It shouldn't be possible, yet the contrast to the dimension before—to the Netherworld, and all of its dark crawling miseries—is hard to shake. Like the skin of a snake half-shed, he feels unmoored somewhere between the two; his mind lingers in the shattered plains of the Shadowlands while his physical body is here, surrounded by gilt and gleaming gold, lost within spotless interiors of luxury and indulgence. His rank is the lowest of low. Fitting, perhaps, and more comfortable for Sasuke than anything higher because no one notices him at the bottom of a hierarchy he wants nothing to do with. He's explored the empty maintenance halls and found them more bearable than anywhere, even in their utter lack of life, even haunted by noises of no origin. If only he could go deeper, open up some earthen trench and uncover the subterranean labyrinth below, he might find—something else. The Netherworld. The village. A dream, a nightmare. Him, Naruto, wherever he's gone now.
Then, the content of his thoughts changes completely. It is like the Shadow hasn't left at all, but instead has changed, corrupted by his surroundings. He knows it the first night he lays his head down in that closet of a room provided to him—only to wake two hours later in a feverish sweat, panicked, mouth cotton-dry, pants sticking wet between thighs in evidence of behavior he should have outgrown long ago. Or never experienced at all, frankly.
It only gets worse from there. The rotation of handsome faces he's seen only once or twice, or never seen at all, is ceaseless. Perhaps it would be enough to bear the erotic taint of these dreams, except for when they aren't there. And instead he is a child again. And events once bled from his body, his heart, are alive and real and happening again, and he wakes to the looming sight of his older brother, cruelly inflicting upon him a sin long since paid in death. Or it is himself that he sees, bodies at his feet, a ruinous path to a pointless, hopeless future.
Maybe the Netherworld was correct, and this is another unreliable corner of the afterlife. Or would that be too generous? He should be nowhere if he's dead.
He stops sleeping. In the well-lit rooms of Talon and Beak, he trains his body to the point of exhaustion and closes his eyes, meditates, then rouses and starts again. Some time after two in the morning on this day, he has the generously sized locker room to himself, seated on a wooden bench after a frigid shower, dressed simply in gray sweatpants—struggling to wrap bandages, one-handed, around the stump of his left arm.
Someone walks in and Sasuke lifts his head, mismatched eyes bruised with sleepless shadows. They widen, then narrow to slits.]
What the hell do you want?
[The antipathy seems to come from nowhere, but Sasuke knows this face. He's seen this face, and that body, in a dream he doesn't want to recall right now.]
( action ) @hallowing / cw: suicidal ideation
It shouldn't be possible, yet the contrast to the dimension before—to the Netherworld, and all of its dark crawling miseries—is hard to shake. Like the skin of a snake half-shed, he feels unmoored somewhere between the two; his mind lingers in the shattered plains of the Shadowlands while his physical body is here, surrounded by gilt and gleaming gold, lost within spotless interiors of luxury and indulgence. His rank is the lowest of low. Fitting, perhaps, and more comfortable for Sasuke than anything higher because no one notices him at the bottom of a hierarchy he wants nothing to do with. He's explored the empty maintenance halls and found them more bearable than anywhere, even in their utter lack of life, even haunted by noises of no origin. If only he could go deeper, open up some earthen trench and uncover the subterranean labyrinth below, he might find—something else. The Netherworld. The village. A dream, a nightmare. Him, Naruto, wherever he's gone now.
Then, the content of his thoughts changes completely. It is like the Shadow hasn't left at all, but instead has changed, corrupted by his surroundings. He knows it the first night he lays his head down in that closet of a room provided to him—only to wake two hours later in a feverish sweat, panicked, mouth cotton-dry, pants sticking wet between thighs in evidence of behavior he should have outgrown long ago. Or never experienced at all, frankly.
It only gets worse from there. The rotation of handsome faces he's seen only once or twice, or never seen at all, is ceaseless. Perhaps it would be enough to bear the erotic taint of these dreams, except for when they aren't there. And instead he is a child again. And events once bled from his body, his heart, are alive and real and happening again, and he wakes to the looming sight of his older brother, cruelly inflicting upon him a sin long since paid in death. Or it is himself that he sees, bodies at his feet, a ruinous path to a pointless, hopeless future.
Maybe the Netherworld was correct, and this is another unreliable corner of the afterlife. Or would that be too generous? He should be nowhere if he's dead.
He stops sleeping. In the well-lit rooms of Talon and Beak, he trains his body to the point of exhaustion and closes his eyes, meditates, then rouses and starts again. Some time after two in the morning on this day, he has the generously sized locker room to himself, seated on a wooden bench after a frigid shower, dressed simply in gray sweatpants—struggling to wrap bandages, one-handed, around the stump of his left arm.
Someone walks in and Sasuke lifts his head, mismatched eyes bruised with sleepless shadows. They widen, then narrow to slits.]
What the hell do you want?
[The antipathy seems to come from nowhere, but Sasuke knows this face. He's seen this face, and that body, in a dream he doesn't want to recall right now.]