[accidental video] Week 3, Day 7
[ Death.
Begins and ends like a lightning strike, like a cavalcade of crows rushing from the trees, like wind wrenching the branches until the leaves tear at the thundering grey sky. (It was raining; Kisame had been there, had commented on -- )Bleeding profusely, from his eyes down his cheeks. Falling into his mouth. Salty. Thicker than the rain ( Read more... )
Begins and ends like a lightning strike, like a cavalcade of crows rushing from the trees, like wind wrenching the branches until the leaves tear at the thundering grey sky. (It was raining; Kisame had been there, had commented on -- )Bleeding profusely, from his eyes down his cheeks. Falling into his mouth. Salty. Thicker than the rain ( Read more... )
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This is an absurd thought - but perhaps this whole thing is absurd. Not that it necessarily strikes him as impossible, or even terribly unlikely. The dead are not really dead in this place. They are mostly like everyone else, breathing and walking and dreaming. People die, people return. Nothing is ever settled in this world. And intellectually, Sasuke has known that Itachi might return.
Still, this is - too much. The gnawing hollow feeling that ate it's way right through him when he found that Itachi's Hitomi was gone, and what he had thought was the bottom, the absolute lowest point he could reach, fell out into a wide chasm where he would just keep sinking and not stop. Drowning and never drowned. And when he thinks he'll be crushed by it, compacted - he breaks a surface. And breathes.
And is unsure.
What to think. There it is. How to feel. He can't identify an emotion exactly. Just - something sharp. Like cold. Ice water on bare skin. Itachi speaks, and the words are strange and meaningless. Is this because ( ... )
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[ ( Is Sasuke whole?
His clothes had been torn, eyes streaked with animal panic; Itachi had seen eyes like those before {hated the wars which produced them, the losses whih lent them to orphans}, but Sasuke, Sasuke's eyes -- he had created Sasuke's eyes, the look in Sasuke's eyes, and he had reached, and the eyes had grown, wide and lined with red that as not Sharingan but blood, blood vessels, but Itachi had only thought: Poke.Poke ( ... )
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Well. He can't exactly bring himself to think anything snide about Itachi right now (Itachi - his voice now is as sweet as ever, as when he would call Sasuke inside for dinner, as when he would tell Sasuke that he was not even worth killing) but he is close. He is practically thinking the words - god damn you you nonsensical fuck - but they are tinged with such absolute worshipful affection that they are reshaped beyond recognition.
His words, his thoughts, are cut short. By that dominating need, to see him. It asserts itself over all else. It sinks in its teeth. It will not release its hold.
To face him in person, so that he can have more than just that voice. Itachi speaks, and the words are - perfect, just to feel his chakra, a glow, a presence which never leaves him, which Sasuke can just reach for, even when he is out training, even when Itachi is on the other side of the village, it's right there - strange. Itachi is...? He is speaking about Sasuke winning. Winning, and losing. ( ... )
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Understands. Recognizes. In life, he made a decision. A choice. He adopted a pretense, a reality; he did it, yes, him. One wrong. A thousand wrongs. That unspeakable dead. Itachi did like this: The idea that others would find it unspeakable, would find him a thing to detest, because if shinobi are tools, this is the perfect capacity of the tool, because so long as they detest him, they are spared of the action, and therefore his action spared someone. Spared more than it ended. In the grand scale ( ... )
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[ The spirits are speaking to him. Izanami? Amaterasu? Or another.
Victory. This word is subjective. Itachi lost. He had felt his body dying, but Sasuke's body would still stand. Victory. Itachi wanted this. Itachi wanted Sasuke's body to remain standing. So it was a loss, yet also a victory. Sasuke's victories are Itachi's victories.
( Itachi's victories are the victories of Uchiha. Itachi's victories are the victories of Akatsuki. It is only Itachi's loss that is Itachi's victory, for Sasuke is the only chance Itachi has; Sasuke is salvation, come to deliver him, come to break free, to move forward where Itachi could only tread in circles. ) ]
It was his victory. I wished for him to have it. There was nothing more I could do, but he still has opportunities. I had long ago concluded it would be time to move on.
I will ask what spirit you are, if you wish to tell me.
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If sanity were a pre-requisite for conversation in Gensokyo, then Sakuya would never have any. Frankly, she speaks to him because she finds him mildly entertaining - and moreso, because there is little else to do when there is so very little here. Without Remilia, Flandre, Patchouli or China, it is as if... something... she is unsure.]
Izayoi Sakuya. My apologies. It is rude to speak without first introduction.
But I am no spirit, I must insist that you refer to me as a living being.
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A living being is in this world?
[ Spoken as if they were discussing the weather. ]
That is curious. I cannot think what you would be here for.
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I'm guessing you hit your head while you got here.
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[ Another one? And one who seems to have some curiosity about the injuries he sustained prior to his defeat. ]
I suffered blows, yes, but that was not the manner of my death.
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Yes, I can make no mistake of that. My condition was certainly fatal and it was becoming impossible to move. I could feel the hold of death on me.
I suppose you are another living being, then? Interesting.
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People talk like this? I expect entertainment not dry cardboard scripts.
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I suppose you will have to seek your entertainment elsewhere.
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Don't worry. Even the most serious man will lose it eventually. It's in the cards, it's the lay of the land...
Looks to me you're already halfway there, besides!
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[ Itachi could reply: I went to war when I was four years old. I took my first life at that age. It is unlikely, he thinks, that anything will affect him. ]
You are free to try, if your desire is to unsettle me.
Perhaps it would be good to feel unsettled once more.
[ Because the truth is, sometimes he lies awake at night and thinks of his dead clan, of the bodies of his mother, who gave birth to him, who smiled at him, who stroked his hair, and his father -- you are truly my child, my child, my child -- and he had slashed through them, through them with his body glazed in perspiration, only that, only that, and all the thoughts of his duty focused on one, clear, cut point. One motive. One goal. No room for anything else.
Something in him may have ached, once, but he smothered it. Refused to remember. Only the duty. (The anger at them for having -- to him --
-- no, he felt no anger. Anger is weakness.
Those thoughts were not truly his. Only lies, mixed signals. In all the pretense. Things do get crossed.) ]
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Second, the name the man utters. Sasuke. Rin remembers: the name of the very first person she met in Kannagara. Not very talkative, and not someone she has ever spoken to again. Maybe she should do that. At least thank him for giving her some general pointers at the start, even if he was reluctant about it and didn't seem to intend to be helpful. Of course, it might always be that this guy means someone entirely different named Sasuke.
At the end of it all, Rin decides to speak. Maybe she can help this man a little.]
Ah... hello?
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[ A video, this time -- of a girl. She looks ... normal enough. But what is her intention towards him? ]
Yes?
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Uh... could it be that you're new around here?
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. . .
So you all truly insist that this is another world? A world of living beings?
I do not know why I am here. I was dying. If I am alive --
[ This is all wrong. Where is Kisame? Where are the others? This is . . . . inconceivable. What could the odds have been of such a miraculous event transpiring? ]
Do you know who has done this to me?
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