Ever After
The strange silvery light that floods into her bedroom from the window is reminiscent of three things. The first—and she almost feels guilty for thinking it—is Kakashi's hair, which, to her, gives him the appearance of a morning dove with its feathers bent from a bitter breeze.
The second is not a thing so much as it is a place, yet even then, she can see it. The second thing is this: the walls of her heart. They flutter tiredly and shake warily, and there is a young boy at the academy who will beat on them if she reprimands him for playing rough with another student. Whenever his tiny fists collide with her chest, she chokes for just a second. Her heart gives in to the void around it, and it seems to tear open, letting a little bit of her concealed pain seep inside it. For some reason, she imagines that pain as being silver, like the pure yet dangerous flow of chakra that exists in her teacher's blue-white Chidori.
Years have passed since she has called him "teacher", and by now she is a teacher herself. Instead of leading a three-man cell, she lingers at the academy with Iruka, whose auburn hair is, surprisingly, untouched by the fingers of Age, and whose skin is—though a little less healthy—still tanned and beautiful.
Between the two of them they share one ink pen and one classroom. They pass the pen back and forth while grading papers together, and while one is waiting the other fills the intricate silence with mindless chatter that resembles radio static.
It's only during the night, when her window is glowing tauntingly, that she allows herself to remember just what the third thing is. With sheets spread all around her as she lies in bed, eyelids heavy, she feels blanketed only by grief.
All emotions have colors. Anger is red, envy is green, and hatred is black. A different emotion belongs to every part of the color spectrum, but it is grief, truly painful grief, that belongs to the silver and the white at the end.
She thinks grief and pain go hand-in-hand. She likes, in the most masochistic fashion, to believe that it is silver and white that represent nothingness, and that, grief and pain together equate emptiness.
There's a barrier, thin leaden crystal and invisible, that separates her from the outside world. Her forced smiles are made of this crystal, of silver, and of Sasuke, whose absence ensures that her heart will never be vulnerable again.
Every time she thinks of him, the barrier thickens.
Fin.