[week 33, day 2 | accidental voice]
[Sasuke opens his eyes. The rain has stopped. He had thought the hollow patter of drops on the rocks-on his skin, in the scattered puddles of blood-would be the last sounds he ever heard. And yet, tragically, his eyes are open and he finds himself staring at nothing. Blurs. He blinks rapidly. Leaves. Sky. Blue.
Other senses awaken. Birdsong and the fragrance of flower blossoms. The crescendoing buzz of cicadas. The very air around him vibrates with...life.
And it is wrong.]
Where...?
[So wrong.
Every muscle in his body tightens, tense, preparing for the next attack. Where is the damp scent of falling rain? The copper taste of blood and bile pooled at the back of his throat? He rolls to his feet, chakra bleeding out of every pore. Chakra, not blood, and weren’t his insides threatening to burst free moments before, when he collapsed on the filthy rocks, drained and dying...?]
Kai.
[A whispered hope that this is still genjutsu and where is the body? (The body, not his brother, never his brother. Nothing more than bones and muscles, at the most basic level, cells, atoms, energy, a meaningless, nameless corpse and why, why, why, WHY-Stop.) Panic slowly fills his chest, building up, the way blood had filled his punctured lung at the peak of battle, just as tightly constricting his breath, clouding his thoughts.
His pale fingers dig into the rough, jagged bark of a tree he hadn’t even noticed. A willow tree of such immense proportions that it momentarily occupies every space in his mind. He looks up, palm pressing into the coarse texture of the bark, eyes following up and up and up the trunk, higher and higher and-
”Hey, Sasuke! You bastard! I’ll touch the highest branch before you do!”
The boys raced up and up and up the twin trunks. Just as their momentum failed, they dropped back to the ground, shared a look (Sasuke’s spoke of determination, and Naruto’s spoke of...of...something indefinable, but one day maybe Sasuke would remember what ‘fun’ looked like), and they started again.
“I won’t lose to an usuratonkachi like you!” Because he always had to be better. He always had to go farther. He had to beat that idiot if he ever hoped to surpass...
The blue sky tilts at a dizzying angle. His hands tremble. The panic comes to a boil around Sasuke’s heart, climbing up into his throat, and he swallows down fear, swallows down oh no, swallows down aniki, swallows down all of the years past...
...and the ground rushes up to meet his knees. A stifling, foreign sensation seeps into his limbs; it mitigates his inner-turmoil, replacing it with the lukewarm numbness of apathy. His palms press into the springy grass, and on all fours he stays, prone, overwhelmed by the sheer vitality of the world around him. Overwhelmed by a sudden calm stealing over his mind.]
Am I dead?
[And more importantly: Did I win? And finally: Is it over?
He releases a deeply held breath he can’t remember taking and shakes his head gently to clear it.
His attention is caught by sunlight dancing across the surface of a small object lying within arm’s reach, half-buried in the grass. He would ignore it if not for the glint of metal and the artificially powered screen shining back at him. Interesting. He sits back on his knees and picks it up, turning the curious object over in his palm, examining it thoroughly.]
Hi-to-mi...
Hn.
[He slides his thumb over the smooth surface. His eyes close, and he can feel the weight of it in his hands. A fleeting thought of power and potential rises and falls like a wave in the far ocean, a ripple, really, nothing more. He can’t focus; his mind rebels against it.
He blinks hard to clear the misty blur from his eyes and when they open again, they settle on a small word just beneath the glassy surface of the...hitomi.]
Recording...? [A tone of distrust, of accusation and suspicion.]