Itsuki stands in the middle of the training ground, and he closes his eyes.

He spends the night with Kakashi beside him as he tries to throw shuriken, but no matter how specific the directions were, Itsuki was getting nowhere in his training.

He can't see the target, less properly gauge how far away it was, how much closer or further each shuriken he throws come. He couldn't readjust his aim, much less understand his own progress, and that makes his training very frustrating and so entirely futile.

So he intertwines his fingers before him, right thumb over left in a prayer, and expands his senses around.

His chakra held together inwards, he takes a deep breath through his nose, and blows out through his mouth. His eyes shut, he sends his chakra streaming to his feet, to the ground.

Stretching as thinly as he can, he pulls them across the grass like a vein of roots.

"What are you doing?"

He's zapped back into reality, and with a longsuffering groan he snaps to the general direction of Kakashi and hisses, "Shhh!"

He tries again.

But his focus is lost and his chakra can't quite coagulate anymore. His chakra feels like water, and the only thing his hands can do is helplessly watch it seep through the cracks of his fingers.

What a waste. He groans, hand in his hair and tugging lightly.

"I'm pathetic," he decides, flopping to the ground, "can't even throw shuriken."

How the mighty have fallen. Prospective top two of the year in shuriken alone, now down in the dumps and worse than a dead last. What a shame.

And to his utter, bone-crushing horror, Kakashi grumbles out to agree. "Yeah, you kinda are," he mutters. "Even Obito can throw better."

Except, he's an Uchiha and still considered above average in his rank?

"You're mean," Itsuki whines, hurt.

"Honesty is a virtue," Kakashi responds easily, like he's practice this hundreds of times.

And yes. He has.

A hurt swells in Itsuki's chest when he remembers-- the last time he saw Kakashi, the last time over there, was in a goddamn manju place down the street from Ichiraku.

Kakashi had called him childish for his sugar intake. Itsuki, the ever amazing person at quarreling he is, short-circuited and his vocabulary shrank to the levels of you're an ugly meanie pants go away. It ended terribly, but they laughed it off.

That had been their last ever conversation.

Half of their greetings in their life were Kakashi pointing out something he did, Itsuki calling him mean, and the former justifying himself with the denotation that he was simply being honest. At some point it became routine. It was so dumb.

Now it's gone.

It feels like the first time again that Itsuki's chest burns, suddenly realizing that he's losing so much. Lost so much.

This isn't the Kakashi he spent years working under, putting back together. This isn't the Kakashi who led him through his first kill and isn't the Kakashi that he nursed through chakra exhausted nights because he was too stubborn to get his puppies to coax him out of nightmares.

This isn't, isn't his Kakashi.

And it hurts.

"Itsuki?"

He doesn't know what his face looks like, but it probably says something that Kakashi sounds worried. He's never worried.

Itsuki lays on his back, and he's told it's nighttime. The sky looks dark enough for that. Maybe because it's black either way. He can't see the stars, can't see the moon, can't see the silver gleam of Kakashi's hair, because it shines at night and it's beautiful but no, he can't see it anymore, not ever again.

"Buy me manju," Itsuki says, and it's like an order.

Kakashi makes a noise like a snort, "whatever you want, your highness."

It's too late in the night, so Itsuki stays there, breathing. He feels Kakashi beside him, and it's a little warm. He's like a furnace.

He can't keep Kakashi here forever. He definitely wants to go on his own training-- he's probably restless. Anko was training too, the graduation exam was soon for her. She's wasted enough time with Itsuki's recovery. The thought alone fills him with guilt.

There has to be more he can do, without needing constant supervision.

He was a genin, after all. (Actually, I'm ANBU.) He's supposed to be independent. If he can't do this, he'll just have to grind his heels until he can.

Adapt.

"So, what's Hokage-sama going to do with my ninja rank?" he rolls over to where he thinks Kakashi is, and asks, "am I demoted?"

Kakashi snorts, "if you were demoted, you'd be going to an orphanage," he says, his idea of a joke, "but no, your rank is just temporarily suspended."

And Itsuki promptly crumbles.

"I'm not too sure about the specifics-- but according to the code, you'll be treated just like any injured shinobi-- you'll be taken off the duty roster so you'll have time to recover, and eventually you'll be put back into active duty."

This didn't happen last time around, which may or may not result in a rather big gap in Itsuki's personal capabilities. Then again, last time around he wasn't blind.

Perhaps this could work out after all-- Itsuki could just lie around waiting to get back on track while he waits for Anko to graduate. It won't destroy his team.

"Ah, damn," he swears under his breath, "how am I going to become a shinobi now?"

He can't throw shuriken, which means he can't aim or do sight recon from the sky. He can't see hand signs in a battle and he can't carve words to make seals.

"You think I'll be able to draw seals using my muscle memory?"

"That's... impossible."

Kakashi''s immediate answer isn't exactly unexpected. He wouldn't be able to read, much less write, without a great degree of practice that he surely didn't have time nor the guidance for.

"For god's sake, how did any blind ninja work out?"

"With training and discipline."

"That has got to be the most Hatake answer possible."

Kakashi raises an eyebrow at that, but Itsuki looks away stubbornly, pretending to not acknowledge it in the slightest.

Itsuki needed a new route. As a sensor, he had the natural advantages of knowing where people were present. But that wasn't enough. That isn't enough for a ninja.

As an ANBU, Itsuki was the greatest in reconnaissance, spywork, ambushes and laying groundwork for an assault. These were all skills he had, and he had lost with his sense of sight.

He can't mourn over what he lost. He'll have to find another way.

"Are there no active shinobi who are blind?" Itsuki voices his question, and he feels Kakashi stiffen because of their close proximity.

Kakashi's response is hesitant. "There were a few, but after a number of years back in line they retired," he says, then clarifies, "some of the elders of the Uchiha."

Itsuki straightens.

The Uchiha are still alive, he realizes, all of them.

And the village's chemistry with them isn't the best at the moment. Would they be willing to help a kid like him?

"Maybe I can ask Minato-sensei and Obito-san to help me out," Itsuki says, more hopeful than he feels. He's not too keen on the idea.

And Kakashi senses the discomfort in his tone.

"You're thinking of something else," Kakashi says, like it's a fact, and Itsuki doesn't like it when Kakashi just knows what he thinks. He always does, the asshole.

And Itsuki admits it easily, because it's Kakashi.

"Yeah," he says, "I'm thinking of studying Juuinjutsu with Orochimaru-sensei."

There is, after all, a reason Orochimaru had his eyes on Itsuki in the first place.