Entropy

Author's Note: My goodness! It has been an absolute dog's age since I've updated, and you, the readers, have my most sincere apologies for that. I admit this story fell by the wayside in the past couple months. Between computer troubles and all sorts of other not-fun stuff, all my time and energy got sucked up. I'm definitely making more effort to reclaim time for writing again. Anyway, on with the story. I hope you enjoy!

Chapter Twenty Four

The marks over Sasuke’s tenketsu faded a little more each day. As the black and purple bruises dimmed into green and yellow, Kakashi continued to worry. He worried even when Sasuke was, for all appearances, healed. In fact, to the casual observer, Sasuke was perfectly normal--at least, as normal as he ever got. He followed his routines, showed his usual mercurial moods, and did more or less what anyone might expect of him. Now deep into winter, Sasuke huddled in front of the fire as he meditated per Neji's advice.

Kakashi wasn't convinced Sasuke was actually healing; knowing him fairly well, Kakashi guessed that Sasuke was just getting better at covering up the instabilities in his chakra. Before, he had had chakra like a lazy river: smooth, flowing, all working together. That river had rapids in it now, hidden rocks creating unexpected eddies and abrupt diversions of the power. The troubled spots weren't static, either. They cropped up anew each morning and shifted around in his chakra coils.

Kakashi watched and waited. He waited for some sort of sign from Sasuke that it might be acceptable to talk about the chakra disturbances. He knew Sasuke would probably never tell him what had caused the problems in the first place, but Kakashi still wanted to give Sasuke the chance to come forward on his own. That vague hope he held for such a confession was, really and truly, against almost everything he knew; it wasn't in Sasuke's nature to give away that kind of information, and it wasn't in Kakashi's to solicit it.

The waiting wore on him. Their mutual silence chewed up what peace they had, and it ate away at Kakashi, too. He caught himself longing for the days not far gone by, when he and Sasuke had negotiated that selfsame peace, had drafted a contract between them and signed it with a few fumbling minutes stretched out on the couch. To find that he wanted that peace back again was… He missed the comfortable quiet and warmth of Sasuke. Kakashi tried, and failed, to analyze his way to a logical conclusion.

That wasn't something Kakashi wanted to dwell on, though, not with Sasuke's questionable well-being staring him in the face every day. Kakashi might have been more patient under other circumstances, but he was worn out with waiting and the stress of the situation as it stood. Even now, he expected ANBU or a messenger from the Hokage to come knocking on the door and demand answers. He needed information, and there was only one source of it, barring Sasuke himself. He decided, then and there, to track down Neji.

When it became obvious that Neji was avoiding him, Kakashi's patience strained to breaking. Not only did he not see Neji around the village, but he didn't see anyone who would see Neji on a regular basis, either; Kakashi knew from a quick snoop in the mission room that neither Neji nor his regular cadre were out of the village.

Kakashi was impatient and determined to outlast Neji in this little cold war. He stuck close to Sasuke, secure in the knowledge that Neji would eventually come to check Sasuke's progress in person. Kakashi snorted to himself. Neji was more arrogant than Kakashi believed him to be if he thought that Kakashi couldn't tell when the Byakugan--Neji's Byakugan--focused in on Sasuke. There was a taste to the air, and Sasuke broke out in goosebumps whenever it happened. Considering that he spent almost every waking hour camped out in front of the woodstove, goosebumps were hard to come by.

Neji finally came to call, three weeks to the day after his last visit. Kakashi could sense that familiar chakra moving through the woods. He clenched a fist and slowly let it out as he remembered how dark the bruises were that Neji had left on Sasuke's pale skin.

Kakashi moved himself out into the training grounds before Neji actually arrived, and he stayed there while Neji and Sasuke talked. At least, he assumed they were talking. They might have been playing board games. Maybe they read books? Or perhaps it was a staring contest. Kakashi still wasn't sure what held their friendship together, but it was a strong relationship. It thrived despite the seeming neglect Sasuke heaped upon it, despite the distance written in Neji's features every time he came knocking.

Kakashi caught up with Neji just as he was exiting the house.

"Hello, Neji," said Kakashi.

Neji's fingers came within milliseconds of being crushed in the jamb of the sliding door. Kakashi hid a sharp smile. Really, he had hardly intended to sneak up on Sasuke's visitor. And was it his imagination, or did Neji seem jumpy beneath that polished exterior?

"Hatake-sempai," said Neji. "Good day."

He nodded, cold but polite, and made to leave.

Kakashi blocked Neji's escape route. He fenced him in with one long arm, leaning nonchalantly against the building, oh-so coincidentally between Neji and the open space of the porch. Neji was stuck in the doorway with little room to maneuver.

"May I be of assistance?" said Neji.

Well-controlled anger smoldered in the backs of his eyes.

"Why, as a matter of fact, you can," said Kakashi.

"Oh?" said Neji.

One of his eyebrows arched, supercilious, but it conveyed both irritation and worry to Kakashi's well-trained eye.

"You can tell me, right now, everything you know about what's happening to Sasuke," said Kakashi. "And if you talk fast enough, I'll let you leave with all your extremities still attached."

Kakashi twirled a kunai casually at the end of one long finger and sank the point into the wall a hair's breadth from Neji's neck. He had to give the kid--and really, why was he still thinking of that generation as children?--credit. Neji didn't bat an eyelash at the blatant threats.

"Do you think Sasuke would be happy, overhearing such a conversation?" said Neji.

He shouldered his way past Kakashi, scraping the flat of the kunai as he went, every muscle tense as if he expected Kakashi to knife him. For a moment, he stood back to. Then he looked back over his shoulder, nose angled slightly towards the skies. His mouth twisted downward. At length, he spoke, barely audible even to Kakashi's sensitive ears.

"It would be better to take this conversation elsewhere, if you are so determined," said Neji.

And so, without further discussion, they slipped off, barely a snowflake or twig disturbed by their passage through the woods.

A/N: Hmm...what to say about this? I'm a bit worried that I've gotten rusty. This chapter gave me a heck of a time, and I'm still not a hundred percent happy. (It doesn't help that half of it was the boring-but-necessary-narrative stuff, either.) It was really hard to try to get back into the moodscape of this story.

However, I am fairly clear on what will happen next, and I expect the next chapter will come both more easily and in a more timely fashion. I need to re-think the posting schedule. I'd like to get back into a biweekly or weekly update, but I don't know that that's a realistic goal at this time. (After all, this isn't the only story I have going right now...) Thanks for reading, anyway, and I hope to be back soon with more. Fingers crossed!