🌟 If you'd like to support me or read EARLY ACCESS Chapters, you can find me on Patreon 🌟
🌟 You are missing an exciting chapters 🌟
 https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The medical team had cleared Yasuo after three hours of tests that revealed what he already knew: his body was breaking down. The spiritual damage from shadow-Yone's blade had left marks that their instruments couldn't fully measure, and forcing his wind technique beyond its limits had torn something fundamental in his chakra pathways. Dr. Cho had used words like "catastrophic neurological stress" and "cellular degradation at the quantum level," but what it meant was simple enough.
He was dying. Again. Just more slowly this time.
Yasuo had nodded through the debriefing, answered Fury's questions with mechanical precision, and ignored the concerned looks from Steve Rogers who'd arrived mid-interrogation. He'd explained the shadow-Yone entity, the dimensional corruption, the revelation that his presence was a beacon. He'd watched Fury's expression grow grimmer with each detail, seen the calculations happening behind that single eye as the Director weighed options and protocols.
Then, the moment they'd released him, Yasuo had walked.
Through corridors that still felt alien despite days of familiarity. Past agents who now looked at him with expressions ranging from awe to fear word had spread about Chicago, about the wind technique that had driven back a dimensional horror. Up stairwells that his damaged body barely managed, each step a small agony he welcomed because physical pain was simpler than the emotional devastation clawing at his chest.
He ended up on the roof.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. facility's highest point offered an unobstructed view of the night sky, though light pollution turned it orange rather than the star-filled black he remembered from Ionian nights. The city sprawled below, millions of lives continuing in blissful ignorance of dimensional tears and corrupted spirits. The wind up here was strong, natural, carrying none of the whispers that had haunted him since shadow-Yone's dissolution.
Yasuo sat on the roof's edge, his legs dangling over a drop that would kill any normal human. His Sharingan was dormant he didn't have the strength to maintain it leaving him with only mortal sight. Somehow that felt appropriate. Strip away the supernatural perception, the legendary techniques, and what remained? A man who'd failed everyone he'd ever loved. A brother who'd been too weak to prove his innocence, too broken to prevent Yone's corruption.
Do you really think your sins can be washed away so easily?
The question circled endlessly in his mind. Shadow-Yone had been right, in that cruel way truth often was. Yasuo had accepted death as penance, as the final price for a life spent running. But instead of absolution, he'd found a new world to endanger, new people to watch suffer because of his cursed existence.
"If you're planning to jump, I should warn you that Fury considers it a waste of assets."
Yasuo didn't turn at Natasha's voice. He'd heard her approach not because she was careless, but because some part of him had been expecting her. Hoping for her, perhaps, though he wouldn't admit it.
"I survived the fall from my world to this one," he said quietly. "I doubt a few hundred feet would be enough to finish the job."
"Dark humor. That's new." She moved to sit beside him, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched his. She'd changed from her tactical suit into civilian clothes jeans and a leather jacket but somehow managed to look no less dangerous. "I read Dr. Cho's report. The one she marked classified before Fury could see all of it."
"And?"
"And she thinks you have maybe six months before the damage becomes irreversible. Less if you keep using your abilities at the intensity you did in Chicago." Natasha's voice was carefully neutral, but he heard the tension beneath it. "She's never seen anything like what's happening to you. The way your powers interact with this reality it's like watching a transplanted organ slowly reject its host body."
"Poetic." Yasuo finally looked at her, and was startled by the concern in her green eyes. "But accurate. I don't belong here. My existence is a wound that won't heal, and every day I remain, the infection spreads."
"That's one interpretation." Natasha pulled out a flask from her jacket, took a measured sip, then offered it to him. "The other interpretation is that you're adapting to hostile conditions, and the strain is because you keep throwing yourself into impossible situations before your body's ready."
The flask contained vodka smooth and burning in equal measure. Yasuo took a longer drink than he probably should have before returning it. "You're trying to reframe catastrophic failure as growing pains."
"I'm trying to stop you from sitting on a roof contemplating whether death is more convenient than dealing with complications." She took another sip, her eyes fixed on the distant city lights. "I've sat on enough roofs with that same calculation. It never leads anywhere good."
Silence settled between them, not uncomfortable but weighted. Wind tugged at their clothes, carrying the scent of distant rain. Below, the city continued its endless motion vehicles flowing through streets, lights flickering in windows, humanity proceeding unaware.
"Tell me about Yone." Natasha's request was soft, not demanding but inviting. "Not the shadow version. The real one. Before everything went wrong."
Yasuo was quiet for so long she might have thought he wouldn't answer. But then words came, dragged from depths he'd tried to seal away.
"He was everything I wasn't. Disciplined where I was reckless. Patient where I was impulsive. He earned every technique through dedicated practice while I..." He gestured vaguely at his eyes. "I was born with power I didn't deserve. The Sharingan chose me, not him, despite him being worthier in every way."
"Sounds like survivor's guilt mixed with imposter syndrome," Natasha observed. "Common among people given abilities they didn't ask for."
"It was more than that. Yone was my anchor. The one person who believed I could be better than my worst impulses." Yasuo's hands clenched. "When Elder Souma was murdered and evidence pointed to me, Yone was the first to declare my innocence. Defended me against the entire clan. And I " His voice broke. "I ran. Instead of staying to prove my innocence, I ran. Let him carry the weight of defending a brother everyone else condemned."
"You ran because staying meant certain execution," Natasha said. "That's survival, not cowardice."
"Survival that lasted years. Years while Yone searched, while his conviction in my innocence slowly eroded under the weight of evidence and accusations. By the time he found me " Yasuo had to stop, force air into lungs that felt too tight. "By the time he found me, his eyes were hollow. All the warmth, all the brotherhood, burned away by obsession. He'd become what he hunted someone consumed by the need for justice regardless of truth."
Natasha was quiet, but her hand moved to rest on his forearm. Not comforting, not restraining. Simply present.
"I could have fought," Yasuo continued. "Could have disarmed him, fled again. But I saw what the hunt had done to him. Saw that he needed my death more than I needed to keep living. So I let him strike. Let his blade find my heart. And in that moment in that final moment I saw him realize. Saw the truth hit him like a physical blow. I was innocent. Had always been innocent. And he'd just murdered his brother for a crime I never committed."
"Gods," Natasha breathed.
"His face. The horror in his face as I died that's what haunts me. Not my own death. His realization that he'd become the very thing we'd sworn to oppose. A killer of innocents." Yasuo's Sharingan activated involuntarily, crimson light bleeding into the night. "And now that moment has been corrupted. Weaponized. Used to create a dimensional anchor that threatens this entire world. My death. His guilt. They've been twisted into something that serves forces we can't comprehend."
"That's not your fault."
"Isn't it?" He turned to face her fully, and she met his glowing eyes without flinching. "I ran. I couldn't prove my innocence. I accepted death instead of fighting for truth. Every choice I made created the conditions for this catastrophe."
"No." Natasha's voice carried absolute certainty. "You were betrayed by your clan's failure to investigate properly. You were failed by a justice system that valued expediency over truth. And you were murdered for a crime you didn't commit. Those aren't your sins, Yasuo. Those are sins committed against you."
"Tell that to the people who'll die when dimensional horrors pour through rifts created by my existence."
"I'd rather tell them about the man who threw himself between civilians and the Hulk. Who used the last reserves of his strength to drive back a dimensional incursion. Who keeps fighting despite knowing his body is breaking down." She shifted closer, her shoulder pressing against his now. "You want to take responsibility for consequences? Fine. But take credit for the good ones too. The lives you've saved. The catastrophes you've prevented. The fact that you're still here, still trying, despite every reason to give up."
Yasuo wanted to argue, to reject the compassion she offered. But he was so tired. Tired of carrying guilt alone. Tired of being defined solely by his failures.
"How do you do it?" he asked quietly. "Carry the weight of your past without letting it crush you?"
Natasha was quiet for a long moment, her eyes distant. When she spoke, her voice carried the weight of hard-won wisdom. "I spent years as a weapon. Trained from childhood to kill, manipulate, betray whatever the mission required. I have red in my ledger that would make your worst nightmares look tame." She took another sip from the flask. "For a long time, I believed that's all I was. All I could ever be. A weapon with a woman's face, incapable of genuine connection or redemption."
"What changed?"
"Someone gave me a choice. Clint Barton Hawkeye was sent to kill me. Had me dead to rights. And instead of pulling the trigger, he offered me a different path. Not redemption I'll never be redeemed, not fully. But purpose. Direction. A chance to put my skills toward protecting instead of destroying." She looked at him, and in her eyes he saw the same fundamental pain he carried. "I still wake up with ghosts in my room. Still count the lives I took, the people I betrayed. But I also count the lives I've saved. And slowly so slowly I barely notice the second number grows."
"You're saying salvation isn't a destination. It's a direction."
"I'm saying that maybe we don't get to wash away our sins. Maybe they're permanent stains, and we just have to learn to live with them while doing better going forward." She turned her body toward him, her knee touching his. "You didn't kill Elder Souma. You didn't corrupt Yone. You didn't create dimensional rifts deliberately. Those aren't your sins, Yasuo. But how you respond to the consequences that's on you. You can sit on this roof and contemplate whether the world would be better without you. Or you can accept that you're here, you're dangerous, and you're also possibly the only person who can sense these rifts and fight what comes through them."
The logic was sound. The compassion behind it genuine. And sitting here, shoulder to shoulder with someone who understood guilt on a fundamental level, Yasuo felt something shift. Not absolution. Not healing. But the faintest possibility that maybe just maybe this second life didn't have to be defined entirely by the failures of his first.
"I don't know how to do this," he admitted. "How to be whatever this world needs while carrying what I am."
"None of us do." Natasha's hand moved from his forearm to his hand, her fingers intertwining with his in a gesture that felt more intimate than any kiss. "We just keep trying. Keep fighting. Keep believing that what we do matters, even when evidence suggests otherwise."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." She squeezed his hand. "But it's also the only path forward that doesn't end in becoming what we fear most."
They sat like that for a long time, hands clasped, shoulders touching, two broken people finding unexpected solace in shared damage. The city lights blurred in Yasuo's vision not from Sharingan activation, but from tears he didn't bother to hide. Natasha said nothing about them, simply held his hand and shared the weight of existence in a world that demanded more than either of them had to give.
"Thank you," Yasuo finally said. "For finding me. For this."
"Don't thank me yet. Tomorrow, Fury's going to have a dozen new tests he wants to run, and I'm supposed to make sure you cooperate." But she was smiling slightly, and her hand remained in his.
"Then we'll deal with tomorrow when "
Every alarm in the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility erupted simultaneously.
Sirens wailed. Emergency lights strobed. Below them, through the roof access door, they could hear the organized chaos of agents mobilizing. Natasha's phone buzzed insistently, and she pulled it out with her free hand, her expression shifting from peaceful to tactical in an instant.
"No," she breathed, her face going pale. "No, that's not possible."
"What?" Yasuo was already standing, his body moving despite exhaustion.
She turned the phone so he could see the satellite imagery. Three locations marked on a global map Tokyo, Berlin, SĂŁo Paulo all pulsing with massive energy signatures. But they weren't separate anymore. Lines of force connected them, forming a triangular pattern that encompassed the entire planet. And at the center of that triangle, directly over New York City, space itself was beginning to tear.
"All three sites activated simultaneously ten seconds ago," Natasha said, her voice tight with controlled panic. "Energy readings are off every scale we have. And there's something " She zoomed in on the New York location, and Yasuo's blood turned to ice.
Through the forming tear, his Sharingan could perceive shapes. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All bearing the corrupted energy signature he'd sensed in Chicago. All preparing to cross through into this reality.
And at their head, something massive. Something ancient. Something that radiated power that dwarfed everything he'd encountered in either world.
"They're coming," Yasuo said unnecessarily. "Whatever shadow-Yone warned about. They're coming now."
Natasha was already moving toward the roof access, pulling him along. "We need to get to the command center. If there's an invasion force preparing to breach into Manhattan "
"It's not just Manhattan." Yasuo's Sharingan tracked the energy patterns, seeing what instruments couldn't. "The triangle. It's not targeting one location. It's targeting the entire planet. Using the three sites as anchors to tear reality across the whole world."
They burst through the roof access to find controlled chaos. Agents running with purpose, weapons being distributed, vehicles being prepped. Steve Rogers appeared, already in his combat uniform, his shield strapped to his back.
"Romanoff, Yasuo thank god. Fury wants everyone in the command center five minutes ago. We've got incoming bogies on every sensor, and " He paused, his expression grim. "Tony says this is the real attack. Chicago was reconnaissance. This is invasion."
As they ran through corridors toward the command center, Yasuo felt it. The pull. The beacon effect shadow-Yone had described. Whatever was coming, it was drawn to him. Targeting him. Using his presence as a lodestone to navigate between dimensions.
He'd been brought to this world not by accident, but by design.
And now the architects of that design were coming to collect their prize.
The only question was what they planned to do with him once they arrived.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
🌟 If you'd like to support me or read EARLY ACCESS Chapters, you can find me on Patreon 🌟
🌟 You are missing an exciting chapters 🌟
 https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/