Chapter 1
Rated; PG [this chapter
Summary; Nestled between mountains, myths, and spirits is the house of Hyuuga—and Uchiha Sasuke, who has just been promised to its heir. Yet as the designs of men ebb and flow, Fate abides in an unalterable, ceaseless current unaffected by the desires of men.
Author's Note; AU, SasuNejiSasu. For Laur's (late) birthday and probably Christmas as well. Further comments at the end.
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Au nowa wakari no hajimari.
To meet is the beginning of parting.
- Japanese Proverb
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The floor was cold this time of night, this time of year. Colder in the darker extremities of the house—rooms which hadn't been open since early autumn and which still retained the season's crisp scent, but changed. It was the scent one would expect to find in an old growth forest after all the trees had died and snow had covered the land. A scent that was dead, but clean. Clean and dead.
"Okaeri-nasai, Otou-san."
Uchiha Sasuke was well acquainted with this floor. As a child he had been scolded for walking on these same tatami with slippers, for accidentally slicing the woven strands with a kunai, for dripping blood near the entrance. It was one of his father's rooms, but not the greatest of those. His father had chosen this room for him as carefully as he chose everything else. A secondhand room for a second son.
As Sasuke pressed his forehead to the cool matting, he decided not to think about it, and instead concentrated on the sound of his own breathing.
"Your mother tells me that you have completed your training with Kakashi. You returned yesterday, is that right?"
His father always had a way of talking that made Sasuke feel, as cliché as it was, small. At the same time, the fact that his father was speaking to him at all sent Sasuke's heart thudding in his chest. It caused a hundred feathers to burst in his ribcage and wing his hope to blossom warm in his chest. It fluttered to perch, ready in his throat.
"Yes, Otou-san," Sasuke said softly, not daring to lift his eyes above the hem of his father's riding gear. Respect stayed his gaze, and against the dark background, Sasuke could see the white puffs of his breath scatter before his father's figure like a thousand soldiers that fled in his presence. "We've finished everything that Kakashi-sensei—"
A sudden screech of movement had Sasuke's voice shudder to a sudden halt, and his eyes snapped back to the floor as his father heaved himself from the chair he'd been sitting in—the only one in the house, it had been brought here for just this purpose—and made a rough circle around the room. Sasuke watched the line of his shadow bend and twist out of the corner of his eye. Mutated.
"It was you that denied further training, was it not?" His father's voice shuddered in the small room, but it was carefully in check. A measured explosion.
Sasuke drew in a breath. "He said himself that he no longer has anything to teach me. I came back because I wanted to show—"
"Then show me."
There was the long, pinched harmony of metal on metal, and Sasuke presently became aware of his father's drawn sword. Every hair on his neck stood on end, as if each had been tipped with steel and was straining toward the magnetic pole of the singing weapon. The young Uchiha's shoulders shook with a faint tremor.
"Show me," his father commanded again.
Sasuke slowly lifted his forehead from where it had been resting on his fingers against the ground. He looked up into the shadows of his father's face—a man's face, thick with lines of age and the hardness of intelligence. The corners of Uchiha Fugaku's mouth dipped in a perpetual frown, and his eyes were a hard, dark obsidian like Sasuke's own. But in that face lay all that Sasuke had ever wished to possess, to corrupt in the only way that pride in a son could do. He would see his father's face shine with satisfaction in the way it did for his brother.
His brother—why was it not Itachi that Sasuke was fighting now?
But there was no time to think on the matter; he would not keep his father waiting. Taking a deep breath, Sasuke mentally prepared himself for the task he alone had placed on a pedestal. Somehow proving himself to his father had become little less than an all encompassing obsession.
He was up in the shadow of a second, the balls of his feet hitting the tatami soundlessly as he gained his balance, effortless as a blacksmith turned his hand to the forge. With the agile grace of a cat, Sasuke caught the sword that his father tossed him, the sharp blade glinting in the light that flickered out from the various lanterns and candles placed throughout the room. This was no mere child's play; the blade of this sword would cut the finest hair on a man's head.
Hunching his shoulders forward slightly, Sasuke slid his feet into a wider stance as his father circled the room once more. Circled him. Assessing.
And then with a groan of leather and grate of metal, his father lowered himself into the chair again. Sat poised just on its edge, the tang of his sword balanced on the arm of the Western structure.
"Come," he said.
Astonished by is father's behavior, Sasuke felt his cheeks flush in heated shame. The sudden shock of a strange betrayal splashed over him like cold water. And just like water, Sasuke forced himself to shake it off, pushing himself into action. Action, if there was no room for thought.
If his father did not believe him to be capable, he would prove that he was by force.
Sasuke's first strike came quick and direct; the arch of his blade made a visible crescent in the dimness of the room as he twisted the razor edge toward one of the many openings that was provided by his father's position. His father's sword was held loosely in his right hand, Sasuke had struck at the left arm—an awkward position for a man to defend against without moving his entire body to face his opponent. But when the whisper of air gasped itself into silence, it was metal that Sasuke's blade bit into and not the rough armor on his father's arm. Not even the old, unpolished wood of the chair as his father moved.
He was almost too shocked to go on, his father's movements had been so swift. But Sasuke was ever-diligent and struck again and again and again—the final twist of his arms sent forth a jab that forced his father's blade out in a circling serpentine like move that thrust Sasuke so far back he thought he was going to fall right into the shogi and punch through into the next room.
When he looked up, his father's eyes shone with the faintest shimmer of red. The smallest glimpse of the demon inside, and the first time Sasuke had seen it outside of spars between his father and brother.
There wasn't a moment's hesitation as he ran the few steps back to the center of the room, blade slung downward in a shallow bow. As the speed of his attack increased so did the speed and method of his perception. Everything seemed to slow down as his concentration pinned itself on each aspect of the room, each angle of his father's body, his father's chair, his father's weapon. This time, Sasuke was able to see his father's sword rise up to meet his own.
But it wasn't Fugaku's blade that Sasuke was aiming for.
The understructure of the chair shattered as the heavy steel of Sasuke's sword bit through it. Wood splintered and crumpled as the chair tipped forward and folded in on itself itself, forcing Fugaku to his feet and on the defensive as Sasuke spun around and threw his sword in an undercurrent to clang against his father's in parry. For the first time in his experience, there was a look of shock on his father's face. It drew the lines there thin and tight, pushed Fugaku's eyes wider before it relented and was once again tamed by the Uchiha clan head's resolve and experience.
They were fighting in earnest now, his father attacking, forcing Sasuke to step back as the long sliver of his blade swung closer and closer to the unguarded skin of Sasuke's neck. Backed up against the inner wall, Sasuke dodged a heavy swipe that sliced the thin rice paper in half and shredded the wooden supports between. He danced his way out of the corner of the room and thrust his sword full-bodied toward the triangle created by his father's elbow and body.
Sasuke's sword was deflected and expertly engaged again, forcing Sasuke back against the broken inner wall. He could feel the warmer air from the inner house melt through the wounds in the paper, and for an instant, his mind divided, slipped back toward childhood and the warm, dry heat of his careless youth during winters past in this house. Desperate for clarity, Sasuke thrust himself up against the cold outer wall.
The light from the windows lit his father's sword as it came down and sliced through the cord holding the window shade in place. As the room slipped into partial darkness, Sasuke slapped a hand over his wounded cheek and felt the sting of his sweat piercing the wound.
"Is this all you've learned?"
Sasuke's expression trembled and split open just like the short, shallow gash in his cheek. His heart beat furiously as his resolve fought against his father's criticizing gaze, and in a matter of moments he had cut the thongs of the two remaining windows and had thrust the room into a shaky, candlelit half-darkness.
The young Uchiha saw his father's eyes flicker in understanding. It was that sudden injection of pride that made him quick and agile, had him sweeping in from the side, raising his arms above his head, the flames of each candle flattening to follow his movement as he twisted—
And found himself face first on the floor, the edge of his sword dangerously close to his unmarked cheek. A bare, but no less heavy foot was pressed between his shoulder blades.
Sasuke hadn't even seen his father move to react, it had been that swift. Whatever precognitive accuracy adrenaline had given his sight had fled at the first sign of his unworthiness.
As the stinging rush of failure made its way through his limbs, Sasuke felt his father's foot disappear from his back, and heard more than saw the rustle of his father's clothing as he bent to retrieve the fallen sword. The dull click of metal against wood murmured in the still air as Sasuke's breaths burst painfully from his lungs.
"You should have stayed with Kakashi," his father said, voice sounding above all things, disappointed.
Sasuke couldn't make himself say anything. He couldn't even force his eyes to open.
He heard Fugaku move toward the door, the sharp sound of his sword slipping back into its sheath defining the man's progress. Sasuke took a breath so painful that he thought for a moment that his father had managed a deeper, meaner cut—but there was no wound in his chest to speak of, only the bitter taste of defeat.
"You will be marrying the Hyuuga heiress," his father said, pausing by the door. "Prepare to set out at first light."
It was almost like he had fallen twice.
Sasuke didn't care to think about whether or not his defeat at his father's hands had led to his current situation—brooding on the way things were was an unfortunate pastime of his that was neither fruitful nor productive to his mental state. As expected, he thought about it anyway.
"It wasn't," his mother told him that night as she pushed a plate of steaming dumplings under his nose. "I wish he'd chosen a different way to tell you, but he just came back from that house and had decided. He really is proud of you, Sasuke-chan."
She said this so often that occasionally, Sasuke was inclined to believe it just for the sake of swimming with the stream instead of against it. The fact that she was his mother made it all the more difficult to hold the idea of her delusion in his mind—certainly she wouldn't lie to him. Yet he had seen the look in his father's eyes.
Sullenly, Sasuke picked at the dumplings. His stomach gave a cruel growl—ravenous traitor that it was—and yet Sasuke couldn't stomach the thought of force-feeding himself when nothing looked appetizing.
"Why do you want me to get married!" he finally burst out, the exclamation far too volatile to be a mere question. His mother didn't look surprised; she'd dealt with this kind of behavior from him for years, and the calmness in her expression was already serving to soothe Sasuke's flayed nerves.
"I think it would be good for you," his mother replied, dark eyes shining steadily, as if from an eternal fire.
It wasn't For the sake of the clan, not It's what expected of young men, no mention of alliance by partnership. She always had to make it personal. But for once, Sasuke wished she hadn't made it about him. Being a tool would have made swallowing this much less bitter to taste. At least then he would have felt his feelings were justified.
Sasuke tore into a dumpling, chewing haltingly for a few moments until there was nothing left to chew but the enamel of his own teeth. Perhaps if he bit into his tongue, his blood would wash this acrid taste out of his mouth—but he couldn't force himself to do it. Instead, he took another bite. A bite more regulated this time, a restrained effort for his mother, who had come around the table and begun to clean the cut on his cheek.
"I want you to be careful with the Hyuuga, Sasuke-chan," she said, voice not nearly as foreboding as her words. "They're different from us. It's probably been a long time since they've had an outsider stay among them."
"Tch," Sasuke grunted around his food, flushing as his mother's careful movements stopped. For a moment, he'd almost forgotten who he was speaking to. He swallowed and took in the fine, familiar features of his mother's face.
"You don't have to worry about me, 'Kaa-san," he said. It was still a bit acidic.
"Of course I do. I'm your mother."
Sasuke grunted.
"We're not giving you away, Sasuke-chan. You'll still belong to me, but something else as well. Something bigger. Try to understand that."
He tried, but when dawn finally came, Sasuke felt no better for it. He ate the breakfast of grilled fish and rice that his mother made and gathered only the things that would be essential to his journey into the mountains, for the Hyuuga lived outside the city, on the outskirts of Konoha. When everything had been packed and strapped to his horse, Sasuke returned inside to farewell his parents and brother.
His mother and father came to the door as he was ascending the steps, each dressed in attire of downplayed colors in accordance to the solemn occasion. Usually printed in red and white, the Uchiha clan's fan insignia looked strange when colored in grays, and as Sasuke bowed and pressed his forehead to the floor in honor of his mother and father, he found himself thinking of ashes, the only product of the raging fires of his clan.
"Where's Itachi?" he asked finally, straightening as his mother broke her position and came to adjust his riding clothes. She was fussing and Sasuke could tell that her movements were only to hold together her calm façade.
"Itachi-kun…" Mikoto said with a long-suffering sigh, as if saying Itachi's name drained her in a way that only a mother could endure, "he rode out the same time you did with Kakashi. He's not back yet."
Sasuke didn't say anything, but pushed the familiar sensation of disappointment down into the bottom of his stomach (where it belonged), and turned to his father. He narrowly caught the fleeting glance exchanged by his parents, but was unable to dwell on it as his father looked at him full in the face.
"Otou-san…" he started, voice nearly a whisper. Printed in those words, Sasuke knew, was the sound of Think well of me, Father, hidden much like the sound of birds behind a fall of rain.
Fugaku grunted and clasped a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. It was tight and strong, and despite his prior failures, Sasuke felt the warm sensation of pride ebbing through him.
"It'll rain," was all his father said.
"Sasuke-chan, take this." His mother was behind him again, and when Sasuke turned around, it was to find that he was face to face with a necklace that he'd only seen, but never touched.
It had been in his family for years—was rumored to be older than the Uchiha themselves, though the tales of the object that he'd heard as a child had never specified when it was created, only that it had belonged to the Gods.
Which was a little ridiculous, now that Sasuke could examine it more closely.
The necklace was rather plain, but it was an item that any Uchiha would have recognized. Upon closer inspection, it was elegant in its simplicity. When strung around a woman's neck, the thin chain (clearly crafted in a manner unknown to present day marksmanship—at least none that Sasuke had ever seen) would lay as smooth as a fine ribbon of silk against the hilt of an old sword—and bring to its wearer the same kind of effortless beauty. Strung on the chain was a single obsidian jewel that glinted iridescent in the light and was smooth to the touch. Its head was rounded perfectly and the tail came to a point that perhaps was sharp once, but which had been worn dull over the years, no longer dangerous. It was the shape that every Uchiha knew well. The tomoe.
"Give it to your future wife," Mikoto said, motioning Sasuke forward so she could string the necklace around his neck. "For now, wear it for safekeeping. The magatama will protect you." She kissed his forehead.
Sasuke mounted his horse, a dark beast that calmed under his fingertips but was unnecessarily violent with everyone else who tried to handle her, and hid the necklace beneath his shirt. It seemed to burn against his skin for a moment before a dull heat began to emanate from the head. Comforting, but in the same way that a hired mercenary with a large sword was: powerful, but toeing the edge of betrayal.
He rode out with his parents watching. As he rounded the crest of a hill, he turned and watched the house disappear behind the horizon, the last hints of a trailing smoke breathing itself toward the sky.
When Sasuke reached the central hub of the city, he met up with a man that his father had hired to guide him the rest of the way to the Hyuuga compound. Despite having been there days before, Fugaku trusted neither his own map drawing skills nor Sasuke's familiarity with that side of the country; he had paid his hired man three pieces of gold, and had given Sasuke three more to bestow once they had arrived safely.
The guide was a short, uncomfortable looking man who was perhaps in his mid-fifties, but whose life had clearly seen enough trials to age him further. His wrinkles had wrinkles, as far as Sasuke could tell, and his eyes were a rheumy blue. When he spoke, his lips curled around his teeth as if to make sure they hadn't fallen out in the process, and Sasuke found it incredibly difficult to want to pay attention to him.
This problem of his attention wandering, Sasuke suspected, was nature's way of protecting him from the senseless drabble that poured from this man's mouth hourly.
He spoke of everything from his dead wife and children to the Emperor's arthritis, and didn't stop for the entirety of their trip. When it finally began to rain, Sasuke found himself relieved despite the cold chill that crept deep into his bones—if only because the sound drowned out the murmur of his guide's storytelling.
Near dusk, the guide's pony—ancient and wrinkled as he was—pulled to a halt in front of a torii lined with the dark figures of still birds, their sharply curved beaks dripping with water. Through the torii lay a road that wound its way partially up the mountainside, stopping only at the foot of a silent mighty house that seemed to be glowing dimly in the half-light.
"As far as I'll go, boy. Hyuuga's right up there, she is," Sasuke's guide said, glancing around nervously before he looked from Sasuke to the money purse that was tied at the Uchiha's hip.
For a moment, Sasuke studied the structure in the distance—more of a complex, really—and ignored his companion, who had lapsed into silence for the first time since they'd begun their journey together. When Sasuke looked at the man, he realized he was no longer staring at the second half of his income, but had fixed his shrouded eyes on the birds of prey that lined the torii gateway. Even in the dim lighting, Sasuke could see their dappled feathers, the soft yellow, the dark brown. Falcons, each, their beady eyes fixed on Sasuke's dripping figure.
"Tch…fine," he said, dragging his eyes casually back to the guide's face. Despite being unsettled by the falcons—five leering from the torii, at least—he gave no sign of it in his manner. Sasuke's movements were smooth when he reached into his bag and produced the guide's money.
Once the gold was in his hands, the little man kissed it fiercely, taking one piece between his teeth to bite down so hard that Sasuke thought what remained of the enamel might break. Then the shrewd little face pulled into a thousand wrinkles, and with a start, Sasuke realized that the man was smiling.
"Be glad! Be glad boy, that Amaterasu looks more kindly on outsiders than she does her children! You'll be all right, for awhile at least!" Here, he gave a gravelly chuckle, "Heh heh…lots of spirits in those hills."
With nothing more than a disapproving sneer, Sasuke urged his mare through the archway, eyes avoiding both the man and the birds, though he could feel the eyes of each burning their way into his shoulders. It wasn't in his nature to fear superstitions and murmurs of ghosts; legend was merely legend, and Sasuke would believe what he'd seen. Sometimes not even that.
As the house drew closer, white-walled with deep brown wood sets and a dark, traditional roof that curved back up toward the sky at its edges, Sasuke dismounted and walked his horse around the back of the silent building. He had never seen a construction glow quite like this one did, though perhaps it was the dark deepness of the mountains behind that provided such an illusion. In any case, the rain was coming harder than ever. His horse needed to be brushed and fed, and Sasuke was cold and fatigued from riding all day.
He was about to call out for assistance—annoyance that he hadn't already been greeted pricking at the edges of his fingertips—when he turned a corner and nearly ran into a form dressed in a plain kimono of pale gray. Her figure was obscured for a moment by the water dripping from her night black umbrella in addition to the rain, and for a moment Sasuke's mind forced a recollection of those words his guide had spoken. Lots of spirits in those hills.
Movement, however, broke that illusion.
"Uchiha Sasuke-san?" the petite figure said demurely, her umbrella tipping just so in a way that made Sasuke unable to see her face. He took a step forward, fingertips frozen around the leather of his horse's reigns, dashed cold by the falling droplets.
Carefully, he answered. "Yes."
"Please follow me. Leave the horse; she will be collected."
Then, without waiting for any kind of protest or agreement from him, the girl parted the rain with her umbrella and ascended the stairs of the veranda. Her muddy geta and umbrella were abandoned on a mat meant specifically for that purpose, and Sasuke also disposed of his shoes there before following her. His socks left wet imprints on the wood, but less and less as they continued to walk further around the house. To an exhausted Sasuke, this felt like miles. In reality, they were walking for less than five minutes.
When the two paused, the Hyuuga and Sasuke (for he knew almost instinctively that this girl was a Hyuuga, though he had never seen her face nor the face of any other from this family), it was before a sliding door that looked exactly like the others that they had passed. Had she not known this house very well, Sasuke's guide may not have been able to tell the difference between the wall and the door—Sasuke certainly couldn't, not until she opened it. And when she did, he was met with a rush of warm, sweet smelling air that drew him in along after her, no questions asked.
"Please make yourself comfortable, Sasuke-san," the Hyuuga girl said, finally turning to him. Her face was pretty, but not beautiful—round and pale, it was framed by dark hair on each side, her bangs falling neatly over her eyebrows. The depths of her grey eyes swirled like smoke. "I'm sure you'll want to change before dinner. You'll be eating with Hinata-sama tonight."
She left.
Sasuke forced himself to look around the room that had been laid out for him. It was floored in tatami and was very plain; the only decorations on the walls were scrolls lined with dark, elegant calligraphy. Sasuke read the one nearest to the door: Ue niwa ue ga aru. Superiors have others above them.
When his eyes had finally darted over the light, low table against the wall, the fresh flowers that graced it in true ikebana fashion, the folded futon in the corner, Sasuke finally allowed himself to drift into the back portion of the room. Closed off by sliding shoji, it was equipped with a desk which had already been set up with a steaming basin of water and several towels. Leaning over the desk, his hands gripping the wood on either side, Sasuke stared at his trembling reflection in the upset water. He was gripping the desk so hard it was shaking.
"Che…" he gritted out between clenched teeth. All this time spent trying to do as his father wished…only to be bartered off to another family because he couldn't please him.
He pushed suddenly and violently against the desk, causing a rain of water to fall from his hair and clothes and bead on the polished surface of the wood. When his muscles finally unclenched, Sasuke felt the chain around his neck slide slightly as the magatama slipped from beneath his shirt and dangled over the steaming water.
Right. He had to do this.
With the water and sliver of soap that had been provided, Sasuke quickly cleaned himself, changed into dry clothes, and slid open the inner shoji only to find himself faced once again with the same girl that had met him outside. Her placid expression remained unchanged, but despite her innocent features, there seemed something…indefinably wrong about her that Sasuke couldn't name.
Placing the feeling aside, but not discounting it, Sasuke followed the Hyuuga girl down a long hall that was lit mostly by the light flooding in through the rice paper boundaries of the interior rooms. The entire house seemed to be constructed of shoji, save for the outer walls and stabilizing pillars. Sasuke, who had never really noticed the value of privacy until now, was slightly disconcerted.
His guide led him to yet another door, this time reinforced with a wood paneling from behind and flanked by two large ornate vases of astonishing color and design. When the Hyuuga girl kneeled by the door and tapped gently on the wooden frame, sliding it open an inch, Sasuke remained standing. As curious as he may have been, he made no attempt to look inside—that would come as the forces in his life demanded. Piece by piece.
"Uchiha Sasuke-san to dine with you, Hinata-sama." She bowed her head, as if the woman waiting inside could see, and then rose to her feet, offering Sasuke neither glance nor consolation before she followed the hallway back to wherever she'd come from.
Sasuke looked at the door, and that familiar sense of bitter rage came back to him as heavy and potent as a rainstorm after a drought. In a moment it was mastered, and presently he slid open the door.
The room behind the fortified screen was lit with lanterns that hung a yellow glow throughout the room and made the place seem smaller than it actually was. Whoever had orchestrated the room had done well—despite its grandiosity, the lanterns highlighted not the finery of the colorful silks that lined the walls nor the vast array of elegant weaponry (weaponry that a trained eye like Sasuke's could tell had never been used, but would be potent in battle all the same), but the ornate table and the girl seated behind it.
Hyuuga Hinata, Sasuke realized as he stepped further and further into the room, was barely a woman.
She was perhaps no younger than him, but it was clear that her adolescence stretched much further than his own ever could have. She had a sweet face. Not beautiful, but the clothing, Sasuke supposed, was supposed to make up for that. She wore a colorful kimono, and fresh lilies in her dark hair. Her was skin so pale, her frame so petite (nearly consumed by all that cloth), that she could have been a doll.
When she moved to bow in greeting, the whole thing fell apart. She was awkward in the kimono, awkward in her own skin. She nearly hit her forehead against the table in her own temerity.
"I'm pleased to meet you," she muttered, words slow to form. Her voice was too soft. Her gaze never lifted to meet his.
Sasuke sat down across from her and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he waited for her to pour him a cup of tea, and when she had, he lifted his chopsticks.
"Itadakimasu," he said, and began to eat.
When he finally looked up, Hinata was meekly shoving a thin piece of folded paper beneath one of her plates, her expression solemn, her eyes angled toward the table. Sasuke didn't have a thing to say, so he said nothing.
But he had to do this.
After the strained, uncomfortable dinner during which little talking took place, Sasuke was led to yet another room, where he was told to wait for a meeting with the clan head, Hyuuga Hiashi. This room was also reinforced with wood paneling, and Sasuke waited for a long time before the door slid open.
The soft shuffle of wood against wood drew Sasuke's attention from his thoughts, and his eyes lifted only to be affronted by their own reflection in the cool gaze of a young man roughly his own age. Sasuke blinked rapidly, body instinctively trying to dispel the illusion of himself caught in that mirrored stare, for it was strange and uncomfortable and thoroughly alien to him.
In those next moments as awareness hit, Sasuke was aware of several things. First, the careless collision of the other boy's shoulder with his own—not violent, but uncaring and unrepentant—second, the way those eyes disappeared behind dark lashes, pale moons shielded by pale curtains. Third was the symbol, brushed as if with blood onto the skin of the boy's smooth forehead as he walked away, glancing back as if on a whim.
He bristled, was about to respond, was about to snarl, Do you realize—
And then a voice said from within, "Uchiha Sasuke?"
Sasuke drug one hand over his face and forced the sudden tension that had gripped him out of his shoulders. His eyes, oddly glued to that retreating form (though seemingly registering nothing but the swish of cloth, the flutter of long, dark hair), swept into the interiors of the room. He could see nothing in that darkness.
"Come in," that same voice commanded.
As he stood by the door, before he closed it, Sasuke looked back down that hallway. It was eerily quiet and still, no sign of ever having been used.
He thought he saw a ghost of movement, but then there was nothing.
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Author's Notes: Um, well…that turned out to be quite a bit longer than I'd originally intended. Hopefully I didn't lose anyone—my rhetoric professor recently told me that I love words too much, and therefore I apologize if anyone found themselves slipping through the cracks; I tried to tone it down as much as possible. A few notes:
1) The time period this fic is set in may be recognizable to you, but some things will obviously not fit, thus the stamp of AU. I'm taking quite a few liberties here; if anything notable comes up I'll be sure to comment on it.
2) The inspiration for Neji's manji comes from Kidinair's beautiful illustration of Neji on LJ which is fabulous and inspiring and many other things that I simply can't describe. Go enjoy her artwork, now!
Feedback is appreciated, as always!