"You wrote a poem?"
There was so much he did not yet know. Is such a thing possible? To live with a person your whole life and yet the number of unknowns stretches into infinity. The silence was so rich and so protected, he felt bad for trying to break it. But was he the only one affected? Wouldn't that make him, once again, the inferior one…?
Itachi looked unlike a human. (They call us yellow by way of racist classification but it's color and all that I can see is white, pure white like a swan or a dove or a geisha and they are…pink, kind of pale-ish like lips, if I were to think of such a thing and I'm not thinking of such a thing because such a thing…is just…it's just…too- Anyway. He looks like a doll.)
"I'm not saying it's girly." ( No. I am. It's extremely girly. And it doesn't suit you. You know this. I can tell; you stiffened just now. That's right, it's an insult. I don't know why and you sure as hell don't but then since you don't say anything you can't. He should burn it. Whatever is written is not worth your time. Poetry is just…isn't it for people with feelings? And you're some sort of doll, right?)
"It's just…" (The paper is crisp. His calligraphy is stunning. But to look at his hand now, he was marble. Marble is cold, lifeless but it's so beautiful. It's hard to imagine that hand moving with fluid strokes… in the context of penmanship.)
A thousand ravens
Converge on corpses
Of my blood brother
"It's a Haiku?"
"Though unorthodox. Lacking in three phases of five, seven and five morae respectively and without kireji… although, even Basho didn't strictly adhere to such restrictions. I suppose… you could view it as modern?" (He does not speak unless he has something completely useless to say. I didn't ask for an education in literature. Times have changed. I used to think he was invincible perfection but now his knowledge seems ugly. I'm not impressed anymore. Something's changed. Wait- don't say it like a question. You know everything, don't you?)
"Oh, wow. That was a yes or no question, you know." (Why…why can't what needs to be said and what wants to be conveyed ever come through purely? It's as though pride filters everything beforehand and uglifies it all. There it is again. Ugly. And the opposite turns away because the doll
…is saddened. )
"Mother needs your ("your, I hope you take note. "your") help."
The silence is rich.
He gets up and leaves his own room while Sasuke stays.
His lips are dry. It's a cold autumn day. And there's a stinging in his heart. He walks up to Itachi's bed and kneels before it, placing his head down. He was so tired. The bed smells like leaves but what leaves he cannot name and dango. It was the scent of his brother. Sharp and then it fades and he was so scared of the fading. Like his stupid Haiku, it made no sense but if he were to analyze it there might be a heap of scientific bull they made up just to sound erudite but nobody cares about conjecture or possible hypotheses, Sasuke wanted there to be a real conversation.
Like…synchronized breaths. No. That's not—that's not it. That's not a conversation. But before when he was a child (What is a child really? He was fifteen, almost sixteen, now) their every movement was in sync and now individuality was coming to rip them apart. Would it be socially acceptable if they were twins? Then, they could have even shared a womb. What a…disturbing thought.
Leaves and Dango. Of a doll.
God.
He fisted the sheets in powerful frustration and they came undone. Itachi was so orderly and Sasuke was just a spoiled child who didn't know what he wanted till someone told him what he couldn't have.
And what he wanted…
"Sasuke, are you ill?"
Itachi.
Maybe if he pretended. Sasuke lifted himself off the ground and onto the bed. Itachi came up to him, worried and searching till his movements stopped because
An arm around his shoulder, a fist in his collar, a force pushing him down and lips crashing into him.
The Silence was still.
Till the slicking sinisterly tongue slid in and tasted what he couldn't have.
"Uhnnn…"
The Silence was shattered.