts when the big guy yells at him. what is he, five?)

❛ literally, in your case, right? ❜    with a rude finger, suigetsu points to the scaly scarring that still mars kabuto’s face, evidence of orochimaru’s influence now as plain on the medic’s outsides as it was on his insides. 

it’s easier to deflect and poke fun when kabuto makes these cutting little remarks; suigetsu’s not interested in bonding with him, to say the least. even if sometimes, he said things that made sense. they were both, in one sense or another, ‘free’ of orochimaru, and yet somehow his presence still seemed to follow them, like a draught in a warm house. always there to remind them.

yeah, right. maybe for kabuto. suigetsu couldn’t care less.

for all of his grating quirks and complete idiocy, Suigetsu must have been the only person she could never quite predict. Maybeーshe reasonedーit was because their minds were wired so differently that she’d have better luck understanding the mental functions of a jellyfish. After all, she thought herself to be the smart one ( maybe even the smartest one, depending how superior she’s feeling ), so maybe his absence of intelligence is so jarringly opposite to anything she’s ever experienced in her life that the ability to comprehend him was beyond her scope entirely. Yeah, that was it. They were opposing magnetic poles, their juxtaposition a blind spot.

It’s remarkable, reallyー his gross misinterpretation of the sheer complex she’s got going on is so stark in its simplification that it blanches the melancholy right out of her, at least for a few beautiful, annoying moments. To think, he assumed this was about something as small as sex. Well, alright, not small… that was a whole other kettle of fish ( tanks of Suigetsus, even; she mentally tucks that one away for later, more appropriate use ). As many bad habits as she knew she had, humping and dumping wasn’t one she counted on in being included in her arsenal of dick moves. Frankly, that’s a situation she doesn’t even want to think aboutー…. and she’s thinking about it, a terribly delayed moment of horrible clarity. 

Karin envies him his way of thinking, sometimes, even though she’d rather let Sasuke stab her again than admit it. The simplicity of it seems… well, simple. Easy. Go with the flow, all things considered. She was almost tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt and suppose that maybe spending a few years floating in a tank, dehumanized and isolated, had planted a few philosophical seedsー but then she remembers the stink of weed, his dead little fish eyes, and his gormless mouth and decides against it. Not some faux-minimalist approach to life, then. Just a beautiful absence of having a clue what was going on.

Nice, really, to have that amidst all of their various bullshit. Where else could she find that sort of relief? If she’d said even half of what she said to Suigetsu to Sasuke, Juugo orーGods forbidーOrochimaru, she’d never hear the end of it. Well, depending on what day she caught Sasuke, but really their baggage alone was overwhelming. On the rare events they happened to be in the throes of the same unwanted introspection, coloured by that self-loathing guilt-rage-shame-repression cocktail, it was an absolute disaster. Enough traumatic responses to wipe out a small village, and you could take her word for it; she was practically an expert on it. Juugo was too kind, too, when he wasn’t having an apoplectic fit of murderous impulse, to feel any good about letting it all out. He looked at her with those understanding eyes, his face soft with concern. Gave her the heebie-jeebies. And Orochimaru… well, the mere suggestion of it made her cold.

So maybe Suigetsu being a tool wasn’t so bad. Sometimes. Times like this, where it was so easy to get angry in that stupid, petty way, instead of that ugly, heavy way that made her want to disappear all over again, drink herself into a sad, lonely death to be eaten by her cats. That would go down well, she’s sure. ❝You are… such a fuckin’ idiot, Suigetsu. What kind of bullshit women’s psyche magazine analysis is that?❞ And so she represses that unfortunate outburst, almost unbelieving at the chance she has to take back some of that accidental vulnerabilty.

It’s not happiness, not really, but some of that perennially sad look in her eyes fades. She’s scowling, now, flushed with anger, but it’s better than looking like a sad sack in front of a human puddle. ❝Why the fuck would I feel guilty, you thick-headed pig? Are you trying to imply I should feel guilty? I can fuck anybody I please. I’d even fuck you again, if I wanted to. Don’t feel guilty at all.❞ Immediately sensing danger, she hurriedly addends, ❝not that I’m sayin’ it’s going to happen again. I just don’t conform to… the ideals that women are limited to one man. And again, blamin’ my emotions on a manー what’s Kabuto got to do with this? Okay, so I spent a little time around him. Not my fault I was looking for an intellectual equal for company. It’s hard to come by around here.❞ Unless she was willing to thrust herself into Orochimaru’s lair and endure whatever mood he happened to be in. She hadn’t missed the fact that Suigetsu’s chakra fluctuated awkwardly at the implication of the Sannin’s sobriety. If such a thing were true, she was going to keep a wide berth until she had a better idea of what she could expect from such a dark twist of events.

A withering sigh conceals the fact that she is, stupidly, kind of, embarrassingly, humiliatingly touched by the idea that Suigetsu wants to talk to her. To think, there was a time she wanted Juugo and Suigetsu to rip each other to pieces and die. Simpler times, they were. ❝Yeahーwellーit’s not exactly a compliment that yer standards amount to objectifying me. What, so a woman’s only good for her body, huh? Dick. I can’t believe I ever touched you.❞ Can’t believe she’s teetering on doing it again. Lunacy. Utter lunacy. ❝But if it’ll make you less annoyin’ and prone to guilt-bombing me next time, then fine. We can talk about things. You know, you’re just as much to blame as meー how can we have a decent conversation if you smoke your ability to make sentences away?❞

Which reminds her… ❝Speaking of, pass me that joint. Now.❞ Disregard the fact she was slating him only moments ago for the habit. 

❛  ohhhhh, so it’s like that, is it?! one minute it’s all, ohh, suigetsu, you’re so disgusting, you big pothead, why are you wet all the time, and the next it’s give me some of the drugs that you did four hundred hours of nanny duty to get from orochimaru-sama because i’m having a midlife crisis. well, y’know what, no! i’m not passing you the joint! you wanna get high, you can go put up with him for a change. ❜

oh, he can’t stand her at all. absence really did make the heart grow fondler or whatever, ‘cause he’d missed her like a fucking wistful war wife but now she was here suigetsu wishes she’d just go back to prison or wherever the hell she was living nowadays. honestly, you try to be the bigger guy and talk like an adult and she’s vulnerable for maybe a second before hopping right back to ad eminem attacks. (kabuto had taught him that, it meant unprovoked attacks to cover up for securities. again, suigetsu’s fucking crushing it brain-wise.) and now she was trying to make this about women, just because suigetsu made it about women. but he’d done it in a nice way, a woke and humble way, whereas she was just just somehow doing witchcraft to make it look like he’s the asshole here. blaming her emotions on a man. well, that’s hardly suigetsu’s fault, is it? he only knows one woman. one and a half if you counted orochimaru. it just so happened that those two people were the total fuckin’ worst. 

❛  listen, lady, i’m just trying to be sensitive to any gender socialisation-related factors borne of the patriarchal society we both live in that might be behind what a colossal tit you’ve been, so don’t you go trying to... turn this on me with your tricky ... female wiles! it’s not my fault you don’t know any chicks except for sasuke’s fake wife, and even then not really ‘cause you’re too chickenshit to just go talk to her! y’know what, maybe i’ll hang out with her, hm? how you like that? maybe she’s a cool chill girl who likes weed and doesn’t just sit there on her sober horse judging me all the time, and we’ll bond over how much you suck at being close to other people and how great i am at feminism. ❜

okay, maybe suigetsu’s also resorting to childish ad eminems, but in his defense, karin did it first. he bloody tried, didn’t he? yeah, exactly, she’s the immature one here, not him. he puffs more smoke in her face to prove it. acting like it’s his fault for not being enough fun to talk to, well excuuuuse him. maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t smoke so much if his life didn’t suck so bad he had to try and forget about it. maybe if sasuke had stuck around, or orochimaru trusted him enough to let him have his own place, or karin—

❛  anyway, don’t start with me about only being good for your body. that’s all you’ve ever liked about me! that and my cute face! if anyone’s using anyone for their body, it’s you! for my body! so don’t you start trying to gaslight me ‘cause it won’t fucking wash. y’know what, i’m done being the one chasing after you! i’ve got my dignity! i’m not giving you my weed, and i’m not doing you the... deed. so suck it. figuratively. ‘cause like i say, you’re not getting either. i’m turning off the pipe. ❜  there’s lots of good soil here for water jokes, actually. i’m turning off the tap until you pay your water bill! eh, he could workshop it later.

sasuke’s frustration grows, because he’s not explaining himself properly ( he never has been able to explain himself properly ) and he knows that if he doesn’t do this now, his pride will get the best of him and he’ll never talk about it ever again. it’ll just be a weird conversation he relitigates at night, feeling ill at ease until he passes out from intoxication or exhaustion.

if he was in any other mood he would probably make a joke, or get mad, or something about being told that he might be going soft. he doesn’t usually think of being soft as something of value. but fuck – fugaku uchiha was never soft, and a fucking adolescent was able to gank him like it was nothing. naruto uzumaki, for all of his strengths and weaknesses, is internationally defined by what people would call softness, and he’s the most powerful person in the world. in many cases, the softness seems to only make naruto infuriatingly stronger, his ability to connect with people and feel their pain and apologise and commiserate and be honest makes everyone want to help him, to build him up, to be a part of his power.

sasuke is not soft. sasuke uchiha is a mountain, craggy and barren. he is fire, intangible heat. he’s lightning, fleeting and destructive. there isn’t any part of him that isn’t a harsh edge or easy to hold.

in this moment, sasuke wishes there was.

“ i didn’t mean like, bad like that, i guess. i…” he trails off, turning around to pick up the chair and tidy up the mess he’d made. his movement are slow, sheepish, nervous. 

“ you know, ” he says, deciding he’d do it – while he had this chance, while he had this courage, to discuss something he’d never told anyone before. something he’d only ever thought of, in his bed, late at night, relitigating it until he passed out from intoxication or exhaustion. “ you know… how i’m weird, right? people sometimes say i’m brave or direct or tough, like it’s a positive thing, like it’s something i choose to be. but i don’t… i don’t choose it, i can’t even fathom not just being this way. people make fun of me to my face, and i only realise years later that they were being cruel. i just… i don’t notice. 

“ i don’t think i’m capable of being good. you… you said you loved me. but i…” he can’t look at suigetsu when he says this, he has to pretend that he’s talking to an empty room or something, because if he saw even the hint of a reaction from suigetsu, he’d clam up. “ i don’t think i’m capable of love. i don’t know if i was just born fucked up, or if i’ve just been fucked up so much that i can’t do it anymore, but i don’t know. i’ve hurt everyone i’ve ever thought i loved. i’ve tried to kill about half of them, for fuck’s sake! but that… that can’t be it. that can’t be love. it shouldn’t be! so… i’m sure now, that wasn’t love. it couldn’t have been. everyone seems to love others but me. i’ve got to be the problem here. ”

he rearranges the mahjong tiles, moving them back to their exact positions, down to the angle at which they all slanted. the clack-clack-clack of the mahjong tiles hitting each other with certainty has always been a good, familiar sound. he likes this sound. it feels warm, like a lazy afternoon with a haze of tobacco smoke lingering in the air, playing in the hallways outside the women’s quarters. 

“ suigetsu, you don’t owe me anything. i don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything! i don’t want juugo to feel like he has an honour-debt to me! because i am not responsible. like, fuck, you see how i treat my shit. how i treat my sword and my clothes and my fucking body – if i have possession over anything, i wring it clean of any utility and then throw it away. and i treat you that way and i don’t want to! even now, i’m just so fucking – so fucking selfish, all the time. everything i do is about me and how i feel and what i want to do. i’m fucking explaining all of this to you to make me feel better because i feel shitty and expect you clean it up.

“ i wanted revenge not for my clan, but for me. for how the massacre hurt me. i killed orochimaru on a whim because i hated him, not to free you or anyone else. now i’m… fuck. now i’m fucking running otogakure because i couldn’t stand not feeling important, not feeling like i had something to do. isn’t that fucked up? people here, dying, because i can’t live with myself if i don’t have something to keep me busy. i use them, just like i use kunai and chopsticks because they’re all just objects to me.

“ look at us. isn’t this fucked up? isn’t it fucked up that you love someone who is mean and scary? who doesn’t ever apologise, and when he does, you can’t accept it? i don’t think i am capable of not using you, and fuck – if i really wanted to call a spade and spade i’d say abusing you – i just… all i’m good for is hurting others. 

i don’t want you to leave, but i don’t want you to be hurt. so. i don’t know what to do. i don’t know what i’m saying, even. ”

shit. they’re in dangerous territory now, ‘cause when sasuke’s this deep in his head it’s almost impossible to pull him out. there’s that old adage, suigetsu thinks, the one that practically every kid in kiri knows; you can’t save everyone that’s drowning, even if you want to. ‘cause sometimes people are too far gone, and there’s too little air in their lungs, and if you or anything gets close they will claw and fight and push you down trying to keep their head above the water, and you’ll both die. 

they could stuff that, though, cause suigetsu’s made of water, and there’s no fuckin’ way anyone’s drowning him by accident.

he deflates a little, tension leaving him the more and more sasuke talks. some of it’s hard to hear; some of it, not so much. suigetsu knows sasuke’s not the type to get into the weeds about it, but he does love, even if he thinks he can’t. hell, the guy was a total fucking mess of emotion, but suigetsu can tell he cares. no one would be trying this hard if they didn’t care, suigetsu knew that for a fact, ‘cause he’d never tried at anything until he met sasuke. and if he couldn’t express love as long as he lived, so what? who cared? suigetsu wasn’t some needy little bitch, right?

the mahjong tiles clack against the table one by one, as sasuke sets them right. putting it all back into place, himself with it. cleanup on aisle breakdown.

suigetsu wishes he got it, really, wishes all of this wasn’t so far above his head; sasuke could jump from point a to point b and suigetsu would have no fuckin’ clue how he got there. selfish? how the hell— suigetsu had only led ‘em down this path ‘cause he was upset sasuke was being too selfless. because suigetsu wanted to be a little selfish, and he wished sasuke would partake with him. how did a guy who’d given his life to a cause think of himself as selfish? orochimaru, now there was someone selfish. kabuto, in his own way. people who shamelessly did what they wanted, went to any length, hurt anyone, ‘cause it was what they wanted. maybe sasuke’s made a point with this whole i need a cause thing, but suigetsu doesn’t think so. 

maybe he is too stupid to understand. whatever. all suigetsu knows is, even if what sasuke’s saying is true, he doesn’t really care. at least, not in the way sasuke does. suigetsu would be happy just to bitch a little bit about it over some drinks, get it outta his system, then get the hell back to work at sasuke’s side where he belongs. he doesn’t care if he’s used. if anything, it’s better that way, ‘cause at least sasuke knew what to use him for. suigetsu’s never known. 

❛  … you think too much, man. you’re... going in circles. s’not good for you. ❜

sasuke needed people, suigetsu needed to be one of those people. that was simple, wasn’t it?

❛  you don’t want me to leave. i don’t wanna leave. can’t we just leave it at that, sasuke? karin told me about this cool thing, uh, “occam’s razor”. there was a whole fancy explanation for it, but basically, the gist is that you cut out all the bullshit, just go with the most obvious option. which is that nothing changes. yeah? all that other stuff, look, sasuke, it really ... doesn’t bother me. you’re saying it’s fucked up, but, i mean ... isn’t everything? we ain’t perfect. so what? it’s still ... good. i mean, i think it is. whatever you wanna call it, fucked up, abuse, a spade— whatever this is, i don’t want it to end. ‘cause i don’t think of it like that. no-one does. you’re just ... you’re stressed, that’s all. ❜  don’t send me away, don’t send me away. there’s literally nothing else for me out there.

maybe it was safer to just stay quiet. suigetsu’s pretty sure anything he says at this point will make things worse. but how the hell was he going to get sasuke out of this thing otherwise? he got them into this mess, he had to get them out of it. had to try and make a barrier between sasuke and how much the dumb idiot hated himself. how the hell do you protect someone you care about from himself? ( fuckin’ unfair, man. this wasn’t in his job description. )

exhaling softly, suigetsu takes the risk of sidling up beside sasuke, closing the distance between them again, placing one of his hands over sasuke’s where it clutched the last awry tile at its proper place. ducks around a little, tries to get a look up at sasuke’s face. he couldn’t fix this like sasuke wanted him to, but maybe he could distract long enough for it to go away.

❛  you ... d’you want me to take your mind off all this? ❜

daffodil : is your muse one to be loyal in relationships , or are they likely to quickly move from one bond to another ?

aloe : how does your muse handle grief ?

poorly— or that is to say, not at all. suigetsu simply doesn’t look his grief in the eye; he doesn’t give it the time to hurt him. if despair is the sea, suigetsu floats, and relaxes, and doesn’t think about what’ll come if he stops breathing. when mangetsu died, he was heartbroken, but as with all shinobi — and especially for a clan as prestigious as the hozuki — suigetsu wasn’t given room to grieve his brother. he learned early to suck up his feelings; instead, his grief manifested as a general apathy for life. he stopped attending school altogether, abandoned or neglected most of the friendships he had, and in every sense stopped trying.

once orochimaru took him suigetsu had all the time in the world to grieve, explore his innermost feelings, and in fact had little option not to; he was alone constantly, with no distractions or methods of healing other than experimentation. suigetsu’s slippery, though; he had water, so he spent most of his time hydrified. while he’s in a liquid state, suigetsu doesn’t experience complex internal thought in the same way he does while human; his kekkai genkai became his only saving grace, the final way he could avoid having to confront himself. overall, suigetsu avoids his grief until it leaves him alone.

bluebell : does your muse learn from their past , or are they prone to repeating the same mistakes ?

suigetsu’s never been much good at learning from his mistakes. most times, he’ll take the easiest path open to him, even if it’s one he’s taken before.

heliotrope : does your muse believe in soulmates ?

bachelor’s button :   does your muse actively seek romantic companionship ,   or cherish the liberties of being single ?

suigetsu doesn’t care much for romance, and for most of his life never really ‘got it’ as a concept; to him, it’s always been a dog-eat-dog, me-against-the-world kind of mentality. even when in love, he’s not exactly romantic; to him, the ideal romantic partner is simply his best friend, without any necessary distinctions to turn it into a Romantic Relationship™. he’s never been one to actively seek out romantic companionship, either; he isn’t the type who’d try to actively date or go to singles events. love is rare and difficult for him, his life having been such an abscess of it, but when he does fall in love, it’s overwhelming and with all his heart, un-nuanced. to him, love isn’t something that can be searched for; it just happens when it happens, and then you deal with it. 

suigetsu’s being in love is an anomaly, though, so by default he’s a perpetually single slag, and likes it that way. he’s a lonely person who needs friends, but he doesn’t have any need for a Person Of His Own to return to at the end of the day.

bay tree :   does your muse seek glory   &   accolades ,   or do they favour a simpler ,   more personal life ?

hard to tell. suigetsu loves praise and glory, and always dreamed of being one of the world’s greatest swordsmen, but he’s never had the motivation to go out and work at it. when suigetsu was young, maybe, he was more ambitious, if still pretty unmotivated; he had big dreams and an attitude, an i’ll show them mentality. after otogakure, though, suigetsu’s more satisfied with his lot; you could call that growing up, or just hopeless pessimism that he’ll never be the person he used to dream of being. while he’s not exactly happy with an ordinary life, he knows that being extraordinary was never meant for someone like him; it’s fun to dream about it, but deep down, he knows it’s never gonna happen. so he settles.

edelweiss :   what was the bravest moment in your muse’s life ? are they known to be courageous from then on ?

suigetsu isn’t generally a brave person; arguably, because being brave requires fear as a prerequisite. suigetsu does a lot of dangerous and reckless things, but not generally because he’s courageous; more foolhardy and brash, often without thinking things through. he lacks a regard for consequences, likely because he had so little passion for life in his youth; while captive in otogakure, he learned a survivalist kind of mentality and gained a sense of self-preservation, as one does when they’re forced to live in a dehumanised, animalistic state. again, though, suigetsu’s various escape attempts were less done out of bravery than a kind of ‘anything’s better than this’ mentality. after being freed by sasuke, similarly, suigetsu gained the attitude that whatever happened to him now couldn’t be any worse than what he’d already gone through, so again, it’s hard to argue that he was brave.

his bravest moment, though, at a point where he’d genuinely come to love life and the people around him, and did fear losing what he had, was during the killer bee fight when he attempted to sacrifice himself to let the other members of taka escape. this was one of the first, and arguably the only time suigetsu’s ever made a self-sacrificial act, not out of guilt or fear but out of the real desire to protect; and he did it aware of the consequences, fearful of death, and with a good amount of value placed on his life. but he did it anyway, and doesn’t regret it. he might not be regarded as a courageous person in general, but that moment probably did show a braver side of him to his team that they might not have known about before.

holly :   how strong is your muse’s sense of intuition ? are they aware of it ? do they ever fear that it is only paranoia ?

bold — always applies.   italic — sometimes applies.   strike — never applies / hard limit.