Never Trust Your Rinnegan (Tales of Sasuke's Travels)

Chapter 35

Read the end of this chapter for the reasons behind this update.

Uchiha Sasuke is jealous of a 6 year old. He never thought he'd see the day.

Sasuke knows that he's not quite stable, a few screws loose of a full box, but this is new. He can't really be this terrible.

He's bad, sure. But to go so far as to be envious of a 6 year old who's just received news that the person who's tormented her for as long as she's been alive is gone, that's something else. Well, he supposes there's always a way to exceed already low expectations. He wonders if his parents are disappointed in him.

It's kind of funny, in a very not-funny sort of way. It makes him want to laugh a little bit. The sort of laugh that begins as a chuckle and ends in him waking up the next morning laying by a river in the Land of Grass even though he vaguely remembers falling asleep in the Land of Rock.

Someone is speaking to him, he notes distantly, but he's too focused on the fact that he's somehow a worse person than he thought, which shouldn't be possible because his prior opinion of himself was already pretty low. On a "scum of the earth" to "best human alive" scale of 1-10, he'd rate himself at about a 1.1, but apparently he's at more of a -5 which is unfortunate but not wholly surprising.

His brain is caught up in the fact that "it's not fair," a thought that Sasuke figured he'd gotten over when he was about 7 years old but he's been wrong before.

This is what he wanted, though. He wanted to tell her and he made the decision to carry her around and get her water so maybe this is more his fault than anything else. He really stabbed himself in the foot with this one.

The young part of him (it's not fair it's not fair notfair–) wants to break into a thousand pieces which would, inevitably, lead to tears, but Sasuke is an Uchiha first and foremost (Uchiha don't cry, Sasuke. Wipe your tears, Sasuke, they're unbecoming of a man of your status. Itachi doesn't cry). He's the last one of his kind and the first person from his dimension so maybe he should've made more of an attempt at diplomacy when he first landed but he was a bit preoccupied at the time. Maybe he'll be forgiven when he comes back from his extended vacation with nothing to show for it.

Well, they could always throw him into T&I again since that went so well for his patriotism last time, but clearly it wasn't enough–

His attempts to shove his thoughts back into the box from whence they came isn't working as well as he hoped. Actually, it's probably making things worse at this point but it's the only way he knows how to deal with anything so he keeps trying and crosses his fingers for the best.

Warbled sounds meet his ears, in one and out the other, gone too quickly to truly understand. His mind reboots but the jealousy still sits in the back of his mind, never forgotten.

He blinks several times in succession, noting the fact that his eyes were closed the entire time and he didn't notice.

"You're safe here. We're in the teacher's dormitories, Eri is asleep so it's just you, me, and Shouta in the room. It's 8:32PM and it's a Tuesday." It's Yamada, he thinks belatedly. He wonders how many times this has to happen before he gets over it already.

An amalgamation of emotions burn throughout his body, embarrassment, bitter resentment, hatehatehateit'snotfair.

"Can you match my breathing?" Yamada's voice fades in and out and Sasuke notes that yeah, he probably should try to match his breathing because passing out from lack of oxygen even though his organs are working perfectly fine would make everything so much worse.

He inhales deeply and follows the patterns of Yamada's breathing until his lungs are expanding and contracting as they should be.

The stupid urge to apologize bubbles up and Sasuke is briefly horrified at the thought but it goes away as quickly as it came.