The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

44: A Shift

[OP: Eat You Alive--The Oh Hellos.]

Sasuke listened to their discussion silently, and not too close to the fire.

He wondered what it meant.

Now that he was actually listening instead of trying to ignore it, he noticed even more how strange it was. But this at least made more sense to him.

Not the God part, but, the part where people didn't want to hear the truth. He might not see how it applied to him, but, he could see it applied to people in general. 

He thought in disgust that ninja cared least of all what was true when it came to what really happened. Better not to know, be harder to be loyal that way.

Sasuke had no doubt that anyone would prove to be corrupt if you just dug far enough into their past, but Dabi's words to him had struck a chord.

Dabi had made it apparent that all of them had darker pasts. In some way...so at least they knew they were like that.

Perhaps it really was a group of rebels and renegades. It was almost humorous, if he'd been the type to think of it that away.

But he was too tired to think very clearly at all.

The nightmares hadn't let up since he joined the team, but they varied in intensity. They had been worse since they got off the ship.

But the nightmare had been worse than ever this last night. It was so vivid that he'd woken up half thinking he was still in it, and the dark night didn't help anything.

 The others couldn't have not noticed what was happening by now, but no one said anything about it.

He knew Shine knew, she'd made that clear the other night with Karin...and Karin had it too.

Sasuke hadn't cared at the time, but he suddenly wondered why both of them had started having vicious nightmares after joining this mission.

There couldn't be a connection, could there? That would be crazy...But...

Well, there was one way to find out.

He slid over to Karin, who didn't expect him to approach.

He noticed that Suigetsu gave him a warning look.

When you're sleep deprived, anxiety and paranoia both increase a lot and that might be why he thought Suigetsu looked ready to attack him, though he didn't care.

"I have a question for you," he said to Karin. "Privately."

"Oooh," Suigetsu said, real maturely.

"Suigetsu!" Karin hissed. "Shut up."

She got up. "Okay."

They moved a little off.

"Don't get any ideas," Sasuke prefaced it by saying, rather rudely.

"I wasn't," Karin said, adjusting her glass nervously. "What is it?"

Sasuke thought to himself that it was a little odd that Karin wasn't angry about being stabbed.

"You've been having nightmares a lot, right?" he said, not sympathetically.

Karin didn't think he was just speaking from curiosity, judging by his chakra right now. It seemed dark.

"Uh...a few," she said.

"When did they start?"

"Start?" Karin didn't anticipate that." Uh...well, I had them before, but...not that often before we joined the mission. Maybe it's the moving around that does it, but it's been a lot more often since then. Or it was, but since I talked to Shine-sensei about it, they stopped."