"I'm home," she mindlessly echoed, automatically taking off her boots and placing them neatly on the rack beside the door. Sasuke poked his head out of the door cautiously, as if he was waiting for something to jump out of the cupboards and send him back to the hospital. A few seconds too much later, he clumsily mirrored her movements, not used to the genkan being too small and the shoe rack being too crowded.
He stepped inside and entered a new universe.
Sasuke already knew that the life that he had lived ended today.
He could no longer go back home to his mother's cooking or even step back inside his own house to lay down on the tatami and listen to the fan run on those sweltering summer days. He couldn't pass by the same dango stands he used to on his way to the academy every day now. These are all things he cried over and anticipated in the hospital room. With the siblings, however, it was as if he was reborn into a new world.
He was uprooted.
All of his expectations of them had been discarded and was replaced with surprised looks and wide eyes.
They lived on the outskirts of the residential civilian district, where the stares and the muttering had only gotten louder the more they stared at the uchiwa fan patched on his back. He thought that the shinobi side of Konoha would suit this strong, passive Rin that he had heard so much about, where the streets were eerily quiet and the neighbors were always tense. Instead, he was led to a rectangular two-story building that was adorned with a white picket fence and pale yellow walls. The windows even had four panels and when he looked through them he could see tied-off white curtains that hung over the edges. This was almost picturesque, a different planet from the minka that used to be the Uchiha compound. He bet there wasn't even a single sliding door in the place.
The nurses at the hospital whispered about Hanasaki Rin. Their voices grew hurried about how he was no-nonsense, extremely charming, but a terrifying and talented shinobi. Sasuke had the picture in his head of his father, maybe some of his older cousins where they were a shinobi during the day, and then when they came back home they were just toy soldiers in a showcase. The fantasy of Rin grew as the nurses and the doctors fed this narrative. He thought that Rin was going to be the same as his older relatives, but with this house in place, he could imagine this faceless soldier going off to buy milk at the supermarket. He would take all of his groceries in one go, rice bag over his shoulder and bagged items in his hands.
His dad would never be seen at the grocery store, mulling over brown or white eggs. One or two percent milk.
It was even stranger was that they had their own house. When he had learned that they were two young orphans living on their own, he thought they dwelled inside those small, cramped apartments. One room, one kitchen, a bathroom that wasn't separate from the toilet.
Now he wondered if whenever they spoke their words would echo in all this space.
But there was more in this house than could have been dreamed of in Konoha.
A brown, soft couch was pushed up against a wall with dark red wallpaper, decorated with vines. Tall stacks of books and mismatched dark wooden tables that held lamps and a collection of heavy textbooks and scrolls surrounded the wall. On the other side was a smooth leather couch, black in color and matched the sleek coffee table they had in between. A scarlet rug was underneath their feet with ornate gold designs that curled around the corners.
This setting was a different civilization of its own, but the strangest thing was the large fireplace at the end of the room. It nearly took up an entire wall, and the stone and wood that surrounded it had lions and snakes with peeks of eagles and honey badgers in the carvings. He had never seen one in real life before. Sasuke had only heard descriptions of it, and from whispers apparently the Daimyo's court had one like this as well, where it was set into the wall instead of being an irori and sunken into the floor. Mismatched picture frames were propped on the shelf, filling the entire area with baby pictures and images of a woman with light brown hair beside a muscular, tan man with a large smile. In one picture, a small boy's face was hidden by a strip of light reflecting on the glass of the frame. However, his small body standing in front of the Academy was as clear as day.
"I'll get your room ready," she stated, moving toward the staircase that was tucked away from the rest of these open spaces. She sent him a small smile that disarmed him. A smile that was supposed to say: This isn't much, but it's home.
She led him past the wall that bisected the kitchen and the living room and he allowed his eyes to continue wandering around this new setting. The place was normal enough. The only weird thing was a bird perch that stood between the sink and the stove. The countertops were not what he had at home, but were familiar. At the entrance of the kitchen and the dining room was a glass cabinet that held several certificates, scrolls, and a few ceramics. Right beside it was a grandfather clock. Sasuke had learned that even the Third Hokage recently got one for his manor.
Before she fully crossed the threshold to the rooms upstairs, she stopped suddenly in front of the clock, seemingly entranced as if she was trying to decipher the arms and the rhythm of the ticking. She stared at it for several seconds too long, keeping Sasuke drenched in this still silence as he was forced to politely stand off to the side as he waited for her.
Eventually an exhale left her nose and her shoulders sank. She turned away without another word and led him up the stairs, up to the bedrooms where he would spend the rest of his present life.
Right before he trailed after her he paused in front of the clock too, wondering what it was that kept her there so long. His eyes widened in surprise when he realized that this clock did not have the time or counted the seconds. Instead this clock only had two hands in the form of teaspoons that they engraved Rin's and Hari's names in and instead of hours this clock had locations. Sasuke's mind attempted to wrap around this strange contraption, wondering for the life of him whether or not this truly worked. The academy, the hospital, home, the marketplace, prison, and traveling were the places he read as he ran his eyes down clockwise. His black eyes looked up and fell upon Hari's hand, perfectly pointed in the center of HOME.
His eyes found Rin's and worked his way down the strenuous list of places. Eyes widened before took an unsteady step back, pausing then running after Hari.
In the center of MORTAL PERIL was Rin's hand.
For all of his awkwardness, Hari thought, Sasuke's desire to be helpful eclipsed any shadow of his initial shyness.
She had previously cleared up her old room and moved them all to Rin's room where they had split the shoebox-shaped place down the middle, squishing all of their belongings to the sides of the walls. Her books and clothes were swept away, leaving behind empty cabinets, her footed bed fully stripped, and left her old dust bunnies without a home.
It was amusing to watch him then, hurriedly taking the dustpan and the broom from her hands and attempting to do it himself, ignoring her watchful stare. His hands knocked together awkwardly, and the broom brushed over the ground with the grace of a newborn giraffe. It was obvious that he had never done something like this — maybe he has never done a chore before in his life?
She had to teach him how to fold some of Rin's old clothes and was at the end of the bed as he sprawled over it like a starfish in an attempt to put the covers on. It took them three times as long with Sasuke than it would be if Hari was doing it all by herself, but his stubbornness was not stomped out in face of tragedy. All while his face was scrunched up with a mixture of embarrassment and a fierce desire to learn. His expression twisted into a hard pout that even she would describe as cute. At his young age, whenever he pouted she could see nothing but cheeks.
Sasuke was eager to please, preening underneath the compliments that she doles out whenever he got a task correct. He was as shy as a kitten but just as eager for affection. He grabbed at her wrist immediately after they had gotten up the stairs, eyes wide with fear as he dropped his voice into a hushed whisper. His hands dug into her forearm like talons, his strength almost iron-clad as he brought the older girl closer to him desperately.
" Nee-san...the clock…. Is Rin-nii…? " His voice was fragmented when he asked her this, broken from underuse and grated like sandpaper.
Pale hands lifted her hand up to pat his hair, but when her hands came up to his forehead his eyes widened until she saw more white than black. He wasn't looking at her then, she realized, his body locked in fear, and only relaxing when her hand passed his forehead and fell upon his black locks.
She had to quickly dissuade him, kneeling and explained that the MORTAL PERIL meant that he was in battle, not necessarily that Rin was on his deathbed. Once they were settled in, she would get him a clock hand of his own.
Sasuke's body shook with relief then, his fingers on her arm falling slack against her sleeve. He fell backward, feet padding in reverse one at a time.
He was not much of a speaker, she realized, but it wasn't difficult to ignore the closeness of his body and his desire to constantly make sure that she was beside him.
Hari shifted in her two futons, piled on top of one another so that her back didn't brush up against the cold, hardwood floor. Outside, the night was ink, running so deeply that there wasn't even a splattering of stars in the sky. She sighed and closed her eyes.
Harry James Potter was careful.
He had died young.
The day he died, it was like fireworks were lit into the sky: explosive, unexpected, terrifying, then silent. Somber silence draped over the Wizarding World when their trophy child died not even nine years after the Battle of Hogwarts. He wasn't even old enough to see Teddy off to Hogwarts, and after being there for every single one of his "firsts" this fact was still one of the things that sent a deep pit of resentment swirling in his stomach. Hari tried her hardest to remember the details, only keeping notes of how Ron and Hermione had cried weeks on end, how Molly clutched his old knitted sweater with a broad "H" in front when they were given his belongings. They said that his pale skin and his trouble breathing like a man in the desert was due to the stress of his childhood finally catching up to him.
By the time he passed, there were patches of bruises and discoloration on his neck from clawing at his throat and his skin was the color of the molten candles that hung over the Great Hall.
His scar never hurt for a second in those nine months.
Now he was a she in a world where First Kills was a milestone alongside First Kisses and Marriage. This village was stranger than anything beyond the Wizarding World. Men would wake up at dawn just to yell about "Youth!" Movies about samurai and heroes would play at the local theater, but there was not a single cell phone in this place. The archaic image of Hogwarts was thrown together with the efficiency of the muggle world in a careless cauldron and created the place of ninjas.
Hari's late father was a ninja, she learned, and so was Rin.
Your nii-san is going to be an amazing ninja, the voice of Rin's former genin teammate echoed in her ear, bringing Hari's then-toddler body up to her lips before curling the edges into a smirk. Her name was Seiko, she remembered, with pin-straight black hair that was customary for almost every Uchiha clan member and favored short sleeves. Smiles came to Seiko much easier than the rest of her clan members, always joking with the Inuzuka that completed the trio.
She remembered the small details about Uchiha Seiko, all the things that Rin had willingly echoed to her. She always carried an extra pack of kunai, was on track for kenjutsu, hated how Rin couldn't cook to save his life. Her favorite color was the famous Leaf Green of Konoha, and… she loved both Rin and Takashi terribly.
Was she smiling on her last day? Hari wondered, arms wound behind her head.
She spoke those first words like it was a secret between the two of them, but Hari could still remember the awe that sprinkled Seiko's voice, keeping her eyes trained on her older brother as he sparred with Shikaku-san.
It was expected that Rin was going to be amazing. Amazing, intelligent, cunning, ruthless, strategic, exceptional. All of the things the older ninjas told him, all of the things that Tom Marvolo Riddle was.
For all of their differences, that was one thing that Rin never came to understand. He glowed underneath praise, but while he passed his classes in the Academy as if by magic, Hari yearned to be just another cookie-cutter shinobi off the street. At Rin's graduation age Hari had just barely entered the Academy and only did the bare minimum that kept her grades high. Rin knew she was better than this, better than the brilliance she was hiding even. He was confident he knew her power better than anyone else in this universe, and the next and the one before them.
She wouldn't have been his killer if she wasn't.
Did she not want to be admired? Did Hari not want the teachers to praise her, be proud of her?
"Does that not bother you?" he asked once, confronting her over the kitchen table. He knew that Snape was not kind to him and Professor Binns had no favorites, but Harry had the love of Professor Dumbledore and McGonagall, that insufferable Gryffindor from his own school years, defended Harry with every inch of her magical prowess. During the Battle of Hogwarts, McGonagall split the sea for him. Did Harry not want this?
She tilted her head, staring at him with those inquisitive eyes as silence fell over them like a curtain.
"No…" she started off, eyes falling to the side. "I'm — "
It appears as if no matter what life they are in, they've always been —
"Just Hari."
He closed his eyes and he could smell the blood again.
Every time he rested his eyes it was a different feeling.
The smell, the slick of blood, the splatter of red underneath his eyelids. After the sixth hour of tossing and turning, his body forced him to pass out, but he didn't rest. In his dreams Itachi was there again, stalking around the compound with the footsteps of a stray cat. When he woke up, Itachi remained in every shadowy corner of the room.
In this nightmare he slipped away. The chase made his blood run like acid, pushing adrenaline and stress into his veins. He ran into his house, dashing downstairs toward the basement where his father's office was and hid himself in the tiniest corner in between two filing cabinets, a wedge in all this empty space. It was so small that he had to pull his knees up to his chest and turn his body so that his back was nearly on the ground.
A hanged man. Symbolizing self-sacrifice or punishment.
Suddenly he heard footsteps, the scraping of heeled sandals on hardwood. It was coming closer to him. He held his breath and never breathed. The sliding door opened, shut, and the footsteps came nearer. From his position, huddled in the dark, curled up like a mummy, he could feel his heart beat against his chest and felt it on his thigh. His eyes adjusted to the dark, going back and forth and attempting to search for a new place to run away. Left, where his dad had the training room. Right, where he could only slip through the door he came from.
"Sasuke."
He looked up, and there he was.
Itachi was so close that he could reach out and touch him.
He couldn't even hear his own shallow breaths. His blood beat against his eardrums so loudly that it was all he could hear. His body was locked.
That man gazed down at him like he was a tower and reached out a single hand. It crept closer and closer until his fingers closed around his right eye.
Sasuke's heart was beating so fast that he was sure that he was going to die of a heart attack before Itachi could do him any harm.
"Sasuke." A charm. A chant.
Ba-bump.
Itachi pulled back his eyelids.
Ba-Bump.
Ba-bump.
"Sasuke!"
He took one look at her and thought ghost.
"You have the same eyes as mine."
"Please...Please don't leave me here, Nee-san!" He scampered up, clutching her arm with little claws, pulling her sleeve hard enough that he formed little bloody crescent shapes on his palm and nearly ripped the fabric.
"Come before me, Sasuke."
His eyes strained in the dark, attempting, desperately searching, desperately trying to look at her. Black met green. If he didn't see her, if he didn't commit her to memory, she was going to slip away from him too.
Ba-Bump.
"It's going to be all right."
His heart burst.
"I'm not going anywhere."
He fell asleep not long after that, nestled in Hari's arms with the sleeve of her shirt tucked tightly in his grasp. When he closed his eyes, Itachi was nowhere to be seen. Instead he dreamt of strangers — a tall, young boy with jet black hair and dark eyes was staring out a window at the stormy sky. When he searched neverending rooms and went down stretches of hallways, he saw another small, skinny boy sleeping under a cupboard under the stairs.
She just wondered if she lived a normal life, had normal friends, Hari could pass away silently.
In the next life, she just wanted to be with Ron and Hermione again.
Ever since that day, Sasuke remained a constant presence.
He stayed in Hari's old room during the day and slept with her in her growing stack of futons at night.
During meals, he moved his chair around their square dining table so that their elbows were brushing, and was always by her hip when she prepared food for the two of them. Eventually she asked if he was familiar with a knife and put him to work chopping vegetables.
He bragged that he was able to throw shuriken and kunai and hit the target dead-on nine out of ten times, but couldn't manage to cut even strips of cabbage.
She was no Petunia, who shrieked at Harry for having jagged cuts the first time he held a knife. Nor was she Snape, who looked over Harry's shoulder to catch every small mistake he had ever made, deducting points for breathing wrong.
She simply gently corrected him and went back to work.
When he eagerly asked for chores to do — he was an Uchiha, he was determined, he was proud, he was going to prove himself — she gave him a broom and he ended up knocking over her lamp in the living room.
She simply moved him aside and sighed. Watch out for corners, she chastised.
Teddy wasn't like this, she mused, wondering. The boy had always been perfect in her eyes, her son in all but blood, but she got nine years to get used to him. Sasuke came with his own trauma and she was missing seven years of this boy's personality.
Sasuke was not Teddy. She did not need seven years to know that. She didn't even need one.
After the fifth day, it was time to go back to the Academy.
Rin's clock hand jumped from MORTAL PERIL and TRAVELING so frequently that she had taken to carrying their communication coin everywhere, just waiting for the metal to grow melting hot so that she could whisk herself away. She took one long, sweeping glance at the clock before she ripped her eyes away from it and down at the new person in her life.
Sasuke's head was bowed low, his feet dragging as he nervously prepared for his first day back.
"Nee-san…" he said uncertainty when he caught her stare. He glanced at the door like it was going to pop out and eat him up in little pieces.
She could only offer a small smile at him, placing a gentle hand on his back. He melted into her hold, resting those tense shoulders and she inwardly let out a breath of her own. He was getting more susceptible to touch.
And these were all baby steps.
"It's going to be alright," she said. I hope. "Iruka-sensei said that you were the best in class, right? And it's only history lessons and kunai throwing today." She had to be the strong one between them, but even she was unsure. It had been only a week after the massacre and even less time had passed due to his small coma. He had grown dependent on her presence in the house, she knew that.
To her surprise, he puffed up at the compliment and nodded, his look changing to one of wary determination.
"Okay then. Let's go."
The Academy was a quaint building with a hard interior. Dried, unclean blood stained the dirt floor where they held spars and the single swing that hung in front of the school had seen years of abuse. Underneath the Hokage Tower and the entryway of one of their hideouts, it was one of the most secure spots of the village.
You protect civilian women, the elderly, and children first. Their safety is your first priority. Stop at nothing to assure that you are the sword and shield to the people.
Why did he feel so unsafe?
He kicked up dirt as he walked, scuffing his sandals on the unpaved road as his grip on Hari's hand grew tighter by the second.
Before he knew it, he was in front of the familiar white sliding door of the classroom. Behind it was a pandora box of noises, hidden dangers, and surprises that went to war with the silence of the Hanasaki house that he had grown used to.
The hand in his squeezed him comfortingly and he trailed his sight up to see Hari staring at the door with a wistful look.
He shuffled his feet awkwardly, growing even closer to Hari's side like they were two magnets.
When he learned that she went to the Academy too, he was ecstatic. He desperately hoped that there was even a sliver of a chance they could be in the same class. Maybe he could ask Iruka-sensei to transfer him or her? Maybe he just didn't know her because she was in the class next to his, the one with a lot of civilian-born kids.
He didn't know her birthday then, and she revealed that not only did she not make the cut-off date to be in his grade, but her birthday was only eight days apart from his, (he had practically glowed when he learned that, hungry for more things to connect them together) nearly a year apart.
Hari was a genius, he learned. She was on the track for early graduation within the year, but they had swiped that program completely off the table last week. Konoha did not yearn for another Itachi.
His grip grew tight as he braved that door like a soldier going off to battle. He let go of her hand and released a shaky breath. If there was an earthquake it would originate from there.
"T-This is my place," he said, eyes trained on his feet again. "I'm going to go in now...okay?"
"Okay, Sasuke." She released his hand completely and turned to make her way upstairs.
"W-Wait! Nee-san!" He called out to her. She looked at him over her shoulder. "W-Will you have lunch w-with m-me?" He was stuttering like the Hyuuga clan heiress. "C-Can I?"
That smile of hers never wavered.
"Of course. I'll meet you here." She turned and that black curtain of hair flicked outward. "See you then."
He waited there until she left and exhaled deeply. He puffed his chest out and held in the urge to cry, tears already burning at the corners of his eyes. The volume seemed to beat against his ear, grating on his nerves and built upon his growing irritation. He breathed again, and threw the door open.
The room went silent. He started to hate the quiet as well. He could only hear his own heartbeat.
The last Uchiha took one step in, one foot under another with his head bowed. Whispers grew around him, curling in the air until it nearly suffocated him. When he finally lifted his head up to locate his seat, the tiered seats seemed taller than a mountain, growing higher and higher the more he looked. Every eye that was on him was like beams of light in the dark.
One foot in front of the other, his walk was getting steadily more difficult. Were these seats always so high? Was he scaling a cliff?
Why did people keep on staring at him?!
"Sasuke-kun!" a voice came from his left, so high and loud that it nearly gave him vertigo as he was diving deep in his thoughts. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been so long! I was worried!" A hand reached out to grab his bare wrist, and the moment he felt skin against his, he reeled back like he was on fire. His hip bumped into the seat behind him, sending a student's pencil and pen crashing down on the floor and he flinched like glass had been shattered.
"Don't touch me!" Blood rushed in his ears when those words slipped out of his lips. The nameless girl opened her mouth to speak, but another had already shoved her away and had gotten so close to Sasuke that he was worried that she could hear his heart attempting to beat out of his chest.
"Yeah! Leave Sasuke-kun alone!" she said before turning back to him. "Hey, Sasuke-kun, want to sit with me today?"
His hands were suddenly so weak that he couldn't even properly hold the folder in his arms.
Those words were merely empty space to his ears and he whipped around in his spot. His feet moved faster, determined to get closer to that empty seat in the back.
His breathing became heavy, labored. That empty spot was suddenly a mile away and sweat trickled down the back of his neck as if he had just ran around Konoha.
"Who says that Sasuke-kun wants to sit with you! I should sit next to him! You already sat with him two weeks ago!"
What were they saying? His mind became so foggy that he wondered if they were speaking the same language as him. The words that slipped from everyone's lips became gibberish to listen to, and their voices went in and out of muteness.
His seat was just beside him now, but his vision had blurred so much that he nearly tripped on the last step. He couldn't even see his desk properly.
"Naruto! Move, I want to sit there!"
"Huh?! What?! But I was here first!"
I can't breathe.
"I said move, Naruto!"
Someone bumped into him and it sent him tumbling onto the ground. He had no control of his legs as his brain rattled in his skull. He didn't feel any pain on his knees and elbows. He couldn't tell where he was. On the ground, over the desk? The voices of those around him took space in his brain, emptying his thoughts to leave space for the echoes of others.
Hands and bodies closed in around him, grabbing every limb.
I can't breathe!
"Sasuke-kun, are you alright?! Naruto, you idiot!"
Something was clawing up his throat.
"I-It wasn't me!"
He heaved.
Ican'tfuckingbreathe!
"Get...away from me!" He mentally wondered if that unrecognizable voice was his.
"Hey!" a voice came from his side. "Everyone, give him space! He's having a panic attack!"
Heavy heart.
"Thank you, Shikamaru-kun, but please move back as well!"
Empty head.
"I know! I know!"
"Sasuke! Sasuke!"
His body shook and the last thing he saw was the face of Iruka-sensei before all went black.
Then...nothingness.
"Hey, Sasuke," a voice called out from above. The teen looked up from the weapons pouch he was preparing and stared at the girl standing in front of him. Her body was leaning against the shelf that they placed in the makeshift shelter, a tent surrounded by a sea of others. She wasn't looking at him, and instead stared blankly at something far away. Something he couldn't see.
"Remember when it was the first day back at the Academy, and we were separated?"
His hand stilled, and the little tinkling of metal against metal didn't decorate the silence between them anymore.
"Iruka-sensei ran into my classroom looking like the world was ending." She laughed at this part. Her expression was searching, as if she was trying to transport back to that day. "You were crying and screaming when I found you.
"I think that...it was because you didn't know if you were going to be alone again or I had left you behind or something. I don't think that you even recognized who I was when I came to get you. You tried to push me away like everyone else."
He finished fixing the weapons in the pouch and clipped it on his hip. He stood up at full height and now Hari was forced to look up. It had been long since he started to tower over her, growing from the small little boy that used to hide behind her and now a teen who tried to shield her.
"Do you remember that?"
Ash fell around them like snow.
"I remember that, Hari-nee."
She smiled and trailed her hand forward, moving so slowly that Sasuke was able to easily follow the movement as the seconds ticked along. It only rested when it fell lightly on the hilt of the sword on his hip.
Hari straightened and green met blazing red once more.
"Let's get that son-of-a-bitch then."
Hari moved the two of them to a training field close to the Academy. The house would feel too stifling; he needed air. She had excused the two of them for the rest of the day, and so she just rested Sasuke's body against a tree while she sat in the sun and waited silently for the hours to pass.
It was near lunchtime when he roused.
When he woke up, her back was turned to him, watching mutely as birds swooped to and from trees in a circle around them.
"Hari…" He winced at the sound of his own voice, appearing as if the inside of his throat was made out of rocks. "Nee…?"
She turned in her spot, looking expectant as if she was waiting for the sound of his voice this entire time. She came up on her two feet, pulling herself closer to his figure at the base of the tree. They were face to face as she leaned in, checking his forehead and his eyes.
"Here." She produced a small vile out of nowhere. "This will make you feel better. Do you want it?" He eyed the liquid warily, watching as it sloshed around the glass in heavy beats. After a few seconds, he nodded and tipped his head back to down it in one go.
It hadn't even been one second when his face started to scrunch up due to the extreme sourness on his tongue. Hari was already by his side with a bottle.
"Water?"
She didn't even have to wait for a response then. He yanked it out of her hand and gulped back half of it, washing down the taste until it was a sheer bitterness.
"W-What is that?" He bit back curses. He was already getting tired again from that experience; but his heart felt lighter. His head began to blow away the fog of his thoughts.
"Calming Draught," she answered simply, and when she cradled the empty glass in her hands, he didn't even see the vile disappear. "Sorry I should've warned you about the taste. Every concoction tastes just as bad as the other."
"You made it?" He whispered. Was she on the medic track? That would mean long nights away even after she made Genin and Chuunin. He felt it starting to work, faster than the medicine the Nara had in the standard shinobi shops.
"Yeah," Hari said easily. "Though you should credit Rin with the recipes. He has a better memory than I do." And he was a better teacher. Legions above Snape even if they were both equally vile.
She had almost forgotten that before he had other aspirations in life, Tom Riddle had wanted to be a Hogwarts Professor.
They sat like that for a while, waiting for Sasuke to come back from the high of the day. It wasn't long until she produced the two sandwiches that she had packed for them, easily handing one to Sasuke.
His nose and ear twitched like a bunny when she placed another hand on his head, smiling to herself as she did so.
"Your headache must be getting better," she said, almost to herself. She took her hand back and produced an apple out of her bag. A kitchen knife flashed into her hands and the two of them fell into silence once more when she went to work at peeling it in one single strip. Hari could tell that there was something on his mind.
"I'm sorry…" he eventually said, rupturing the silence.
"Huh?" She looked genuinely surprised. "What for?"
"For…" His free hand fell into a fist. His nails created bruises on his skin. "For being so emotional all the time. What happened back in class was shameful." Black eyes resembled a storm in the night sky.
Her expression softened, sighing defeatedly. "There's nothing wrong with that. You were overwhelmed. It happens to the best of us." She should've kept a better watch on him, bulldozing through his trauma from what she had seen only when he was with her. Hari even believed that he handled his emotions better than she did back in the day, back when she was a fuze waiting to be broken. Harry Potter had shown his temper at everyone and everything then.
"But a good shinobi shouldn't be like this!" Sasuke finally snapped. Hari's full focus finally fell on him, lowering the apple in her hands until she was keeping those big green eyes on him. Inside, he was glad that he snapped, but a small part of him was fearful too. He knew that he was an anchor in her life these past few days. He had broken her things and dragged the days on past its twenty-four hours as she had to tread with caution around this ticking bomb. He wanted her to feel just as much outrage as he did.
She had only shown tiredness and acceptance the entire time he had been with her. Hanasaki Hari was still holding back from him, keeping him from the real her. He was scared, yes, but he was still as smart as he was a week ago.
"Do you think that being a shinobi doesn't make you human?" she suddenly asked. The question stunned him like a spell. "You think that by having a forehead protector you're not allowed the same rights to your emotions as everyone else?"
"But — !" His eyebrows furrowed. What was she trying to say? The words that slipped from her lips contradicted everything that they had taught them in the Academy. Ninjas do not show emotions. Ninjas should not be weak. They were obedient. She should know this. She was on track to graduate early.
What she was saying was almost —
Treason.
"Taking away your emotions…"
This cookie-cutter kunoichi…
"Doesn't benefit anyone but the government. You are not a tool for them to use. Why would you damage yourself because someone else wants you to?"
Was suddenly on a different path than everyone else.
This was the thing that he would never understand.
"Hari." A voice suddenly appeared before them. Sasuke jumped in his seat, tense like a cat at the sudden intrusion. "What are you doing out of class?"
This question was spoken like a statement, cutting across the air like a sword.
The two of them whirled around, moving so fast that the wind whistled in their ear.
Sasuke's eyes widened when he got his first taste of Hari's older brother. The man who was on the same level as Itachi. The shinobi who they called Rin of the Green Flames. He was the shinobi people aspired to be.
The sun shined far above him, the rays of light surrounded him in a halo like the god he was in his own eyes.
"N-Nii-san…!" Sasuke's voice was breathy as he steadily got up on his two feet to greet the man in front of him.
For some reason, he couldn't help but think —
"Stop," he spoke to him like he was a dog. "Don't call me that." His face did not show malice, anger, or ill intent. He only stared at Sasuke as if he was a bug in his path. The last Uchiha stopped in his tracks, one foot in front of the other.
"W-What?"
"If you do that people will assume that I am your older brother." Hari sat silent in the background.
That Hanasaki Rin's eyes were even crueler than Itachi's on that day.
Red eyes shimmered in the sunlight.
"And I am not your brother."