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the heavens stroll inside of me
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It's been a long time. He's not sure how long it's been, but he knows it's been long enough that he can't really remember what she looked like before. When he tries to remember, all he sees is a flash of pink and a little green he always thought was way too bright to be natural. There's maybe a hint of a smile, but it's so bright in his memories that he has to shrink away from the thoughts before they blind him.
He knows she's not the same. Even if he can't really recall what she was like before he left, he knows she's not the same girl he left waiting at home.
He tries to remember why he left. He was nineteen and he just needed to run. But that was then and this is now. Now he and she are twenty-four and everything is different. He's back and she should still be waiting for him. Everything should be just as it was. Yes, he left in the car he traded in Suna for the bike he has now, but he's back and that's all that matters. Everything can go back to the way it was now.
But she's not waiting anymore.
It's like he was never there to begin with.
Though the locks are pulled back, he can tell the springtime strands are longer than they were but still just as glaringly pink as they have always been. Those supernatural eyes are still just as green and that smile is brighter than he remembers it ever being. She's beautiful in such an unorthodox way. Her forehead is too big and her eyes are too innocent and that hair is just obnoxious, but she's beautiful all the same. There's this light that shines about her, dragging him in like the dreamer seeking the stars.
But he's never been a dreamer and he's seeing the cold reality of his actions through the bitter winter air.
She's smiling brighter for him. She was always so full of light for him, yes, but for this man who isn't him she's shining in a way he didn't think possible. It's not right. She's supposed to be waiting for him because that was what she said. She looked him in the eye five years ago and told him that she loved him, that she always would so why is she sitting there in the arms of another man—and that man, for that matter—as if he were never a part of her life?
He can hear her laughing. It's such a painful sound because he's not the one causing it.
"It's your fault, you know."
He turns to glare at the man who brought him here. This is his cousin, yes, and their faces are so much alike and yet they are so different. This man of the unmoving river has always been like her. He's supposed to be bright. He's that man's best friend, yin and yang and all that weird shit his mother likes but he has never cared for. This man beside him is supposed to be to his brother what the idiot is to him.
He is not supposed to be the dark one that tells him about this tragedy.
She is smiling and laughing and looking like she's completely in love and it's like he was never a part of her life. Instead, it's him. How could this happen? Yes, he left, but why him? She was never supposed to move on, to forget about him.
But she has and the evidence is glaring at him through the bitter winter air.
"They were both so broken," Shisui speaks in low, accusing tones, "No, they were shattered by what you did. They were lucky to find each other because neither one was able to pick up the pieces alone."
She's sitting there on the park bench he remembers standing next to when he walked away from her that last time. She's sitting there wrapped up in her black peacoat and vanilla scarf, a cup of what he knows is a strong black tea held in that little hand that was once held in his, fingers laced together. She's sitting there on the park bench he left her at with her black coat, vanilla scarf, strong black tea and she's all wrapped up in his arms.
The sight makes him ill. He wishes he never made the horrible choice he did five years ago. He wishes he never left and he wishes he never returned. He knows he can't leave now, though. His mother's already seen him and he just can't hurt that woman again.
She would never recover. She's his mother, after all.
But this woman? This woman he just knew would wait for him when he left that wicked summer night, but this woman recovered. She recovered and she found someone else.
And that someone else just happened to be him.
His brother.
A tiny voice in the back of his head told him he very much desired a hole to curl up and die in.
He left her five years ago. Five years, seven months, seven days, and probably seven hours ago he left her standing alone on that wicked, wicked summer night. For five long years, he's searched for himself and all he found was this woman with springtime written in her features. She is it and she doesn't even know. She never will from the way things look. He's come back for her, to be with her and she's with him.
"You did this," Shisui hisses.
He can't tell if his cousin is blaming him or just wanting him to feel ashamed. He thinks it's the latter. Shisui has always been sadistic like that. He enjoys taking revenge in the form of mental anguish like this.
He hurt Shisui's best friend, and this is how he is paying for it.
This woman he came back for isn't going to return to him and he knows it. Rather than wait and let the feeling of wanting to die grow anymore, he turns on his heel to walk away. He'll face her and him another time. He'll talk to them when the glaring truth that he screwed up isn't so hard to deal with.
He walks away, never noticing the way his brother has noticed him. He walks, and Itachi says nothing. There's nothing left to say.
disclaimer: me no own.
for sonya
-hikari adams