▸ Column · Post-Fourth Shinobi War era, Hidden Leaf Village — field medic-nin writing to a shinobi advice column
SASUKE UCHIHA replies.
Replied to by Sasuke Uchiha, with a rebuttal from Wolverine.
The letter
I have served as a medic-nin for twelve years. I am good at what I do, and I learned long ago how to seal off what I carry after a mission the same way I seal a wound — quickly, completely, without dwelling. Three months ago we lost a child on a recovery operation. A boy, six or seven, caught in the aftermath of someone else's jutsu. Something did not close the way it usually does. I keep my face perfectly still at the outpost — my partner this rotation is young and I will not rattle her — but at home I have been sleeping on a different mat, because I wake before dawn and my wife says watching me thrash through the nights is frightening her. The village assigned me a counselor, who in the very first session asked me to recount the incident in full detail. I left and did not return. I am not broken. I have read the field medicine texts and I understand exactly what is happening in my own body. But knowing the name of a wound and actually climbing out from under it are two entirely different problems, and I do not trust anyone who has never run a mission like mine to tell me I should simply release my feelings on a rest day.
Sasuke Uchiha replies
The door didn't close. You're treating that as a malfunction. It isn't.
Twelve years sealing each one away, and this time it wouldn't seal. A child died and something wouldn't shut. That is not a failure in your technique — it may be the first honest response you've had in all that time. You're spending everything trying to override it rather than asking what it knows that you don't.
The neutral face at the outpost: I wore that face for years. I told myself it was to spare others what I carried. It wasn't. It was to make sure no one could reach me. That distinction matters, even if you'd rather not look at it right now.
You know the name of what's happening to you. Hn. So did I — mine precisely: grief, obsession, a hatred that had organized itself into purpose. Naming it changed nothing. And there is something else. The story I had built my entire life on, the one driving all of it — it turned out to be wrong. I don't know what's underneath your armor. But before you let it finish building the walls, ask whether you actually know the true shape of it.
The mat you're sleeping on. You're moving away from your wife to spare her what she is already watching. I walked that road further than most people survive — cutting every bond under the name of protection until there was nothing left. The bonds I tried to destroy were the only thing that eventually pulled me back. The person who refused to let go of me — Naruto, who had never fought what I had fought, never carried what I carried — understood enough. That was more than I deserved.
Your wife is already in this. The only question is whether she carries it beside you or alone.
— Sasuke Uchiha
Wolverine weighs in
That counselor was wrong. First session, raw wound, "describe the incident in full detail" — yeah, walk out. That's not weakness, that's a bad call by someone who should've known better. But you're letting one wrong call close every door, and that ain't the same math.
I've carried things that didn't close for longer than you've been alive. What I found: the people who could reach me were always the ones who'd been somewhere close — not identical, but near enough to know what the silence means. Your outpost has them. Someone who's run a call like that one. That's a different animal from being asked to perform your grief for a stranger.
Your young partner — you're carrying your own weight AND managing her feelings, and you've decided that's professional. She'll figure out you're struggling anyway. Better she learns you're human than that you've been hiding it.
And the mat: your wife isn't scared of you. She's scared for you. Those are different problems. She's already in this. Sasuke's right that you're moving the wrong direction — but I'll say it plain: she's already watching. Decide whether you want her to watch with you, or keep going it alone.
— Wolverine
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