“It’s alright, I understand,” Iruka assured. The teacher was surprised to get any response at all. He would have been happy to just move on to his chapter book.
“I know. The nightmares are scary and the pain medication makes you feel less in control than you felt before, right?” He assumed Sasuke meant nightmares, that he was not currently having flashbacks and mislabelling them. His own nightmares had yet to stop in nearly two decades; he understood the fear. “And yes, they’re dead.”
“You don’t have to look at me, it’s alright, but you do need sleep. Not right now, but you’ll start feeling worse if you don’t get some rest.” The doctors would eventually order a sedative, regardless of his consent if he actually managed to keep it up too long. Iruka suspected they would not have to, that Sasuke would pass out from exhaustion long before they needed to intervene and that it might make sleeping seem even more traumatizing for him.
“You can work up to it. Is there anything that might make you feel safer? Tea always helped me, and sometimes keeping my shoes on inside.” The latter was one of the sillier things that had helped him calm down in the past. Sharing his own silly or embarrassing moments often helped his students open up about things they felt ashamed about. He hoped it might work with Sasuke as well.
Sasuke gave a short, jerky nod at the assessment of his disjointed words. He was glad Iruka understood and that he didn’t have to repeat or elaborate. He didn’t think he could even if he wanted to. The assertion of death did nothing to alleviate his concern. They were physically dead, but in the broken landscape of his thoughts, they would exist and that was enough. Sasuke picked at the edge of a bandage on his hand, and just listened for a moment.
He was tired enough already He doubted he would last for much longer, but whether sleep would be peaceful was another story altogether. Sasuke would try to fight it for as long as he could, but he knew it would win. The darkness always did in the end. How could he fight his nightmares, though, when sometimes he couldn’t even separate them in his waking moments? Sasuke shied away from these thoughts. They led to dark places where hell lurked.
“What?” Sasuke blinked, drawn from his thoughts by the odd image. He didn’t look over this time, but his gaze did flicker toward the teacher. There was the faint hint of a smile on his lips; barely there but amused. “Why?” He paused, mind drawing back to the question. The smile faded. What made him feel safe? He tried to conjure up something, and failed. His brother, he supposed, but not even Itachi represented something that felt so elusive now. “I...I don’t know.”
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