Whispers in the Rain - Bleach X Naruto - Uchiha Itachi Love Story

Chapter 27 - Challenge

Sasuke pov:

"You idiot!! Get your lazy ass up and moving! Or else I'm going to be the one doing that for you!" Karin yelled at Suigetsu for the umpteenth time today.

Yet again, we had stopped in the shade of some rocks because Suigetsu was dehydrated and had to replenish water in his ninety five percent water constituting body. As always, Jugo was silent, not making much of a deal about the break that I had agreed to give Suigetsu but Karin was being noisy. Saya was standing a few feet away from me watching amused as the whole scene unfolded.

"Oh shut up, Karin! I'm too tired to have you yelling in my ear! Why do we have to travel in such hot weather anyway? There has to be a better route than this...." Suigetsu muttered, clearly annoyed.

"You're so useless, you know that?! I don't even know why Sasuke asked you to come along with us!"

"At least I can fight! All you do is whine or swoon over Sasuke!"

"What did you say, b******?!"

"Karin, Suigetsu, that's enough." I said, finally getting put off by their nonstop bickering.

I had to stop them before they bit each other's heads off too. Karin was already getting ready to punch Suigetsu in the head and if I didn't stop them now, the fight was probably not going to end anytime soon.

"See Karin? You're annoying Sasuke now. So stop yelling at me." Suigetsu complained with a frown towards Karin.

"What was that, teme?!"

I closed my eyes with a barely audible sigh. Sometimes I even wonder why I bothered trying to intervene in their bickering. I should stay out of it like Jugo and wait until they got tired of yelling at each other and falling into comfortable silence.

I glanced at Saya and noticed that sometime in the midst of the arguing, she had looked away from the two of them and she was staring at her katana. There was a strange fondness in her eyes as she looked over the katana – I assume she had had it with her for a very long time and was attached to it.

I scoffed. Attachment? Bonds? Nothing like that existed. None of those had any value. I had cut off all the bonds I had with Konoha and everyone I knew. And I found it stupid that Says showed attachment to a mere katana. I had asked Karin to hold onto it for the time being because I didn't trust Saya and it served as a good temporary weapon for Karin to use for her protection. Using something besides kunai and shuriken might make her more useful to Team Hebi.

Saya's expression fell and she looked at the ground next to her with a sigh. She rubbed her eyes and suppressed a yawn. She hadn't been sleeping very much since I had her join my team. I don't think it had anything to do with the guilt of changing sides because even though she was following me without much resistance, she probably wasn't really on my side. She was just going with the flow and waiting for the chance to escape.

She had been waking up several times in the night with a start, from nightmares most likely. There were even times when she would stay up the entire night after waking up from a nightmare. As the days passed, the lesser sleep she got. There were dark circles under her eyes and half the time, she looked to be in a daze.

The thing I found mildly intriguing was that one night when she had woken up suddenly, disturbing my sleep as well, she had yelled out the name 'Karin'. Suigetsu had found it amusing and teased Karin that Saya was dreaming about her. Suigetsu had received kicks and punches from Karin and Saya had received a deathly glare but Saya hadn't found the situation funny in the least. In fact, she looked really troubled and anxious and Karin and Suigetsu had fallen silent under the sudden tense atmosphere that had settled around Saya. That night, Saya had slept for merely two hours before the nightmare and she had spent the rest of the night wide awake and looking at the moon.