piece.
“Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” she prompts. She’s a crappy lawyer, why didn’t she read Suigetsu’s fucking case files or whatever? Half his fucking history was in the news, anyway. Crappy fucking lawyer if she didn’t know the bare minimum.
“Well, my ma and pa shagged and I was born. There, you happy?” he spits back, still not looking in her eyes.
“That’s a start,” she continues, her voice as even as ever. They probably gave her to him ‘cuz they know he’s going to be a fucking trouble case or whatever. Sasuke probably doesn’t got a bitch like this, “Where are they now?”
“Dead. Or good as, I dunno. Don’t fuckin’ remember them.”
“You don’t remember them?”
“Who took care of you, then, Suigetsu? If not for your ma and pa.”
“Brother.”
“Can you tell me a bit about him?”
“Why should I, Kah-rin?”
“Because it will help me understand you better, so I can argue your case, Suigetsu,” she speaks to him like a fucking primary school teacher. Suigetsu’s had to deal with the same cunts his whole life, and now he’s gotta fucking deal with another fucking one.
Sick of women like them, he is, sick of the way they hold themselves like they’re better because they didn’t grow up on the estate or because they went to fucking university. They’re gonna give him time, anyway, a huge enough chunk of his life that he’d probably be better off killing himself right now.
Suigetsu heard the stats in juvie all the same. Poor, sorry fucks like him just get out to reoffend and get put right the fuck back where they belong.
Suigetsu’s sick of playing this fucking game.
Suigetsu’s brother’s name was Mangetsu. Mangetsu was bright, brighter than Suigetsu or anyone else Suigetsu knew growing up. Mangetsu had intelligence and honour and bravery and all that good King Arthur shit. If he had a better lot, if he wasn’t saddled with Sui’s sorry ass, he would’ve probably had a good life.
He was smart, like uni smart. Canny, like banker canny. He coulda been the kind of fuck in a suit who took the tube to Canary Wharf every day and worked in a high rise and made more money than he needed and invested it in bonds or whatever the fuck and had a wife and a kid and the kid goes to private school and doesn’t need to take a loan to go to university or whatever. He could’ve been that guy. Maybe. If Sui wasn’t in the picture.
But Sui was, and so Mangetsu wasn’t.
“Mangetsu was in a gang,” Suigetsu says. It’s true, it’s probably down there in the government’s files like the rest of Suigetsu’s life, that Mangetsu was in the Seven Swordsman and he killed more people than he needed to or the government was happy with, and Mangetsu was fucking good at it too. The Seven were honourable, good to kids and shit, much better than what Suigetsu got mixed in, anyway. Suigetsu only remembers good shit about Mangetsu and his friends.
“They were raided,” and Suigetsu remembers this clearly too, remembers his brother bundling him into a closet and telling him not to make a sound and the sound of gunfire and hiding his lanky fifteen-year-old-body under a pile of winter coats and hoping they didn’t check very thoroughly.
He remembers, “Mangetsu was shot,” a body lying in its own blood on his shitty council floor, seeping into the ratty Ikea carpet Mangetsu insisted Suigetsu hoover once a week.
He remembers, “Mangetsu left me a bunch of money,” for uni, the will said, to keep Suigetsu on his feet for long enough for him to become a decent man, a good member of society, a godfearing suitwearing whitepretending English man, not like Mangetsu’s dumb paki ass. “I’m not even fucking Pakistani. I’m fucking Sri Lankan,” he says, and he doesn’t make sense anymore. He doesn’t ever make any fucking sense when he talks about this shit. “All that cash, god, he had a fucking lot. Written a last will and testament too, had it witnessed and everything. Not that it mattered or nothin’ anyway. Wanted me to be a good fucking member of society.”
Suigetsu was mad, he was fifteen and his brother, his whole reason for living was shot to death in front of him and bled out on the kitchen carpet and Suigetsu didn’t even get a proper fucking funeral for him or nothin’, just threw his body in the Thames and watched it have a tiny segment on the news a week later. No one fuckin’ cared that Suigetsu’s whole world had been destroyed, broken like a delicate little flower that floated onto the road and got run over. No one cared, so, “I took that cash ‘n bought a piece. A really fuckin’ nice piece.” And a shit ton of smack.
“A piece?” the fuckin’ lawyer asks like she’s an idiot. Prissy bitch.
“A fucking gun, keep up. Bought a gun.”
Being fifteen and the sole provider to yourself on a council estate and having barely passed your GCSEs didn’t give you many options. Being yourself and all, being what you knew and all, there were few options for a kid who had a gun and his wits and not much else.
That’s where Orochimaru comes into the picture, followed closely by Sasuke fucking Uchiha.
Things you don’t know about Orochimaru: where he’s from (dude has a fucking imperceptible accent); what exactly he wants from you; what his first name is; where his morals are.
Things you do know about Orochimaru: he will unscrupulously hire kids; in fact, he loves hiring kids (you don’t dwell on that bit and hope it works out); and he pays good money.
He pays money that edges on the side of too good to be true.
You don’t care, because he keeps you in food money and rent money and electricity money and clothing money and weed money. Not many other barely-homeless fifteen year olds get to say that much about themselves, have that much to their names.
You have enough to teach you how to cook from Tesco brand pasta and sauce and tinned curry and you make do. You think Mangetsu would be proud of you, after he got over being so mad that you dropped out and started doing all this shit. You’re the man of the house now, and you’re being real fucking responsible.
Sasuke fucking Uchiha is not like you.
Apparently, he has a mate on the estate but you’ve never seen this mate. This kid is a tourist, you’ve seen them before. They walk and talk the same, trying too hard to be real, but they learnt all their reallness from the t.v. so it don’t come out right in the end. It’s sad, and Suigetsu knows what an easy mark looks like.
“How much for an eighth?” Sasuke asks this time, and you give him a big smile, all shark-like. You learnt your trading technique from Jaws.
“Forty quid,” you say, because Sasuke’s an idiot and one time he actually gave you that much.
“No,” Sasuke says, and he doesn’t smile. You’ve never seen him smile. You don’t really know much about him because he doesn’t talk much. Just leaves to go find his mate and then he disappears from your life for a couple weeks. You don’t know why he comes around anymore.
“Okay,” you say, because you don’t negotiate. Badass motherfuckers like you don’t negotiate.
“I’m gonna find my friend now,” Sasuke says, and you nod. You don’t say anything.
Sasuke leaves, and he doesn’t look back when he walks away. He doesn’t care about you or anything. (Why do you care about him?)