Sometimes, Sasuke wakes up and for a moment he isn't sure where he is, what year it is, if his family is alive or not. He wakes up hoarse, but no one comes to calm him down, so he concludes that his family must be dead, but he gets out of bed to check all the same, because maybe…
One time there was a man in his kitchen, and his heart almost stopped with joy. But Kakashi is no substitute, he doesn't make the kitchen warm like mother, his opinion doesn't matter as much as father's, and he doesn't say kind things that mean nothing like brother. It never happens again, because Kakashi seems to understand the pain he caused by just letting himself in early in the morning the way he can do with Naruto.
But there are times when Sasuke wakes up and for a moment the colors are all wrong, and he is eight years old again, and it's happening all over again, because the world of the tsukiyomi never really leaves you.
Maybe one day he will snap out of it, he thinks as he slowly forces milk down his sore throat. Maybe one day he won't wake up and wonder if he ever really was released from Itachi's eternal world of never ending terrors.
