I am very nervous about this chapter.
Aw well, have at her.
Much love,
Inky
Kabuto's fists slammed into the wood of his own Dispensary door with growing force, glowing by a light that emitted from his skin as the magic in him took hold of his desires and strengthened his hands to accomplish what he wanted.
Leaning heavily against the wall behind him Anko panted for breath, her brow beading with sweat and her hands covered in blood from stitches still far too fresh to be so recently ripped.
"Hinata!" Kabuto punched at the wood again, watching the entire heavy wooden frame jump on it's hinges but remain steadfast in place.
Feeling the effects of the blood loss and pain Anko finally gathered breath into her lungs and slid down the dark wall slowly, ignoring the scrape of the rock against her back. "K-Kabuto... Kabuto, I..."
Her breathless painful gasp was hardly a familiar sound from Anko's usually vibrant voice and Kabuto whirled to look at her immediately, eyes wide and horrified. "Anko! Curses, your stitches. Here." And sniffling he wiped at his face with his sleeve before pulling out a pouch brimming with a powder that glittered and glistened.
Anko blinked through the haze as he ripped yet another of her robes and with careful fingers administered the powder over the bloody gash now straining to hold together with torn string.
"Is that what I think it is?" Anko grunted, watching as the glittery white powder formed a pink paste with her blood.
Kabuto's mouth was pressed thin and sour, his fingers steady despite his obvious turmoil. "I figure he will kill me regardless if he sees the angel tears gone from the Gallery. I may as well take something else for you to put me back together if he happens to leave enough pieces for the mending."
Anko's irritated grunt was half pain half displeasure as the powder began to sizzle at her wound, fizzing and popping with heat that coursed through her body in waves like being licked by a fire.
"He is imprisoned in that pit. He's not coming out."
Kabuto did not disagree, watching instead to make sure that the powder did it's job before sealing the pouch with it's silk draw string and stuffing it back into his robes.
"Ah." She hissed, wincing at him as he watched her flesh bubbling. "It burns, Kabuto. It boils."
"A moment more. Just breathe, Anko."
No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than the door behind them rattled and within Rasu's growling threat turned to whining as an invisible flash of power came from beneath the door to slam into both their chests, sending Kabuto nearly to the wall with the force of the magic.
"What?" Anko's gasp was followed by her gripping painful fingers at his shoulder like claws, eyes wide and staring at the Dispensary."What was that?"
"We have to get in there." Kabuto glared at the door for a moment longer before reaching for the magic in the air, for the pulse of the mountain who ebbed with an energy enormous and sleepy as a giant mid nap.
"Stop." Sliding a hand into her robes Anko moved towards the door's hinges with a knife in hand. "Males, always breaking things when wit is all that is required. Help me." And with a jiggle of her knife at the hinges the door was suddenly slamming to the ground at an awkward angle that allowed them to heave it out of the way.
The sight that they beheld left Anko frozen by the doorway, watching as Kabuto rushed forward with her hands over her mouth in horror.
The Star remained where he was, only the slight rise and fall of his chest a sign that he was alive despite the scrawling black of the Profane's poison bleeding through his skin.
Sprawled across him, still and white as a bone was Hinata.
"Oh Veil.." Anko swallowed hard. "Is she... is she dead?"
Kabuto was worrying at his lip with his teeth as though it were offensive, and with trembling hands moved Hinata to lay beside Sasuke on her back.
A hiss of breath escaped him at the sight of the Profane's scrawl on her face and neck, sliding in curling flame patterns down her arms. "Damned! She gave him the tears."
"Is it passing the poison to her?" Anko closed her eyes. "Is that what it does?"
Kabuto shook his head, feeling the pulse on Hinata's neck carefully before sighing and eyeing the subdued Rasu staring at his prone family on the stone floor, eyes careful on Kabuto and Anko but teeth hardly bared.
"It requires an exchange. The healer gives the tears, provides the energy for the healing and the one healed gives something of equal value back." Closing his eyes Kabuto pressed his hand to his forehead, barring Anko and Rasu's watching eyes from his sight.
"What...what does a dying fallen star have to give?" Anko turned to look at Sasuke then, at the pulse of the poison moving forward and backwards on his skin like a battle at stalemate with armies winning and losing breath by breath.
On Hinata's skin the dance was the same, the black curling forward and back while her skin paled and paled beneath it.
"Nothing." Kabuto snapped, not bothering to look up. "He has nothing, she will die. I killed her."
Anko's shocked gasp and the start of a refusal began in her throat dying there as Kabuto raised his hand to stop her, focused instead on keeping track of Hinata's heart beats, praying that somehow she would wake up.
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The wave of magic overwhelmed her like lightning to her spine, electrifying every molecule that made up her body. Through the swirls of power and energy she choked, aching for air and finding that perhaps she had no lungs to breathe with.
There was chaos, there was the burning of poison and then with the abruptness of waking from a nightmare she felt herself slam onto a rocky shore.
Coughing wetly Hinata dragged in a gasp of air and regretted the action instantly. There was water and debris in her mouth, swirling bits of invaders in her lungs and with every breath of air they rattled through her chest cavity.
Looking down at the sand and stones beneath her hands she froze, staring. The pebbles were white as bones and for a horrible moment she had thought they were a beach covered in an endless collection of discarded teeth.
Crying out frantically she froze, listening to the sifting rustle of the rocks knocking against each other, clearly stone, glowing faintly in a way she had never seen before.
Behind her the ocean that had spat her onto the shore was a vastness not of blue or gray or anything she had heard the ocean to look like but tinged a multitude of sharp agonizing colors against the black of a sky lacking suns and stars. Instead planets moved in the heavens in slow sleeping paths only disturbed by the occasional hyper comet shooting through the black.
Finally catching her breath Hinata studied the rocky edges of a hill beyond the white pebbled beach and the endless swirls of indigo and dark green, honey yellow and shocking pink that drifted and mixed in sparkles through the water. There was nothing beyond the liquid, just the black of the sky against the horizon, impenetrable and endless.
"Where am I?" She froze, stunned by her own voice only to look down at her small hands, her delicate fingers, feeling her face with the childish extremities and realizing with a growing lack of concern that she was in fact a child.
Something soft and delicate pricked at the back of her mind. A voice she recognized but also wondered about vaguely. It was familiar like her mother's voice was, but also not her mother. Younger and more permanent in her mind than the half recollected images and sounds of her deceased first love.
This is not a dream.
This is not reality. Yet is real.
This is soul.
Her legs moved without the worry of making a choice, her hair dripping the colors of the ocean behind her splattered on the beady sand below and as she reached the first rocky outcrop she paused.
Stretching out in an endlessness that should have been frightening but was not, there was a field. It's strangeness was not so much in it's vastness however but in the thing it seemed to contain. A smooth surface like glass covered in a film of water stood still and silent but for the shifting clouds of white against the blue sky held within it.
For a moment she was dizzy. Below her was the blue sky of the Veil, above her the black endlessness of space.
And floating between the two masses: feathers. They were black as night suspended in endless fall, doing slow elegant pirouettes that never ceased.
From her vantage point a little higher than the endless plateau before her she could see the dark ink spots of the feathers clearly against the skysoil. They were steadily more numerous, condensing to a solid ball of black plumage. It was then that the silence of the place finally settled on her shoulders and she realized that even the ocean that had spat her out had made no noise.
She noticed it because the quiet was broken by a sob.
It was not a tear in the world or a crash of falling tears shattering but rather soft, like the underside of an owls wing against a cheek as the weeping whispered it's mourning.
Inside her chest her heart shuddered like her eardrums, drinking in the sound. Her lips moved, silent and mute as she said the word.
Sasuke.
The time for decisions was nigh.
The spinning feathers glinted in the strange light of the planets above, blue and green and ivory white reflections of the colorful spheres against the darkness of space. Their razor sharp edges winked wickedly and as she stared past their field to the mass of black at it's center she knew one thing and one thing only with absolute certainty.
The way to Sasuke was through the feathers, to the center of the sky.
She learned her second fact as she stared at the closest shifting plume before her twirling innocently in an invisible wind.
The feathers would take her blood.
In the moment before diving into the fray she breathed in, studying the curve of the first feather before her, dissecting it for weakness like an opponent. As her hand raised to touch it's delicate curve she paused.
Images floated through the stiff fibres of it's tip, muted faces reflected in it's ebony darkness. A woman's smiling mouth and her black loving eyes, her fingers reaching towards the viewer familiar and affectionate.
The same voice that had whispered before, soothing her fears and anxieties whispered again, almost as aghast as Hinata herself was.
Memories.
And in that moment Hinata standing before the feather realized it was her own voice she was hearing.
Like choosing to step through the feathers was a choice bravely made so then was touching it. Gritting her jaw and setting her tiny shoulders Hinata breathed in deeply and pressed her fingers to the curving plume.
It started with his face innocent and young, just like her.
Running through the grasslands with the expanse of sky black and lit from below his feet by the lunar light was one of the things that brought him the most joy.
He could hear the swishing hiss of the silver grass at his legs. It parted as he passed through up the hill behind his house overlooking the vast fields that stretched on the outskirts of Umbra City towards the Soul Tree Woods glinting their glass green canopy.
Behind him Itachi ran, yelling incoherent things. Battle cries, proclamations of victory, accusations of treachery, all tinged with the gasping laughter that was causing a stitch on his side.
Sasuke laughed too, black gaze as dark as the sky behind him, wings white as the trees of the forest. Perfect and innocent and pure. He flared their downy mess and wished again that he could fly, that perhaps he would learn too as early as his brother had, so much earlier than anyone else.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see his brother gaining on him, longer legs eating up the space between them and in a panic he flapped the fluffy white puffs on his back, setting the grass to shivering in the wind.
"Sasuke! Don't!" Itachi's shout was hardly a reprimand, his amusement softening the snap. "Don't! You're not ready yet- Argh!" And his cry of defeat echoed as Sasuke shunted off the ground, his wings beating furiously for the two feet of height beneath his feet. The frantic slap of air against the grass making lunar dust rise in swirling clouds that made Itachi wince as he came up beneath him.
"No!" His brother's voice still had a laugh at the edges but his grip on Sasuke's waist was firm as he pulled him down. "No, Sasuke." And with a last tug the younger Uchiha landed in a crumpled heap in his brother's arms, his pout accompanied by an angry pair of glinting tears on his lashes. "But- Brother! I almost had it that time!"
"You almost had a broken bone is what you had." Itachi scolded with no bite, throwing him up on his shoulders with ease. Sasuke had always been smaller than Itachi, who seemed taller and more broad shouldered than his younger counterpart, even considering their age gap.
Wings twitching with annoyance Sasuke slumped over his brother's head, chin digging painfully into Itachi's dark head of hair so he groaned loudly as they stumbled back down the hill, fingers reaching up to tickle his brother's side to dislodge him.
"How will I ever catch up to you if I don't start trying to fly early." Sasuke's tone might have been punctuated with laughter at the tickling but his words held meaning and Itachi stopped, looking up at his brother above him while Sasuke looked down, small mouth in a deep frown.
"You are Sasuke." Itachi frowned, looking intently into eyes so incredibly familiar they might as well have been his own. "You are Sasuke and what you do will be because of who you are, not because you caught up to me. You will have your own stregnths. Your own battles."
Sasuke's face twisted with displeasure, his lips keeping any words of disagreement firmly behind their pout.
"It is not all it seems to be, little brother." Itachi sighed then, feeling Sasuke's forehead press to his. Soft, warm and soothing he breathed in the scent of youth on his brother's hair, still more baby than even child. "Being a weapon means someone is always trying to wield you. Don't envy me so much."
If only Sasuke had understood.
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It was rare being in the Council Chamber as a child. Here the very fate of the three Realms had been decided more than once. On the walls the lunar stone had been carved to represent each story, holding all the warnings, all the heroes, all the death that came with war.
Members of each of the powerful Clans of the Angels stood to attention in vastness of the chamber. Above them the domed ceilings were painted in the dark blues and soft silvers, gentle grays and off whites of their realm, depicting the expanse of purity, of sameness that made up the Heavens. Sasuke stared up at it, finding it both beautiful in it's simplicity. Yet at the same time painfully dull.
Beside him his mother stood stiffly, her dark hair and black eyes so much like those of her two sons and husband were a rarity among the pale haired, blue eyed angel breed. Only those of the Uchiha clan seemed to ever be gifted with such darkness. At times it was a thing people envied, for in a world of plain pastels and soft whites the darkness was stark, beautiful like the ebony sky dotted with planets and comets.
Other times it was whispered about, in hushed tones. Darkness called to darkness, sin to sin. Were they blessed or were they cursed?
Before the stone dais stood a dozen men, their wing spans were a thing of alarm, even tucked behind their backs their feathers were sometimes longer than Sasuke was tall and he stared at the dotted gray and white plummage with awe and envy. Some faces were lined with age, others lined with bitterness. On occasion a scar left the face marred with pain that never faded despite the Veil tears that healed them.
"The Council is in session." One man called, and his was one of the faces marred with both wrinkles and scars. One eye had been lost and instead of wearing the scar with pride as all angels were meant to do the elder had hidden it beneath bandages stark white against his tanned skin. Sasuke stared at this man, at his strangely quiet voice, at his lips so straight a line he could not tell if he was smiling or frowning. He was a blank slate, confusing and unnerving.
Or perhaps Sasuke felt the disarming feeling due to the wings that were tucked neatly behind him. Wings that unlike the rest mostly white tinged occasionally in silver or gray had large patches in ebony black that looked less like feathers and more like steel.
"Fugaku." Another Council member murmured and his voice was reassuring in its nature. Elder Sarutobi gazed at the Uchiha family with kind eyes unaffected by his aging face. "You come to discuss the recruitment of your eldest son into Knighthood. What have you to say on this matter?"
Itachi stood perfectly still beside his father, unaffected by being the topic of discussion. Peering from his periphery Sasuke watched as his father, broad shouldered, square jawed and strong looked at the imposing crowd of elders before him.
"The decision must be made outside of my household." his voice conveyed the distaste of the words, and his lip curled in a way that made Sasuke think the phrase had left a bitter flavor on his tongue. "My wife and I have come to an impasse."
A few elders shifted, and as Sasuke studied the many varied faces he noted with some interest that the women in the crowd were starting to be pushed forward.
One such elder gazed at Mikoto sternly, her pale hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head that matched the paleness of her feathers.
"Mikoto. Please, explain your position to the council."
Eyes down Mikoto drew in a long breath. "My children have been ...blessed with abilities beyond their years. So far Itachi, my oldest has been marked as a special gift to the Knight forces for his prodigious development by his Masters." She swallowed. This was all things the Council knew, and so they nodded.
"I do not want him entering service until he has reached an age of average maturity. My husband wishes he be sworn into service now."
Sasuke watched as eyes shifted on the council, glances were exchanged, jaws tightened and Sarutobi's gaze softened as he gazed at the Uchihas. His sigh was heavy.
"Elders." He murmured softly, glancing to his peers. "If you could please give myself and the Uchiha family a chance to discuss this in private."
So strong was the influence of the elder that the others left without another word. Mikoto watched this with dark eyes stricken. Itachi remained perfectly still and Sasuke's dark eyes flickered from him to Elder Danzo who remained where he was, gazing at Itachi with interest.
"Danzo." Sarutobi murmured then, robes shifting gently as he extended his hand down the dais towards the door to the right where the rest of the elders were leaving. "If you would be so kind."
It was an order veiled thinly in gentleness and Danzo's mouth did not change it's straight unwavering line as he bowed his head and exited the room.
In the silence left by the crowd the council chamber echoed with emptiness. Here the ceremonies of knights ordained to serve the Realms were held, filling the chamber and out the door, down the steps with angels come to view the new generation of guardians. Here punishments were handed out. Here Council was held to determine the movement of angels from Heaven to Veil and Veil to Hell.
Here whispers were hissed and plots were hatched in the shadows of the arches.
"Mikoto." Elder Sarutobi's face stayed poised towards the door where the rest of the council had disappeared, turning only towards her when the door was firmly shut and he was sure of privacy. "Mikoto, I understand your hesitation."
"Then this should be an simple impasse to resolve." Mikoto's soft voice, her quiet and gentle spirit shone brightly through her dark eyes still focused on the marble ground before her. Sasuke stared at her, at the mother he had always known to be full of smiles and laughter and quiet deference for his father. Had he ever heard that unrelenting tone in her voice, that waspish sting to her sentences?
"I am afraid nothing is ever as simple as it should be." Sarutobi eyed Fugaku who sighed and it occurred to Sasuke for the first time ever that his father appeared wary, even tired. He was a mountain unmoved by storms and winds, by gossip or political ploys. Yet here he was, his face lined with exhaustion, his dark eyes closed against the battle before him.
For the first time in his life Sasuke stared at his parents with rising panic.
Who were these people?
A hand, bigger than his but still young suddenly had his in it's grip and he glanced furtively at Itachi. His brother looked straight on, as still and silent as the lunar rock beneath their feet. His fingers tightened to a vice of comfort.
"War is coming." Sarutobi's whisper was delicate. "There is a storm brewing. We will need all the weapons we can muster. We will need all the loyalty of our people. I understand your worries, I understand your heart break." He swallowed. "But we are what we are. Your son is, for all intents and purposes a Knight of the Realms. We... " he paused, placing a hand on Mikoto's stiff shoulder, her face hidden by her dark hair. "...I have need of him, Mikoto."
Itachi's grip tightened and tightened until Sasuke's fingers ached and he winced against the pinch. He said nothing, only stared at the floor, as always following his brother's example, although he no longer knew who was comforting who in the end.
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The sheets were as soft as his brother's wings. They were worn because of how often he requested his mother wash them and she always complied. With her soft smile, her fingers lingering on his cheeks she would happily take the fabric.
Together they would hang them in the yard, where they would catch the scent of the moon flowers that bloomed every rotation of the planets, opening and closing their soft lavender petals like arms aching to hug.
When spread smooth over his bed the fabric breathed with scents of home. The soap his mother made in the kitchen and infused with herbs and sugars, and the smell of the outdoors.
On nights when he could not sleep Itachi would crawl into his bed with him if he was home and not out on missions. Yawning and hair rumpled, eyes half mast he would soothe Sasuke down before burying them both beneath the sweet smelling covers. Smoothing his pale fingers in slow circles over Sasuke's shoulders he would yawn and yawn, more asleep than the one he was trying to get to finally find rest.
Sasuke remembered those moments with the most clarity. Staring with dark eyes through the dim light of the stars that never set and the moon soil always aglow with the shifting light of the two suns. He could remember clearly as his brother's lashes touched dark against his pale cheek.
The safety of these moments, the inexplicable calm that washed over him had been so deep that he could never remember when he fell asleep. All he could recall clearly was the shape of his brother's chin, the smooth curve of his dark brow on his forehead and sometimes the twitch of his lips as he realized he was being stared at.
"Go to sleep, Sasuke. I'll be here in the morning, I promise."
"Sometimes you are not." Sasuke's tone held the unmistakeable remnants of a pout despite his best intentions not to let it win.
"I don't break my promises, I don't tell you I will be here unless I fully intend to be."
"Hm." The reply was less than convinced and Itachi opened one dark eye, so similar and so different from the innocent gaze fixated on him.
"I will never lie to you, Sasuke." Slowly his brother's fingers drifted from Sasuke's back to his hair, pushing back the ebony locks, staring directly into the guarded expression on the youngster's face. "Lying is a hurtful thing. I never want to hurt you."
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Perhaps his brother did not lie, but he did omit things.
Dark eyes silent and growing more and more brooding Sasuke had watched as he packed his bags for a trip. Their realm was wide and empty, filled with spaces of heavenly Soul Tree forest that needed constant maintaining.
Or so he said.
"When is Shisui coming back?" Sasuke's voice was surprisingly light considering he was irritated and prying.
Itachi in his cleverness did not look at him, focused instead on gathering items for his trip. His battle armor for one seemed to be on the list of items.
"When it's time for him to come back, I assume." His brother replied vaguely, studying a compass with care before stuffing it into his satchel.
Sasuke bit the pink flesh of his bottom lip and flopped onto his bed. With the shutters open and the glare of the moon reflecting the sun it might as well have been midday, even though it was late. Later than Sasuke had seen Itachi leave for a mission before.
Words hung on his lips, words that made no sense. Words like "Be careful." Words like "I'm scared." Words like "Please come back."
Before he could figure out what those words were even doing in his mouth, Itachi had slung the bag over his shoulder and with quick steps crossed the divide between their beds. Pressing his lips to Sasuke's head gently he paused.
"Be strong, little brother." And stepping back he pressed his fingers to Sasuke's forehead where his lips had just kissed, as though pushing the affection into his mind.
Scowling now Sasuke crossed his arms, and watched him leave without a word annoyed that as always his brother had called him little.
It was only after he disappeared that he realized any of the words would have been fine to say. It was the silence he had resorted to that felt like a sin.
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Something had happened.
He had been so very quiet for so long, had smiled without mirth, had laughed so that the hollow part of his chest echoed the sound and his soul refused to be in it. Sasuke let his fingers trail through Itachi's hair, watching as the dark eyes of his brother faded away to stare at a distant place within himself beneath the covers of his bed. His mother had not been able to wash the sheets and so they no longer held the wild free air within their fibres. Instead she had spent time in their yard, her fingers full of throwing knives, her stance stiff and unfamiliar and lethal as she practiced again and again.
Sasuke had never known his mother was a deadly thing. His father made it a point not to discuss it, had looked Sasuke in the eye and without a word made it law. When asked where his mother was, or what she was doing Sasuke would simply stare at the face of whoever asked, placid and calm.
"She's in the yard." No one ever seemed to require more than this from him.
As a result his sheets no longer smelled like the loveliness of homemade soap, wild solar winds and the blooms of the moon fields.
Something else... Sasuke tried to identify the soft hardly noticeable scent.
Salt. He decided it was salt. It smelled like the Well of Tears in the city, filled with the supplications of the people of the Veil.
He stared.
Itachi looked back at him, gaze glowing red. A color that Sasuke had hardly had a chance to see before. The crimson produced it's own light, it flared and turned the whole cave, the warmth of his bedtime nook into a nightmare shine. The shock froze Sasuke's tiny body, widened his gaze and it took a moment for Itachi to register the stunned horror on his little brother's face.
"...No..." He sat up, throwing the blankets off himself and burying his face into his hands, away from the wide eyed shock of the child still frozen in the covers. Sasuke's wings fluttered, their downy whiteness sliding around him, cocooning as his brother blinked hard, again and again, the tears he had been shedding without realizing filling the air with the scent of salt Sasuke had just been thinking about.
'I... I am sorry." Itachi whispered, rubbing at the tear streaks that lingered on his cheeks, down his chin as the red of his gaze flickered and died to it's normal black. Now however Sasuke saw them as something else, coal before being lit to fire, not the expanse of sparkling black sky covered with stars.
"Brother..." His voice shook, there was no hiding it and despite the shame it brought and the wounded look on Itachi's face at the wobble he looked steadily on.
"Where is Shisui?"
It had been weeks since his departure to the Veil, weeks since his expected return. Time moved so strangely from realm to realm and so at first there had been no worries, and then a lot of speculation and finally Itachi's sudden secret departure in the evening and his silent morose return.
This blackness that seemed to hang over everything and everyone. And these red eyes so unlike anything Sasuke had ever witnessed seemed linked somehow.
It was easier to ask this question, still so painful, than to ask what was happening to his brother... to question why his feathers sometimes looked silver, or gray in the light of the moon and sun.
Itachi looked steadily at the little one, at the small bones of his hands, the tiny stretch of his pinky and the tiny nail that crowned it. Sasuke was so small, so innocent. Out there, in the shadows, in the council chambers, in the Veil, a war raged. A cloak and dagger enemy willing to kill stars, any star that got in his way.
Like Shisui had.
Steely determination made Itachi's jaw tighten, his swallow thick and his brow furrow. There was no point hiding this from Sasuke, the enemy would hesitate at nothing to destroy him and the ignorance would hardly serve him.
"Shisui was slayed, Sasuke."
It all made sense then. The red gaze, the graying feathers, the quietness, the shadows.
Darkness. Sin. Hatred.
Sasuke trembled, biting his lip to keep it from betraying his fear. The red gaze, the touch of hate, of pain, of sorrow upon an angel's heart was culminating in his brother.
He whispered it, because to say it loud made him fear it would call it upon the house, like some nightmarish monster beneath his bed, better not named or acknowledged.
"Please... don't die, Itachi."
His brother's gaze filled with tears again, smoothing his fingers over Sasuke's cheek with gentle eyes that flickered back and forth from kind to something that Sasuke could no longer name. Was it sorrow? Was it hatred? Did he ache?
Itachi did not promise he would not. He had after all said he would never lie.
If only Sasuke had known that there were worse things a brother could do than die.
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Mother's voice was shaking, whether from anger or tears Sasuke could not make out but it was making his heart beat in his chest with the same battering ram pain as being punched at the academy. Eavesdropping was something he had been expressly told never to do and it shamed him in a way that twisted his insides into knots but he couldn't stop. He was frozen.
"I don't know what he is doing. I don't know where he goes. I... I have a bad feeling about this, Fugaku."
"Itachi is a full fledged knight, Mikoto. He is doing his duty, and as an adult-"
"An adult?" Her choked snap was so unlike anything Sasuke had ever heard come from his mother's mouth. He closed his eyes in the hope that it would help block out the dark hall in his home. The silvery light of the moon, the shadows long and blue and gray against the white of the walls all vanished and he was left with only the voices of his parents, furtive and hushed.
"He is an adult whether you wish him to be or not, Mikoto. You heard Elder Sarutobi and with his qualifications... with his...his gifts-"
The sob made Sasuke brace against the wall, made him hold on to the coolness of the lunar rock, shivering so that his feathers whispered and he had to still his breathing to keep himself from giving away his position as he listened.
One moment his family and home was a place of joy and happiness. His brother's face full of openness and cheer and then, like a sudden shutting of a windowpane there was a shadow over his face that marred even his smiles.
Gifts, his father called it. Sasuke clenched his jaw tight against the noun.
Gifts did not make his brother weep at night under the covers of his bed, did not make him muffle the cries that rippled out of his throat, did not make him curl tight around his pillow in an attempt to muffle the noise so that Sasuke would not hear.
"Opening the Crimson Eye does not make him gifted." Mikoto's voice struggled through her weeping. "It makes him cursed." And her words dissolved then, half buried beneath her sorrow, the creak of her chair echoed down the hall past the closed door of his parent's bedroom as she rocked herself. "They'll use him, Fugaku. They'll use him in this war. They'll make him do things...They will change him."
His father said nothing, the silence worse than the creaking sorrow of his mother.
"My baby... my Itachi... cursed."
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They came together.
Danzo and Sarutobi, their faces drawn, their wings fluttering in the wind of a brewing solar storm. Sometimes the galaxy beyond the boundaries of their Realm blasted the moon and the forest of Soul Trees and all the villages between with winds covered in the dust of distant planets. The colored dust, sometimes red, yellow and blue would be gathered eagerly when the bitter winds finally died.
Sasuke was already pulling baskets of woven feather grass from the kitchen cupboards. It had been some time since the last storm and they had long run out of dye for their clothes. Soon Itachi would be inaugurated officially into Knighthood. His father and brother would need new robes, new tunics, shining navy blue and black, and if red was to be found in the storm then the Uchiha emblem would be sown into the cuffs of their shirts, showing beneath the black of their armor.
The knock on the door confused him and the frown that came over his face deepened when he saw the stiffness of his mother's shoulders, her gaze wide. She was like the pale white does dotted with soft green freckles on their faces and backs that dashed through the Soul Trees during hunting season.
"Mother?" Sasuke lowered his young body to the kitchen floor from the counter, watching as she stood mechanically, her neck straight and eyes unseeing.
"M..mother?"
"Stay, Sasuke."
He heard her steps, nearly silent on the hall floor, felt himself pulled magnetically to her shadow. Inside him his insides twisted to painful knots that threatened sickness.
Sarutobi and Danzo's faces were caricatures. One brazenly bland, unfeeling and cold. The other with eyes honey sweet, pain filled them and overflowed.
Elder Sarutobi swallowed, braced on the door frame as Mikoto's shoulders shook, and for a moment Sasuke had a dark painful feeling of irrational fear that his mother was laughing.
"Mikoto." Sarutobi began, his eyes flickering behind her to Sasuke even as a sound escaped his mother that he had never heard before.
Someone was tearing out her insides, someone was pulling out her heart through her throat. She collapsed, knees slamming to the ground with the sound of anvils and Sarutobi crouched with her, hands on her shoulders. His words were a torrent, her screams a background noise even to the growing buzzing sound at the back of Sasuke's head.
"...we tracked down the leaders of the Rebellion, and although it's head is still not clear we are sure to locate it soon. I am sorry, Fugaku did not know... none of us knew... Itachi was there. Itachi was one of them. Itachi fought against us."
Dark eyes focused with an intensity that gave him clear insight to every muscle on Sarutobi's mouth Sasuke watched as he said the next words.
"Itachi was the one who slayed Fugaku. I am so sorry."
It was just a sentence, but Sasuke felt the blow down to the very marrow of his bones.
His mother explained when he woke that he had fainted, her hand had smoothed his hair from his face even as he stared at the pink swollen lids of her eyes, as she sniffed and wept through her words.
"Your brother is a traitor, Sasuke. For now we must bear the shame."
Sasuke stared at the ceiling, at the light of the moon beyond dancing like water on it's bright whiteness, jaw set resolutely, heartbroken by his mother's words.
"He's not." His throat ached and it was only afterwards that he realized he must have screamed sometime after hearing the news. "It's a lie. They're lying."
Mikoto's tears continued to fall, her gaze steady on his face. She did not contradict his stubborn denial, only continued with her weeping.
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The memory of the day his world ended was flashes of places and feelings, like a beautiful stained glass window shattered.
The rebels attacked unexpectedly, there was no warning and there was no mercy. They came aiming at the civilians, and the knights of the realm were not ready. No one was.
There was the light of the suns reflected off the lunar soil, shining into his room as something shocked through the house and shook it to it's foundations. Dust and bookshelves, pottery and frames clattered to the ground as magic choked him from sleep and he fell from his bed.
There was his mother's grip tight on his fingers, pulling him out of the door and stopping abruptly to stare at above.
There was the sky a blazing black that brightened and flashed with the light of what looked like fireworks exploding in the darkness among the planets that danced far and wide.
Another shock wave rolled the soil beneath their feet, making the silvery grasses of the hillside behind their house shiver and dance.
His mother's hug was fierce, it pinched and hurt as her armor, so long hiding in storage crushed his ribs, scratched his chin and tangled on his tunic.
Her kiss was not gentle, it pressed to his cheek like she aimed to break the bone beneath the soft flesh and her orders echoed in his head, murky as a distorted scream in a hollow cave. He could never remember the words she said in that moment. His eyes had been on the horizon where the tower of the Umbra City's bell was going up in vicious flames.
Wings, so rarely sprouted from her back had snapped to life from her shoulder blades. He could count the times he had seen his mother's wings. It was too difficult, she had always laughed, to do chores and have her limbs out.
They spread into a whiteness so pure he stared. No hatred, no bitterness, no anger tinged them gray, silver, off white. Pure as snow, pure as the stems of the Soul Trees.
At her side the sword once belonging to his father glimmered as she flared her feathers and smiled at her son.
He was supposed to follow the protocol for evacuation, he was supposed to rush to the Academy, he was supposed to find Kakashi, or Obito... someone.
Instead he watched his mother rise in the sky and then dive, a comet that tangled itself among the exploding magical fireworks in the heavens and cut a sharp descent towards where the hill resolved itself into the endless flatlands between the City borders and the Soul Trees.
Everything had died.
There was blood, silver and shining splattered in chaotic smears over the lunar rocks of destroyed vegetables and feathered wheats.
There were bodies in heaps, their black armor marking them all the same, the only difference between the dead was the blue cloak of the Heavenly Knights and the red of the Rebellion.
Magic exploded in fiery bursts, in twisting rips of lightning, in thunderous strength that shattered the moon and decimated their land.
Innards were tangled with the limbs of enemy and ally, their eyes vacant.
He watched with growing panic as the Soul Tree forest behind it all, flickering through the smoke and magic, shuddered. He could not make sense of the sight, until his eyes located a single tree and watched as the white ivory of it's trunk cracked, bristled and shattered into dust, the tinkling smash of the glass leaves from it's branches adding to the cacophony of battle.
What he had thought was panic rising in his chest was sick, and before he could stop it he was on the edge of the hill where a cliff had been carved by explosions of magic and power. He vomited onto the metallic tinged grasses beneath his hands and wondered that his own ill could seem so pure and clean compared to the meaty organs of the fallen on the battlefield.
Then he saw it, clear as day.
The only pair of wings he could recognize from any distance, besides perhaps his own.
Wide and powerful, white and gray and slate black, speckled like those of a hunting bird, predatory and strong.
His brother, with the crimson red of his rebels cloak fluttering between the two marred white plumes.
It was the end of everything.
All he could remember after that was his mother's lips tinged silver with blood, her demands that she take care of his brother, the collapse of her body heavy on his young horrified arms.
And his screaming. Endless ragged tears of his vocal chords shrieking, without any hope to stop.
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He woke with the light of the mourning lamps dancing through the open arches of the windows in the healer's ward.
Above him the ceilings were painted with the frescoes of many life giving plants only found in the deep wild of Heaven where the waters tasted sweet and the grasses began to be tinged with the green as the leafy canopy of the Soul Trees.
He knew this because his mother had spoken to him about it. She spoke about how her own mother had spent much time in the wilderness gathering medicinal plants, learning much about them, always wandering, further and further into the vastness of the heavens until one day she did not come back.
Somehow it had not been a sad story. His mother never said it with any particular expression on her face and as a child he had simply assumed that it had been normal. Now he lay in the bed, with his eyes watching the lanterns of fire dance and flicker as the parade of mourners walked past his window and he wondered how he could have possibly been so foolish.
Of course it had been a sad story. Mikoto had lost her mother to the Heavens, it had swallowed her up and left nothing for her in return, nothing but stories of the wild and the paintings she covered the ceilings of the healer's wards with every year.
It gaped inside him, a hole so big it was threatening to eat him alive as he lay there with his body a limp thing incapable of doing the one thing that he wished it would do. That is, to die.
The scream rose as he remembered the stained silver on his mother's lips as she collapsed into his arms on the hillside. It was an animal, wild and ferocious. It tore at his throat and he felt the sharp sting of his vocal chords as he strained to restrain it.
His hands, still young despite the sudden abrupt age of his soul rose to his mouth and he slammed them there, pressing hard even as the pressure rose and his eyes filled with tears.
No one had to tell him, none of the healers that rushed towards him at the movement had to say it out loud. They watched him with terrified eyes as his gaze, so young and so old flickered from black to red and back again with every beat of his frantic heart.
If he let out the shriek that was rising inside him would he ever be able to stop screaming? What would he shout? What would he weep? Would it be his mother he called for?
As the healers pinned his panicking body to the bed, their faces pinched with wariness he caught sight of one familiar face in the fray standing in the corner of the room with his head in his hands and the tiredness of his shoulders giving away the pain within him. His wings draped on the ground with exhaustion and his armor was stained with blood that may or may not have been his.
His pale haired head rose to look at him through the many arms of the healers.
"Kakashi!" Sasuke's voice escaped him despite the desperate bite of his lip in his attempt to keep his shrieks from leaving his body. The blood coursed down his chin in a mess, coating his teeth as he snarled at the hands of the healers holding him down.
"Where is he?" His roar had more people flooding the room, more hands to hold him, more energy to keep his rising hatred from overwhelming them all. "Where is my brother?!"
His feathers so young, so downy fluttered through the room as he thrashed and writhed, heaving for air and growling. The wild beast had not been his scream. It had been himself all along.
He should not have been able to hear him in the chaos of the healers shouting at each other and at him but he did, his eyes fixed on Kakashi's mournful face through the fray of silvery feathers once white.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke. He got away."
Someone, some kind beautiful soul shoved a rag to his face smelling acrid and suffocating with medication. Roughly they pinned it to his nose and mouth. As he panted the darkness ate away at his new world, this new nightmare he would never wake from, and although he was thankful for the sudden reprieve when he woke the pain remained, as it always would. There was no mother in his life to tell him one day it might fade.
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They could not tell him how long it had been as no one was really keeping track of him for many tolls of the replaced lunar bell after his mother died. As a result when he woke it could have been a week since her death and burial or it could have been a day. Regardless the loss was the same acidic agony that always burned and never waned.
It was Obito who found him crumpled on her form, either exhausted by the changes in his soul or the shock it was difficult to say but there were no damages to his body and for that they told him he should be thankful. His proximity to the battle should have resulted in broken bones, maimed wings, spilled ichor and pain.
He wanted to tell them how much he wished he too had died.
It took months for the realization to dawn on him, for his mind to comprehend more than the act of breathing, eating, sleeping, sitting up to walk when the healers ordered he did.
His wings, so young and downy, still barely capable of lifting him aloft were already smeared through with the deep gray of growing hatred. The whispers of the healers, and even Kakashi's face had been carefully placid, unable to disguise the fact that beneath the still surface of their expressions he could see the horror and worry. Their faces were as translucent as water. He was a thing broken. When he finally realized, he also acknowledged that he did not care.
Obito came for him the day of his release from the healer's ward. It was one of the few buildings left standing in the city, still covered in the debris of other ancient monuments destroyed in seconds after a millenia of building and careful safe keeping. Histories and the lives work of many angels gone by the brutal magic of Itachi and Danzo.
It was Obito who explained in soothing tones, with his hand on Sasuke's back and their legs hanging over the edge of the cliff where his ancestral home had once stood that his brother had fought his own rebellious commander for power in the middle of the war. They were still unsure of why the rebels wounded or otherwise turned and ran into the Veil. They could not fathom what caused them to suddenly admit defeat and despair enough to dive through the forest roots past the skysoil to the Veil below. Many of them were sure to have perished. Sasuke did not mourn the loss of his kind but relished it.
"I do realize, from what Master Kakashi has told me that you believed... up until the rebels invaded the city that your brother...did not slay your father?" It was phrased as a question, but Sasuke did not reply. Instead his dark eyes surveyed the empty field. A pyre had been lit with the bodies of the armies, the remnant ashes of the soldiers would eventually be taken away by a solar wind.
Beyond the field where the endless stretches of Soul Trees used to crowd, a thin white forest now stood. Every second tree seemed to be gone. Many of the left overs were but saplings, the tallest of the trees were naked and exposed without a crowd of peers to hide behind.
Somewhere out there his brother's Soul Tree still thrived. His heart still beat. It was not particularly comforting that Danzo's Soul Tree had vanished, leaving a darkness in the soil where nothing would grow. Sasuke did not count it as a blessing. He wasn't sure he believed in blessings anymore.
"I want you to know that I will do whatever I can to help you." Obito's hand on his shoulder was gentle, his eyes sad. "I will make your goal viable."
Sasuke finally turned to look at him, and though his face was that of youth, his eyes were ancient, the pain as bottomless as the blackness of space behind the vignette of the ruined city.
"And what is my goal, Obito?" There was snide bitterness in his tone, the biting of the words giving away his feelings of aimlessness.
Obito looked surprised, his gaze widening a fraction. "Has...has no one told you? The council has decreed your brother a traitor to our kind." He winced slightly. "The worst of us to fly in our skies as far as our histories remember."
Sasuke remained unmoved. Nothing anyone could say about his brother touched on the hatred that was flourishing within him, blackening his wings feather by feather every day. If Sarutobi had survived the battle and not died trying to protect the city from the rebels perhaps he would have gone to him to spit at his feet, to tell him how his mother had been right. Itachi had not been ready for knighthood. Had not been ready to be used.
Inside him his hatred burned, too big for his young frame and he trembled.
Obito sighed at the impassive glare he received in return to his statement.
"He will forevermore be called the Apostate, and he has fallen from our Skies to the Veil to hide and perhaps amass another army. A dangerous being of his abilities must be stopped. Must be slain."
Sasuke's breath stopped then, as he watched Obito hesitate, as his words lingered unsure on Obito's lips. He knew what they would be and the mixture of relief and horror that rose as he realized brought him utter shame.
It seemed, shame was a feeling he could never go too long without.
"As his only living kin..." Obito hesitated again, drew another breath, looked down at the silver smeared field, at the boulders and cracked lunar stone, the scorch marks of Itachi's powerful magic and the thunderous chaos of Danzo's own.
"...it is expected... required, in fact that you..." He paused, and Sasuke turned away, mildly surprised to feel the relief and horror dissolving inside him into the numb buzz of distraction.
"I will have to absolve his sins." He murmured then, taking the burden from Obito, who sighed.
"You will be known as the Vindicator, should you achieve your goal." His master whispered softly, the obviousness of his regret more grating than the content of the conversation.
"Vindicator." Sasuke snarled, shoving himself up with vicious painful movements. His eyes flickered, black and red and black again in a dizzying haze.
He still did not understand the power of his gaze. Those who should have taught him what it was, who should have been there to weep with him over the thing his mother had called a curse were gone. Father, Mother, brother all erased.
"Breathe." Obito murmured softly then, staying still while the world fluctuated under Sasuke growing fury, his magic sizzling and hissing through the air and setting his wild black hair to dancing. "Breathe, and let the Crimson Eye fade. You should not attempt to use it." He shook his head.
"Why?" Sasuke snapped, fixing him with a look that made Obito's own gaze narrow. Unlike all his other teachers Obito never held his wings free, they curled deeply within his body out of sight, almost like he feared flight. Once Kakashi had insinuated that there had been an incident in their youth, something painful that had stolen the joy of the skies from his dearest friend.
Sasuke cared not. He had his own lack of joy to contend with.
"The Crimson Eye can kill with a blink, little Uchiha." Obito sighed. "And with every death your wings darken more. It is not a thing easily used. It takes as much as it accomplishes. Never rely on it."
It took several deep breaths to have the magic ripple slowly into calmness, lessening the pressure of the air and the frantic energy on the wind.
When his gaze strained no more and he was sure that the crimson was gone from his face he fixed Obito with a furious deadly determination.
"I will kill him."
His nod was slow, acknowledging. "Yes, I know."
Turning away to head back towards the building where he had been dumped with the rest of the children his brother had orphaned Sasuke stalked away.
"Never call me little again."
He did not see the smile that graced his teacher's face then, focused instead on Kakashi's sudden form alighting from the sky before him, his frown deep his voice tired.
"Sasuke, I was wondering where you had gone. Obito- I was told by the elders to retrieve him from the healer's ward. He has an appointment with the Council." Then after a moment Kakashi fixed him with a shrewd gaze. "What have you been talking about?"
Obito shrugged his shoulders, catching Sasuke's wary eye and signalling the secrecy of their conversation with just one look. "Nothing important."
Withdrawing her hand from the feather Hinata stared, face placid despite the pooling tears in her eyes as blood gathered in the slice the black had made on her palm. Long and deep the crimson rose and settled, trickling down the side and to the glassy sky below her feet.
It's landing made the ground ripple out softly, as did the tears coursing down her cheeks and to her chin. Each drop a small tinkling bell tone so that by the end a symphony of rings tolled, echoing infinitely into the air.
This was a different pain, a different agony than any she had endured before. It was a pit inside her chest, endless and gaping it sucked from the rest of her and stole even her sobs, even her screams.
In the distance however, his voice still wept.
Looking up, dazed by the images that were not her own she swallowed hard, pushing past the edges of the endless field, moving awkwardly through the ever thickening black of his memories captured within his shed feathers.
"Sasuke?"
She gasped, glancing at her knee and the blood coursing from a slice through the skin dripping down her shin, not bothering to stop despite the shout of memory that exploded in her mind at the touch of feather to skin. "You can't catch me, big brother, you can't!" Peals of childish laughter, the buzz of nectarflies and the swift gusts of solar winds. Straining to focus on the task at hand she pushed on, ducking and dodging, smearing blood on her face where another feather sliced.
"Is that not the younger Uchiha?"
Holding on to mother's hand through the markets, past crowds of winged beings their eyes pale, their hair luminescent.
"Yes, I believe so."
Glances furtive and smiles secretive as they whispered, not carefully enough before a child so watchful.
"Oh I do not envy him, always living in his brother's shadow."
"Sasuke!"
Ahead the tangle of black feathers was a knot that shifted as though battered by a wind until she grasped that the cocoon was his wings, shivering and shaking with his sobs.
The sense of peace, of calm that had overwhelmed her on the beach was fading and instead she found herself with a pain in her chest that threatened to consume her completely. There was not enough air, there was not enough space.
Feathers hissed as they spun around her in a deadly dance and she winced and whimpered as the cuts took more of her blood, the droplets leaving a trail of red like rouge across the sky blue ground.
"Sasuke!"
It was impossible not to touch them now, every slice of a feather shooting not just pain but memories through her mind with the agonizing sharpness of a headache. Voices echoed and overlapped, faces faded and warped as they overwhelmed.
"Is that all that an Uchiha can do? Harder!" Obito's voice shouting in his ear as he strained through training, feeling muscles scream in protest, feeling magic pour from his body until he thought he was nothing but a long wrung out rag.
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"You need to stop following me Kakashi. I don't need a bodyguard." Kakashi's sad half amused laugh at his young furious voice. "A bodyguard? Sasuke, I'm here to make sure you don't take off before the Council decides you're ready. Let's not pretend you haven't thought about it."
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"Obito you're going to kill him- stop!" Shouts and screams as he lay on the ground of the training area with his cheek pressed to the lunar stone so warm from the suns light earlier in the day. Blood, silver and potent slipping from him to the rock as his masters shouted and argued, giants in the world where his ears hummed and his body refused to give more. "I'm going to kill him? The Veil will tear him apart if he is not beyond exceptional. His brother can only be defeated swiftly- giving him no time to talk. I am doing him a favor!"
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Avoiding the crowds of the markets and streets, watching instead from the shadows the tightly wound packs of orphans as they played and jostled together. Their young wings growing stronger each day. Many would be part of the Knighthood and their camaraderie would grow with each passing year. Glancing back one pair of eyes focused on him lurking in the shadows and the disgust there lights like a fire. The child spits in his direction, loathing on his face explaining the subtle bluegray of his feathers smattered like stars across the expanse of white wing. "Uchiha." The name once revered by those of the Heavens is now profanity.
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"Remember I love you, little brother. Remember." Itachi's face as he walked out of their home for the last time , his grip desperate, his face white. The last shaking words spoken before he was forever gone..
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The sobs were loud now and the wings just a few steps away in the chaos of twirling spinning black feathers more like knives than anything else, more like trauma, like torture.
The blood was pouring from her now, a thousand paper cuts to bleed her and the crimson splashed onto the watery glass beneath her feet, rippling and diluting into the smoothness with every drop.
Panting she shoved the wings apart, peeling away the tight knot with bloody fingers.
Sasuke was a child, his dark head pressed to his knees, his arms tight around them and his shoulders shaking as he sobbed.
Her voice, soft as a petal alighting on skin escaped her then breathlessly, even as she wiped at a smear of blood trailing down her young face from her brow over her fluttering eyelashes.
"Sasuke."
The head rose, and black eyes stared back at her in obvious shock, the tears smeared all over his cheeks glittering in the light allowed passage past his black wings.
"...what...what are you doing here?"
She felt the abrupt tremble of her chin at his question. Always it was that question, always the disbelief that she had a purpose, that she made a choice.
Her eyes traced the lace pattern of black on his cheek and chin, on his forehead and arms, on his small delicate ankles and tiny pearl toes.
"I... I... I want..." she swallowed the knot of tears, something about that pattern on his skin was frightening. Why couldn't she remember why it was frightening? He needed to get it off. He needed to be free of it.
"You are bloody." His voice wavered, thickening with more sobs, more tears. "Did I...did I do that?" Horror overwhelmed his face and Hinata looked down at her hands, at their smallness covered in the stains of blood from innumerable cuts.
"No." The firm answer was forceful and she clung to that decisiveness. "No! I came here. I wanted to."
"Get away from me!" Sasuke scrambled back then, his small body struggling to put distance between himself and her. "Get away before I- I am- I wreck things- I-"
The lace moved, it shifted on his face and Hinata's heart pulsed painfully in her chest. Eyes wide and terrified she launched forward, throwing her arms over his shoulders and around his neck.
Chest to chest and cheek to cheek she sobbed even as he did, feeling his tears on her face mixing with her blood, stinging in a way she found satisfying for that meant he was close.
"I want to be here. Please let me be here!"
Eyes widening he stared, his chest heaving with helpless gasps as his tears began pouring again, his body shaking.
"If you want me to be here. I'll be here always." Pressing her forehead to his Hinata stared into the young eyes, too old in such a small face. "Always."
His arms were around her neck before she knew what was happening, his sobs wracking his body hard against her own and as she watched the wings on his back flared, from the tips moving inwards the white fought the black, inch by inch turning the dark ebony snowy white and as his grip tightened she felt his young uncertain lips on her cheek, wet with the salt of his tears.
It was a broken sound that escaped him, a cracked shattered thing, like the destroying of pottery.
"Please."
TBC