Erebus on the Cusp of Dawn
by Hic Iacet Mori
There you stand in stillness at the edge of a drop, gazing at the dark vastness where infinity begins. Do you stay and wait, or do you turn and walk away? Do you step a few distance and spread your arms wide, believing in a power you have yet to acquire? Do you run on faith and jump on trust, hoping at a shot on what you couldn't see?
She sat across him, her sun-yellow hair blowing shadows around her face, her eyes narrowed in thoughtful blue at a point only she could see. He looked back, dark eyes blank, none of his thoughts manifesting on his equally blank face. Had he not his dark eyes and the flush of color that made his lips, he could have been the moon, so cold and dead. He could have been the satellite and no one would have questioned why.
As it was, he was far from a big chunk of rock in space—Sasuke was a pragmatist spun of goals and dreams, alive and real with cold logic and hot emotions. He had a tight grasp of himself, tighter than the world in general, as if he had to hold himself together to not fall apart—other times, he simply did not know what to feel, and his face would come up blank as he struggled within him for a proper response. Feelings like doubt, fear, surprise, joy, frustration... he wasn't used to feeling, feeling for so long, feeling for someone not his brother, feeling a range of them all at once. The most he had felt for others were indifference and irritation, and they didn't exactly induce visible reactions from him.
Right now, to the world, Uchiha Sasuke was a figure of marble, smooth and cool. Right now, to his world, Uchiha Sasuke was simply confused.
And he really was. He looked at her right now, frustrated and annoyed both at her and himself, crouching so casually on his 15-foot wall and staring at the emptiness separating her from his window. It confused him so much that he couldn't answer her question, but it confused him more because he was so certain of his own answer.
"Ne, teme?" she prodded. Her husky voice floated clearly to his ears.
He turned away, feeling disgustingly shy, of all things, as he muttered his answer, "I prefer talking over shouting."
"Wha?"
He felt his eyebrow begin to twitch. That was his face, trying to form an expression and trying to stop it at the same time. It was hard, sometimes, to contain all emotions, especially when they were too many to handle at the moment. It was harder still when you were used to hiding it because you automatically fight against any outward expression.
"I didn't kinda hear you," she said in an almost-shout, "I mean, yeah, I'm kinda—Iunno, touched? —that you invited me in yesterday even if you're being a bastard about it, but why? You slept on me, see. And well—" He watched her cup her chin, eyes closing before one popped open in a curious glance, "I didn't take you for the friendly neighbor type. I coulda been a thief or a serial killer for all you know, teme."
His fists clenched upon his window sill. She would really have him say it, would she?
"Na, dobe, I don't know myself but I just trust your idiotic self. I also listen to the whispers of my heart and believe in myself so much I don't have to do anything else to succeed. And my tears? They can heal everyone. I can bring the dead back to life when I cry. I also moonlight as a carebear and I crap hearts on a good day."
Because really, he just trusted her. There was no reason behind it: his heart—he inwardly cringed—just did. He had always trusted his instincts and his instincts—yes, that sounded better, instincts—trusted her. And he couldn't tell her because she would just ask a slew of embarrassing questions he wasn't ready to answer and he wasn't the one who's supposed to answer questions anyway.
"I said," he repeated, voice louder, his face set in a scowl to show his dislike for repeating himself, to show it wasn't a great deal, inviting her inside his room yesterday without a second thought, inviting her now, "I prefer talking over shouting."
She snorted, clearly finding his answer unbelievable. He didn't care. It wasn't a lie, anyway. He did prefer talking over shouting, though he much preferred listening over talking. And really, how would they talk if she was on the tree, or on the wall, and he was inside his room leaning on an open window? Not only was it stupid, it was like an impromptu rendition of some cheesy love story between histrionic prepubescents whose headstones will declare Death by Hormones to the world in a matter of minutes.
He took a second to clear his mind off the disturbing image before frowning in response. She rolled her eyes and placed her palms on the wall, her shoulders tense, rising, a predator preparing to catch his prey. Then she was sailing through the air, her body stretched over the darkness, and then she was on his ledge, pushing herself up before jumping down with the satisfaction of a cat fresh from a night of prowling.
She landed gracefully on the carpet and turned to him. He quickly snapped his mouth shut. She grinned, amused by the reaction she had caught. "So ye—Fuck!"
He looked down, smirking. She lifted her head with a low groan, her forehead a bit red. She threw him a filthy glare and lifted the book that had tripped her, chucking it to his ankle with deadly accuracy. Sasuke almost stumbled backward but caught himself at the last moment, glaring back before smirking again at her figure on the floor. She growled and immediately sat up, sticking her tongue out and sulking.
"Usuratonkachi," he taunted. He almost chuckled at her answering growl.
"Bakayarou," she retorted, arms crossed over her chest. She stood up and made her way to the corner she had claimed yesterday. His hand shot up to stop her before his senses quickly caught with him and he curled it instead. This got her attention, however, and she paused, her body angled to him as she waited patiently.
It was time to get to business and this time, unlike last night, he was ready.
"Tell me."
She walked past him after a pause and settled across his bed, her face hidden under strands of spun rays of light. He sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together over his chin, his white features stark against the tendrils of blue shadows tousled by the night breeze.
"We met at work," she replied. He turned this answer over in his head.
"You don't seem older than me," he said. A white grin and he stared.
"Is that your way of giving a compliment?" she asked, giggling like a child. He knew he should be put off by this show of immaturity that so many of the girls around him liked to do, but he found himself not minding it at all. Besides, she had done worse than that already.
He snorted, covering up the strange urge to smile. "Hardly," he said. "I'm merely stating a fact, which implies I don't believe you."
She smirked. "Well, teme, I'm a few months younger than you. And you believing or not? I really don't care."
His eyes narrowed, irritation flaring within him anew. Did she have to know his birthday too? She was really annoying. "If you're almost the same age as me—as you say—then you should be in school, not work." Never mind that he didn't really know the nature of his brother's work. It was enough for him to know that it was Itachi, and upright Itachi would never involve himself in anything illegal.
"Funny you'd say that," she said. Her voice sounded odd in his ears. "I think it's a—anou, novel idea. School."
Was it wistful? Or patronizing?
"You've never been to school?" he asked, his monotone concealing his disbelief.
She snorted, her eyes alive with dark humor. "I've been to one, alright," she said. She shook her head, as if ridding herself of an unwanted thought, and smiled once again. "But if you meant like the studying shit you guys do in school, that I've never been to."
He was at a loss. The only people he knew who never went to school were those too poor to afford the cost of education and too far beyond hope to be helped by the government. To think she was one of these people...
He felt something pinch his chest.
"Oi, don't look like that," she said sharply. Her head turned away but he could see her hands clenching into fists. "I don't want your pity. Not attending one is a personal choice. Means I can go but I chose not to."
He frowned. "Why?"
She leaned her head on the wall, eyes sliding down to regard the pillow in his bed. "You ask a lot of stuff, teme," she drawled. "You don't hear me asking. And you really should be sleeping, I can hear your brain yawning."
"You seem to know a whole lot about me already," he said coldly. Why the hell wouldn't she shut up about the sleeping? Did he look like a zombie or other such monsters sorely in need of sleep?
"Not true," she said, mild and unmindful of his chilly expression. "For example, I didn't know you like to curl on your right side until weeks ago."
He felt himself flush at the words, inwardly thanking the darkness for hiding the sudden change in his color. He had known she was watching him, but the thought that she was watching him in his sleep had never been driven home into his mind until she had said it outright.
She wasn't done, though. Not according to her overly innocent demeanor, the sly she-devil.
"I also didn't know you murmur in your sleep until last night."
Merciless heat enveloped his body.
"I didn't know anyone knowing your sleeping habits embarrasses you until now," she concluded with a teasing smile.
"Shut up," he growled, grasping on anger to cover his embarrassment. Her husky laughter, ringing in the air as she threw her head back, brought an unwanted blush on his cheeks. His eyes roved the visible smoothness of her neck without his consent before snapping to the wall on her left, cheeks burning hotter.
"Since when?" he asked instead, inwardly wincing at the unevenness of his voice. He expected her to tease him about it—and he would have let her, with minimal damage, just to know how long she had been spying on him—but she simply stopped laughing, a blank cheer now on her unsmiling face.
"A month since he—" she paused and took a deep breath, "A month since."
He swallowed. His mind still couldn't grasp the reality of his brother's death. No, not death, he said to himself. Just move. Nii-san's somewhere else fooling everyone but me.
"Why?"
She stood up, the shadows melting away from her. He felt his breath getting shorter and shorter with each step she took, until she was in front of him, crouching, hesitant hands landing on his shoulders.
It was a pleasant tingle of warmth, her hands over his shoulders. He found himself regretting it, throwing on a dark blue shirt in an attempt to make her comfortable around him. He shouldn't have changed his sleeping habit for her.
... Not that he cared for her comfort, no.
"Go to sleep."
He allowed her to gently push him down, his blood roaring in his ears, his pulse speeding up, his body oddly pliant under the touch of her hands. He couldn't move and he found himself not wanting to—she leaned over him, his sheets in her hands, and it was all he could do to bury his nose into her neck and inhale the jasmines he could only smell when she was this close to him.
Soon she was tucking him under his sheets, his half-lidded eyes looking up to hers that never looked back. As her hands drew away, he captured her left wrist. She stilled.
"What's your name?" he murmured.
She shook her head, liquid gold spilling on her shoulders. Warm like the sun, he thought faintly, his mind giving him false memories of pale fingers running through their strands. Warm, like the pulse beating steadily on her wrist that brought him a strange disappointment.
"Night, teme," she whispered.
He slept.
He woke up at four to the emptiness she left behind.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
She raised her head to his direction. After declining his awkward offer of a pillow—"Think fast, moron"—and throwing it to her face, annoying him when she caught it easily before throwing it back with the force of a baseball pitcher, she had retreated into a watchful silence, a silence he immensely disliked. She wasn't made for silence, he thought, and this certainty fueled his dislike for it. She had many forms of silence for such a loud character, and this silence, where her eyes watched but never saw, where her ears heard but never listened, where she waited but never stayed—
He disliked it almost as much as her silence the first time he saw her in the cemetery.
It was almost a need for him, breaking it. And break it he did, asking another question he knew she would answer. He learned quickly that she answered his questions providing they were nothing personal about her that could pinpoint her identity.
She was still a selfish moron, withholding her name. Well, he had a lot of names for her now.
"I want to make sure you're here," she replied.
An eyebrow rose. The same eyebrow began to twitch after a second of thought. Who did she think she was, his mother?
"It's not really safe at night, you know," she went on. "I mean, sure, Konoha's a peaceful little town but even it has its bad sides. They just pop out at night, when everyone's s'posed to be asleep."
"And you know this because you're one of them?" he asked, tone sarcastic.
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm one of them sexy bad sides," she said, sticking her tongue out. "But seriously, teme. I'm making sure you're staying put 'coz you're not safe out there."
His brows furrowed at her words. She had used you're instead of it's—which meant she was pertaining only to him.
"Are you saying," he said slowly, "that someone is after me?"
She waved a hand, snorting. "What'd they want from a nerd? Glasses?"
His back straightened, his eyes narrow. So he wore reading glasses sometimes. So what? "Your enlightened opinion is warmly accepted," he said coolly. He frowned when she coughed—he knew what he heard and he just heard her cough 'geek,' thrice. Immature moron.
"I am not a geek," he retorted.
Her eyes were wide and innocent, as if she hadn't spoken at all. Her smile belied everything, though. "Sure," she said, approving. "You're a nerd. You're not a geek, nonono. Go you nerd, huh?"
He glared in annoyance. "Geeks and nerds are different," he huffed. "Geeks are extremely obsessed in a specific area and its accompanying sub-areas to the point of acquiring a high level of expertise on said area, whereas a nerd is interested in the intellectual pursuit of knowledge over a vast area. Hence, I am not a geek."
She laughed. "You just proved yourself."
"Idiot."
She shrugged, chuckling, and his eyes immediately honed on her shoulders. He looked away when he realized he was staring. "Wow, you babble too. And well, you're a book geek, so same-diff, ne? Oh, and a tomato geek too. So it doesn't really matter, teme."
He rolled his eyes. It was better than strangling her, and did she have to know his fondness for tomatoes, too?
Tch.
Dark eyes widened a fraction. How did they end up in this conversation?
"Stop changing the topic, dobe," he said, annoyed that he had allowed himself to be distracted, annoyed that he wanted to laugh. He shouldn't be wanting to do it, laugh with her, "Is someone after me?"
She broke into a smile that sent shivers down his spine.
"Not when I'm here."
Believe in what you could and stare the darkness down—see a drop of sun between the threads of infinity, and see yourself fall until all you can do is fly.