Erebus on the Cusp of Dawn
by Hic Iacet Mori
Weave illusions with your mind and fulfill them with your hands, colorless, soundless, but infinitely kind—after everyone had gone, they are all you'll ever have, they are all you'll ever need to go through with your life.
A month after her death, Uchiha Sasuke was living.
He pulled his drawer open and took his black tie, handling it with a care befitting a dear child. He stood before his mirror, dark eyes unseeing, his hands automatically tying the strip of dark cloth below his collar pressed a few times before. He spent a few seconds carefully straightening the tie, more seconds patting his white dress shirt and black pants until there was not a hint of crease left. Minutes later, satisfied, he put on his navy blue uniform, leaving the top two buttons open, before doing the same meticulous process until everything was in place.
He glanced at his radio clock, noting the time—6:25 am—and idly recalled historical events that occurred on the 25th of June. Custer's Last Stand in Little Bighorn. Diary of Anne Frank was published. Invasion of South Korea by North Korea, triggering the Korean War. Declaration of Independence by Croatia and Slovenia. Birth of Sir Eric Arthur Blair, more known as George Orwell, writer of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Prince Yasuhito Chichibu was born. So were gravure idol Nozomi Takeuchi and Jeong Ji-Hoon, the Korean idol more known as Rain.
A lot of important figures died that day too.
Sasuke immediately turned away. His socked feet padded on the carpet as he made his way to the exit. He opened the door, his backpack and muffler in one hand and his black overcoat draped over his arm, and closed it behind him with a quiet force. He walked through the hallway, a pale shadow with a purpose, and went down the stairs, counting in his head as he went down one step at a time.
One. The atomic number of hydrogen.
Two. The first magic number in nuclear physics.
Three. An average person has three trillion cells.
Fo—
He paused for a moment. The next step was unlucky, should he step on it? It was the fourth step and its homonym wasn't exa—
Death.
Sasuke nodded, deciding. He'd take the step today. There's no reason not to, this time. He had no test, or project, or report, or game that needed all his luck today. He could take the risk.
Four. Number of forms in the Square of Opposition.
Five. Horizontal lines in a musical staff.
Si—
Scars.
He abruptly stopped and shook his head, a small child caught in the trap of his own lies. Dark eyes stared down at his feet as if seeing them for the first time, a pale hand unconsciously coming up to rub on the curve of his cheek. There was something—something warm—
Six. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent, the tastes in Ayurveda.
Sasuke blinked, feeling the familiar cold touch of his hand on his face. His hand slowly dropped to his side. He took another step, still looking down. His hair brushed against his neck, tickling like the thoughts at the edges of his mind.
Seven. The last suici—
He stumbled on an unseen bump and immediately caught himself on the banister. He drew a steadying breath, briefly closing his eyes, waiting for his heart to slow down at the suddenness of what happened. Black eyes opened, contemplating the carpeted step. Seven is an easy number.
Seven. The last suicide mentioned in the Bible courtesy of Judas Iscariot.
Sasuke inwardly sighed. He took another step as he eyed the remaining steps. Almost there...
Eight. The number in the Beijing Summer Olympics opening ceremony, 8:08:08 in the evening of August 8, 2008.
Nine. The other name for the Nazgûl in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Ten. Worth of points of the face cards in blackjack.
Eleven. Number of points in the stylized map—
He caught himself on the banister once again. Damn, what the hell was wrong with him today? He'd never had this much trouble so early in the day before!
Sasuke leaned on the steel handrail. His limbs felt weak. He closed his eyes, waiting for strength to return. A second passed, two. He stood up slowly and began straightening his uniform again. He needed something to do with his hands. Something bad might happen.
Eleven. Number of points in the stylized maple leaf on the Flag of Canada.
Only two more steps. He took the penultimate step with an almost relieved sigh. Going down the stairs had never been this hard and he was feeling a bit better that he would be reaching the ground floor soon.
Twelve. Number of feet for a mark twain.
And the last step, thirteen. The number of steps leading up to the gallows.
He reached the landing, almost falling over with a sudden burst of haste, scrambling to the kitchen with a strange anxiety in his chest. Black couldn't hurt him, white wouldn't dare. Count the steps count the steps count the steps count the steps. One step two steps three steps four steps—
He gave himself a harsh shake as the nauseating feeling dissipated. There's no reason to act like this. Besides, he only had ten more minutes to eat his breakfast and prepare his lunch to get to school at a decent time. He also had to add thirty pieces of puzzles—it had been thirty days, since.
Since he concluded that routine is good.
Sasuke opened his refrigerator, grabbing the bag of onigiri and heading back to the living room. Perhaps he didn't need to eat breakfast today, he thought faintly as he took random pieces of puzzles, hoping to find a fit. The thousand-piece puzzle he had bought exactly thirty days ago was nowhere near completion but he didn't care—he much preferred the incompletion. With how he kept forcing pieces where they clearly didn't fit, he knew this puzzle would remain incomplete for a long, long time.
Everything felt like a long time. And yet, sometimes everything would sneak up on him and they would be fresh and raw and vivid all over again.
... twenty-eight pieces, twenty-nine pieces, thirty pieces.
Exactly ten minutes later and he was heading outside, his overcoat over his uniform, a pair of gloves protecting his hands, and his muffler around his neck. Sasuke liked it, his muffler—it was a simple maroon, knitted by his own hands the uneventful summer of his seventeenth birthday. He had felt a surge of pride with his handiwork, along with a blast of coolness at his color choice—it was the nearest to red that he owned and though he wouldn't speak of it aloud, he thought it looked good on him.
"Maroon? Hn."
His brother seemed to agree, too.
Sasuke opened the door and immediately, golden warmth touched his cheeks.
He blinked, slowly, as if waking up for the first time after a century of slumber, the haze of sleep and dreams falling from his eyes to reveal the world as it had become. It sent a sharp jolt to his nerves, this warmth, light—he had become so used to the gray cold that he hardly felt the biting chill when he rode his bicycle to school, with the wind becoming so cutting and cold it wasn't unusual to see most of the townspeople wearing colorful ski masks. Sasuke went about wearing ski shades, however, numb to the gray fingers of frost and the harsh sting of ice, lost in his recitation of etymologies and vocabularies and endless streams of trivia, of where else he could place those pieces of puzzles in defiance of the inevitable, of how much longer he needed to perfect his aim. The coldness had long seeped inside him that he hardly felt it anymore, and it was a physical shock, this golden warmth—it brought muted visions of a time long gone, when everything seemed golden and warm despite the absolute black of night.
He stood, motionless, bathed under the yellow sun—its light rolled over endless white revealing the first hints of colors of a sleepy town wrapped in winter, their roofs the bright heads of children coming out from under the wrappings of their thick woolen blankets to enjoy a dry and crisp morning. Each house was dotted with hints of the holidays, their designs a ribbon of red streaking through winding snow. Some branches of bare trees had silver ribbons tied around them, giving the tree a festive look, while some residents had decorated their leafless trees with colorful lights blinking to the tune of yuletide songs.
But it was smoke, however, from the house nearest his, that woke Sasuke from his stupor. There was a surreal quality to the gray smoke drifting out of its chimney, curling to the skies before vanishing within the threads of rolling white clouds—he could see it so much he could taste it, that lingering, bittersweet loneliness from having to leave a home behind, and he felt his body begin to shake as he tasted it again and again and again.
As his mind began to taunt him with the scent of home, Sasuke hooked a leg over his bicycle and took off.
By his estimation, he would be thirty minutes late to school. It didn't matter, however—the holiday vacation had begun two weeks ago.
No one would be around to care.
He sat in the waiting shed and took another bite of onigiri.
It was lunchtime and Sasuke had immediately stopped doing crosswords—it wouldn't do well to miss lunch, not after he had missed breakfast and remembered to pack it earlier this morning. As he took another bite—what did it taste like, onigiri? did he even know its flavor to begin with?—his eyes landed once more upon the steel gates of his school.
He was in no mood to break in this morning so he decided to spend the morning in the waiting shed outside of the school—besides, the principal had threatened to remove him from the list of graduating students if he did it again, after a school custodian caught him in the baseball field lying on the snow. Sasuke hadn't been doing anything, just staring at a pine tree brought from overseas and estimating its number of needles, but the custodian had freaked out and immediately ordered him to leave the premises or he'd have him arrested. Sasuke coolly informed him that he didn't give a damn, returning to his estimating game in dismissal, only to have the school principal bearing down on him with clear displeasure on her beautiful face.
It turned out that the school staff, from the principal to the lowliest of sanitation agents, were having a Christmas party—the principal herself brought him to her office and demanded why he broke and entered inside the school. Sasuke sat silently throughout the interrogation, answering only when he could give a straight answer, when he was sure he didn't have to see the glint of gold from the dim sun behind her window flashing on her hair. Through this tedious process, she learned that Uchiha Sasuke had been breaking and entering since the start of the holiday vacation, that he arrived during the beginning of class hours and left during dismissal, and that he never took or left anything behind. He didn't answer why he was doing this and she ordered him not to do it again, along with the threat that she'd hold him back if he were caught for the second time.
The next day, he scaled the school walls and ate his Christmas lunch of tomato salad and green tea on the rooftop. He thought he saw her from the window of the administration building, a lonely silhouette threaded through the shadow, but he was probably seeing things.
He instinctively glanced at his watch, noting with satisfaction that it was the start of afternoon classes. He carefully placed the empty bag of onigiri inside his backpack and stood up, heading to the forest on the west side of the school. His feet led him to his favored tree without thought and he climbed up—it was easy, now, climbing a tree, and he could do it as thoughtlessly as he could tie the laces of his sneakers—settling on the highest branch to observe the view of lower Konoha.
Konoha was the epitome of life, that afternoon. Children ran about in excited abandon, their mouths yelling words he couldn't hear from where he sat. Some threw snowballs at each other, and some ran around their mothers doing last-minute shopping for the arrival of the new year. The rest knocked on random houses and sang, or at least that's what he thought they were doing, because a few of these kids carried homemade musical instruments—a strange custom he had observed—their efforts rewarded with a bag of round fruits. Any round fruit would suffice, though the most favored, Sasuke immediately learned, were small, shiny red apples tied by a loop of gold ribbon. It received the most wide-toothed grin and the best-made snowmen and, he believed, the most careful of touches from innocent creatures naturally reckless and free.
How had it been, when he was a child? Had he been like those little men and women who acted as if they were born only to laugh?
As he sat upon the snow-laced branch, caught in a patch of sun caressing his cheeks, Sasuke couldn't remember. Perhaps it had been too long a time ago that he couldn't remember anymore. Perhaps they weren't important enough to recall and relive, even for a breath. Perhaps some memories are best kept locked under key.
Sasuke looked up to the skies and his eyes slid shut. The transient fingers of the afternoon sun traced the lines of his face, touching with a silent question that demanded, that pleaded. He understood, somewhat, but he couldn't bring himself to answer. He didn't want to consider the possibility that he had failed.
He was living. Like he had been asked to, he was moving on.
He opened his eyes. A lone snowflake floated in the air before him. It landed on his hand, white against white. Melting. Crying. Another snowflake. Another tear.
Perhaps things could have been different. Perhaps nothing would have changed. But what did it matter if he was moving on with his life?
It's so cold.
A glance and he fired.
Twenty-one.
He lowered his hands to his shoulder's level, eyeing the target. Another bull's eye. Soon, he thought, soon all twenty-one bullets would hit dead center, and then he'd move to shooting moving objects. For now, he contented himself with hitting the target he tacked on the resting maple tree near his brother's grave.
His hands weren't shaking anymore. He could now hold a gun with a steady grip, before and after firing a shot, and he had gotten used to the clap of thunder from a bullet cracking in the air. His accuracy was improving and his speed was getting there too. All in all, he was satisfied with his progress.
Replacing his gun in the pocket of his overcoat, Sasuke sat down beside the white marble bearing his brother's name. He idly traced the first line of dates, his other hand tugging on the handful of grasses breaking through the snow. It was only a matter of time now.
"The sun's setting, Nii-san," he said softly.
Against the burnished gold of the dying sun, the snow-kissed world became a landscape of sand, bronze and sparkling with dustings of silver-white. Dark shadows interlaced with the dusk winter sands, weaving a tapestry of solitude, desolate and beautiful.
Opaque dark eyes took it all in. The tableau was nothing short of enchantment. His brother would have approved with a slight tilt on his lips, the closest to a grin that Itachi would give.
"It's a nice sunset."
Sasuke couldn't feel a thing.
He stood up and patted himself down. Snow and grass. White and green. No trace of red unless forced by humanity. It's time to go.
He turned around, ready to leave. He froze.
It was snowing.
One drop. Two drops. Three drops. Four drops—
Sasuke was exhausted.
He sat on the floor, the couch, his tub, his bed—Sasuke didn't really care, location was irrelevant—his dull eyes watching dust trace stories through the light of the moon stealing its way inside his house. He was curled upon himself, stretched out, on his back, on his stomach—it didn't matter, shadows didn't care—tired from staying awake, from sleeping and waking up so suddenly, so quickly, tired from living, from moving on, from dying.
The night, once a friend, never offered him reprieve.
He was filthy and he didn't care. Nothing mattered—not the rotting food in his fridge, not the pile of dirty laundry in his hamper, not the illusion of normality, not the temptation of insanity. Nothing mattered except he was falling down, falling down again and breaking into more and more pieces.
He wondered faintly how dehydrated he already was. Could someone complete a puzzle so dry its pieces would crumble into dusts? Would he die if all his waters dry up?
Was he still even alive to wonder about it? He was living, his mind said so, his convictions told him so, but a void inside him, nebulous, suffocating with its heavy numbness, said otherwise. For how could he be alive when everyone else was dead?
What did it matter, anyway? All he had ever loved had killed him in their death—maybe this was finally his.
"Itachi is dead," Sasuke said. Just to test it out. To see if he would finally, really, truly honestly believe it, the first time he spoke of it out aloud to acknowledge its power.
He did.
"Na—Naruto—"
He stopped, unable to go on. His eyes were itching once more, sprinkles of ash under their lids, and he couldn't go on. He wasn't ready for that yet.
Perhaps, he never will be.
"I love you," he said instead. It was truth and he believed it. Even the night did, its shadows receding into the corners of his room, the corners once blessed with her golden presence. "It's not just the sex," he continued, his tongue loose. It didn't matter. He would trade all his truth for a lie of her smile. "It's not just your attention. It's so much—so much more that I don't even understand.
"I love you—" Sasuke's breath hitched, tears finally falling down in unrestrained grief. He was lying on the carpet, a broken figure in porcelain, catching the silver moonshine on his brows and the stars that once tangled in her hair, "—because your hair reminds me of the sun... because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the distance between the two is great but it doesn't matter at all.
"I love you… because your eyes are broken, because they're so beautiful, and blue, and they say so much—and they changed my world when you looked at me, the first time, and I'll never forget how I—how I felt, seeing myself. I want t-to be in your eyes, always, and I sound like a lovesick idiot but I c-can't help it—" he gave a choked laugh, "I guess your idiot's catching...
"I love you... because you like orange and frogs, because you have different smiles and I always find it hard not to smile back—because your eyes shine like stars, with your secret smile, because there are millions of stars and I—I couldn't count them all, even when I tried it, last night.
"I love you because you act like a—like a kid, sometimes, because a child is born every 20 minutes... because all children grow up and forget their parents sometimes, but they always remember when all they can do is cry... I love you because—because you like milk and I like green tea, because it's nice, sitting on the couch watching a lame movie with you, even when you're sleepy, because you stayed awake to—to watch, with me—because you babble like an idiot when you're excited, and you're nervous, and it's your smile that tells me the difference, and I thought it's—it's okay, that lame movie.
"I love you because I hate Calculus but I like Algebra, because you thought Trigonometry is a terminal sickness, because you told me Chemistry is for dorks with too much money and time in their hands, and I defended the subject even when I—when I secretly agreed w-with you—
"I love you, because I have 206 bones in my body, because the skin protecting them misses yours, because I have p-platelets and-and-and erythrocytes a-and leukocytes and they circulate around my body, because I have a p-pair of lungs and when I breathe, I smell—I smell jasmines and I—and I inhale y-y-your smile—
"I love you... because my name is Sasuke and it sounds so—so perfect, when you said it—
"I love you because you're N-N-Naruto, and it's a specific name for idiot, and moron, and dumbass, and loser, and I can't believe gravity betrayed me, like they said it did with that—that damned apple, and made me fall for a complete do-dobe and-and usuratonkachi—
"I love you, because I saw you in the cemetery, on the tree, on my wall, on the bed, and I decided you'd be a permanent fixture in my house, in my life—because I don't buy that bullshit forever but now I can't—can't say it without thinking of you—
"I... I love you because damn you, y-you fucking idiot, I'm talking to no one and I wish—I wish you're hearing me, right now—and I love you, I love you so much, and I really...I really don't know why..."
Sasuke was exhausted.
He curled to his side under the wash of moonshine, his heart dying in his throat, his mind playing visions behind the darkness of his eyes. Minutes, hours, years later and finally, as the moon began to hide behind the comfort of its clouds, he fell into oblivion.
He woke up, an eternity later, to the scent of jasmines floating in his room. His hand sought the warmth on his side and his eyes fluttered open, a drowsy smile curving on his lips.
Liquid gold. Melting blue. Copper wrapped in orange and black.
Ribbons of scarlet winding around the sun.
"Naruto?"
It was all he could say, her name, in the face of the smile lighting up her eyes.
"Did you mean it?" she asked, breathless. Snow dappled her hair, her eyelashes, her cheeks, her face flushed from the outside chill. She radiated light and warmth and Sasuke reached up, his arms winding around her, his fingers tangling through her hair, his eyes catching hers. His sight was blurring again and he had to hold her, claim her, before she completely faded against the treachery of his tears.
"Every word," he murmured, his lips on her neck. He breathed deeply. Jasmines. Her.
It was really her.
His throat was closing up. Emotions were choking him. In a world devoid of air, she was the only air he needed.
He breathed. He forced his words out.
"I love you, you fucking moron. Even with all those lies."
Silence answered his words. He didn't expect her to speak. She spoke enough with the brilliance in her eyes.
A sigh.
"So that's why."
Sasuke's eyes shot open.
Leaning on the wall beside his window, an orange pocketbook in one hand covering his face, was one Hatake Kakashi.
Live them out, everyday, in the safe haven of your mind—without illusions you exist, without illusions you die.