๏ผ the shock is ice and iron to his awareness — one moment, the only familiar chakra on the station is kakashi and a distant, glimmering awareness of the cultivators and haki-users. in the next, energy that tastes of ozone and ash, abyssal as an ocean that closes above his head and drags him into the depths becomes an encompassment. it is a glut of sensory perception, and in the throes of marshalling his own reaction, his right hand spasms faintly, knocking his inkpot askew. the ink becomes a tributary along the banks of dove-white paper, obscuring the poem by ito eiji he had half-copied out in a calligraphic hand.
('one can hear a hawk mourn/if one listens to the crying wind')
for a very long moment, he does not move. it is as if he could sink into the black river and disappear. at length, the paper is folded, and then folded again. ink has bled through to the desk beneath, a sheen like an oil slick. he should clean it, and stands to retrieve the necessary items from the small ensuite in his room. the motion is surety incarnate, but his mind is a tumult, fissures kept in check for a long year in this place cracking apart like a coal-seam set ablaze. cleaning happens in a daze of which he will later have zero recollection, mind shuttered like he's anticipating a storm.
sasuke. that he has regrets of his own is understandable — it seems to be endemic to all uchiha, as much as their cursed love. but a year's peace, and nara shikamaru come and gone, leaving only hatake kakashi to remain, had whittled down the speculation that sasuke would one day arrive on the ximilia to a distant possibility wrapped in impossible odds.
not so impossible, apparently.
there is nowhere on the station to avoid him — though viveca would likely offer him use of the north wing if he asked. the thought occurs, appeals, but is ultimately discarded. he is deeply enough in her debt already.
instead, he simply undoes the tripwires and the tags that bar his door, and begins a pot of tea. every nerve is afire, frayed, but whenever sasuke opens the door he will not appear to be so, seated in a room that is utterly devoid of all personality save the very faint smell of ink, lacquer, the sharp astringency of acetone and the indulgent gyokurou that is steeping. there is a bed, neatly kempt, plainly made, obviously never slept in. there is a bookshelf, lined with japanese poetry, science, the history of various worlds. most damningly, perhaps, is the book from konoha — a medical textbook, clearly quite old, careworn by the crack to its spine.
(there are other things. little touches, that live like sparrows in the eaves of this new life. in a drawer there is a pink plush toy. between the pages of a book there lives a hand-drawn picture, of the two here that have found their way into his threadbare heart. there are bottles of nail polish, gifted from others who do not understand the significance of the colour he wears, tucked in a box alongside the futon he does sleep on.
there is a very terrible neon-orange shirt that says ๐ชโ๐ณโ๐ฏโ๐ดโ๐พโ ๐นโ๐ญโ๐ชโ ๐ปโ๐ฎโ๐ชโ๐ผโ hanging in his closet.)
yet — the fact remains, sasuke can be nothing save what itachi made him, shaped to a grim and terrible purpose. he is already prepared for a fight, settling into a skin that hangs oddly on old bones. he is not the man he was a year ago, and stepping back into it feels like a betrayal, though he cannot say to whom. even now, if he had any desire to tell the truth — he would not be believed. his own noose, expertly tied and twice over tightened. perhaps that is why his expression is darkly sardonic when sasuke flings open the door.
he knows, courtesy of shikamaru, that sasuke lives until at least nineteen. it is difficult to gauge his age except as older, but his attention does drop briefly to the empty sleeve where his left arm should be, and it sets the world askew. there are precious few people left living after his death that could have done such a thing. the intensity of his own anger surprises him, and is quickly cut from oxygen — he cannot afford to have a visible reaction to it. the rinnegan, which simply gets a faint hm as his eyes cut back to sasuke's.
will he sense the faint, distant flicker of a chakra not his own, that marks these eyes as belonging to another? how perceptive has he gotten, this little brother of his? ๏ผ
no subject
('one can hear a hawk mourn/if one listens to the crying wind')
for a very long moment, he does not move. it is as if he could sink into the black river and disappear. at length, the paper is folded, and then folded again. ink has bled through to the desk beneath, a sheen like an oil slick. he should clean it, and stands to retrieve the necessary items from the small ensuite in his room. the motion is surety incarnate, but his mind is a tumult, fissures kept in check for a long year in this place cracking apart like a coal-seam set ablaze. cleaning happens in a daze of which he will later have zero recollection, mind shuttered like he's anticipating a storm.
sasuke. that he has regrets of his own is understandable — it seems to be endemic to all uchiha, as much as their cursed love. but a year's peace, and nara shikamaru come and gone, leaving only hatake kakashi to remain, had whittled down the speculation that sasuke would one day arrive on the ximilia to a distant possibility wrapped in impossible odds.
not so impossible, apparently.
there is nowhere on the station to avoid him — though viveca would likely offer him use of the north wing if he asked. the thought occurs, appeals, but is ultimately discarded. he is deeply enough in her debt already.
instead, he simply undoes the tripwires and the tags that bar his door, and begins a pot of tea. every nerve is afire, frayed, but whenever sasuke opens the door he will not appear to be so, seated in a room that is utterly devoid of all personality save the very faint smell of ink, lacquer, the sharp astringency of acetone and the indulgent gyokurou that is steeping. there is a bed, neatly kempt, plainly made, obviously never slept in. there is a bookshelf, lined with japanese poetry, science, the history of various worlds. most damningly, perhaps, is the book from konoha — a medical textbook, clearly quite old, careworn by the crack to its spine.
(there are other things. little touches, that live like sparrows in the eaves of this new life. in a drawer there is a pink plush toy. between the pages of a book there lives a hand-drawn picture, of the two here that have found their way into his threadbare heart. there are bottles of nail polish, gifted from others who do not understand the significance of the colour he wears, tucked in a box alongside the futon he does sleep on.
there is a very terrible neon-orange shirt that says ๐ชโ๐ณโ๐ฏโ๐ดโ๐พโ ๐นโ๐ญโ๐ชโ ๐ปโ๐ฎโ๐ชโ๐ผโ hanging in his closet.)
yet — the fact remains, sasuke can be nothing save what itachi made him, shaped to a grim and terrible purpose. he is already prepared for a fight, settling into a skin that hangs oddly on old bones. he is not the man he was a year ago, and stepping back into it feels like a betrayal, though he cannot say to whom. even now, if he had any desire to tell the truth — he would not be believed. his own noose, expertly tied and twice over tightened. perhaps that is why his expression is darkly sardonic when sasuke flings open the door.
he knows, courtesy of shikamaru, that sasuke lives until at least nineteen. it is difficult to gauge his age except as older, but his attention does drop briefly to the empty sleeve where his left arm should be, and it sets the world askew. there are precious few people left living after his death that could have done such a thing. the intensity of his own anger surprises him, and is quickly cut from oxygen — he cannot afford to have a visible reaction to it. the rinnegan, which simply gets a faint hm as his eyes cut back to sasuke's.
will he sense the faint, distant flicker of a chakra not his own, that marks these eyes as belonging to another? how perceptive has he gotten, this little brother of his? ๏ผ
Sasuke.