SasuSaku: One and Only

Chapter 13: The Road to Redemption

The sun had almost completed its decent into the horizon as night was slowly taking over... Kakashi and the raven had just arrived right outside of Konoha Prison where Naruto now stood...  The raven looked at his former teammate and then up at the building gates and remembered his vow to never be sent to this place again...  And he would spend the rest of his life atoning for his past to keep it that way...

***Flashback***

(Sasuke's POV)

It had felt like an eternity since he fought alongside his teammates to stop the Infinite Tsukuyomi and defeat Kaguya during the war...  He didn't exactly know how much time had passed since he was locked away, but knew it must have been months as he could feel his hair had grown out and was now touching just below his chin...

He was sitting in the cold dark cell, blindfolded, in a straightjacket...  It was the arrangement that Kakashi made with the village elders...  If it would have been up to them, he would now be dead...  But Kakashi advised them that the Uchiha was nothing without his visual prowess and his left arm...  Although that was a lie, he also convinced them that if he was blindfolded and in a straightjacket, he wouldn't be able to use his Sharingan or chakra and would pose no further threat to the village...

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs towards his cell...  The footsteps stopped as Morino Ibiki addressed the Fifth Hokage, Hatake Kakashi, just as he arrived in front of the ravens cell. He heard his former Sensei excuse Ibiki...

"You May take your leave now, Ibiki...  I can handle him until the next guard arrives in 10 minutes..."

The raven heard a sigh but he complied, "Hai, Hokage-Sama!"  The sound of his footsteps became less audible until they faded away...

(Kakashi's POV)

Kakashi looked down at his former student and noticed that his bangs had grown out and were now past his chin...  He looked at him with sadness as the state that he was in was something he never wanted to see for one of his own students, but the alternative would have been death...  He could tell that the other guards had been roughing him up...  He made a mental note to tell Ibiki to relieve them of duty and hand pick the next group that would at least treat the raven with dignity...  The elders were the ones who had assigned the last group of guards and knew it was an attempt to get back at the Uchiha... But Kakashi could clearly see that the raven had no intentions to fight back...

Kakashi knew all too well how skilled the raven is, and that if he wanted to, the guards would now be badly injured or even dead... But he could see that his desire for revenge and the anger that had once consumed him all those years back was slowly fading away and now guilt and remorse were taking its place...  The only request that the raven asked of him was to not allow his teammates to see him this way...  Especially the pinkette...  It was the only time that he didn't fight to hide his feelings in front of someone...

As Kakashi unlocked the cell and stepped in he spoke, "Sasuke... I will have someone come tend to your wounds and change the bandages on your arm...  How about Sakur..."

"No!  She can't see me this way!  I will only allow Tsunade to treat me...  I mean it Kakashi!  You can't let her come here and see me... Not now...  Not... like this..."

He could hear the ravens voice tremble and even though he couldn't see his eyes, he could tell he was fighting hard to hold in his emotions...  Although his student had spent the last 12 years pushing her away, he knew that the raven had feelings for her, deep down... But back then his hatred and anger had always made its way to the surface...  But in this moment, he could no longer push it down...

(Sasuke's POV)

It was the day that he finally realized that the pinkette was still very special to him...  But he didn't know what to do, or how to handle it...  These were feelings he only felt once before, long ago on the same night that tragedy struck...