Chapter 2

Every time he set foot within the premises of the Uchiha compound, Sasuke swapped the tattered robes of rationality for the satin ones of the sublime. Space was suspended, time transcended, and a secret entry made into a sanctuary of the sacred.

And it felt as natural as breathing, this sense of belonging.

The wonderment, which lasted only an instant, turned back time, made him three, invoked in him a sort of religiosity. It made him see in his clansmen vestiges of the faith bleared, sandalwood smeared monk; in his parents, the deities that resided in many a marbled fane and breathed ditties arcane into the air profane; in his brother, the blanket of divinity, brother being the bedrock of community: he was the soil that lent supplement to shoots of defiance, the fume that, once inhaled, stole away all memories of mistreatment and supplanted them with dreams of dominance, the ensign that, in their darkest hour, when unfurled, would determine whether they be unyielding or undone. Itachi was as the very earth, from which arose the vengeful girth of ambition's boughs.

Then wonderment soured. And Sasuke. . . Sasuke in this moment was nothing. He was a perspiring pilgrim, trundling along in the coat-tails of the holy, bequeathed, like the moon, with a borrowed identity, and of no use—not to clan and not to brother. He felt, through the vanishing halo of wonderment, the hollowness of being with no prodigious talent. Unable to help, lost in the sea of time, struggling to reconcile the storied, gloried past with a present penned by hands hostile. They were penned in, in this pigsty, rights dwindling like the last logs in a funerary pyre which in death birthed the embers of an idle repression; and here he was, chasing, like a rabid dog, after the last echoes of a lost generation.

And so too it was that sunny evening. He stepped into his community, and the central cistern, whilst filling up, did not sway to the sedate rhythms of water; it was, instead, a heaving heart, that in frothing hate defied its fate and raged in rebellion— their blood beat helplessly against the cemented confines of an oppressive rotundity, agitating that it be let flow, let free, or spilled. . . seditiously.

Then the sentiment went; reality rent the splotched canvas of half intent and thoughts of wistful bent. The cause of freedom and the call for revolution were stifled deep, set to a troubled sleep, a sickly infant, nourished nonetheless on a never-ending supply of loathing and insularity. Sasuke made his way home.

A long rest this time, perhaps. Fatigue, flitting through his form like a coil of rope conjured by that truant, sleep, sapped his power to think. It was as obtrusive as a swarm of flies in a sink, this seeping sensation that slowly spread out from clavicle to ankle. A bed, a bed! But even half dead, he was already imagining the next mission— there would be a next mission.

But only for him, his brother and a few others.

They own me, he thought. They own me. You are never free. Only death begets freedom, for in death is simplicity. You are stripped of identity, mourned by family, set free, and you step away from the spiral of human foolishness and human sentiment and become one with the firmament. Whereas life, he thought, half asleep, life was a complication: one cleaved for oneself a pathway clean, only to be derailed by muddled events unforeseen—like marriage.

Fucking marriage.

He did not hate Hinata Hyuga. No, no, he did not hate her at all. She just meant as much to him as the clod congealed on his clothes.

He did not wish to blame her, for he knew it was in all probability hard for her too, perhaps more so than for him; yet he nonetheless felt towards her a degree of resentment. He had known he would someday be married, and that too without his consent— and he was all right with that; but he had not wished to add, at eighteen, the cufflinks of marriage to the trappings of a tenuous identity already stretched thin. Away with all the redundant adornment.

He entered his house, and his movements were soft enough that no one heard. He stood still a moment, then headed straight for his father's room.

In the hallway he crossed her, and considering the way she shook, the way her eyes dropped, the way her white face clouded with a fear so visceral, he felt for an instant an iota of pity.

Then indignance replaced this—she acted as though he had sworn the foulest of oaths against her and her family. He put on an air of indifference and offered a short nod, then glided past, taking no heed of her stammered attempt at conversation.

Father was not home, and neither was Itachi. Sasuke glanced at the clock.

It was seven.

He remembered a time when father was home by five; a happier, healthier time, when father's face hadn't been smitten by a smattering of splotches or bitten by the serpent of tension. When the creased mask of death that he now wore was healthy skin which spoke of the character within.

He remembered that they had a bigger house on the other side of the village; he was free to mingle with everyone then, and not certain someones that belonged to clan alone.

He remembered a time when father smiled. When mealtimes were happy, when mother hummed freely with a sparkle of joy in her eye, when not every conversation devolved into an argument over the web of order from the other side, delivered like a stake through the heart—the Leaf was the other. He remembered a time when they were not so tired, so formal, so distant.

Even now, there came the odd instance of goodwill, that like a mirage would shimmer through in the desolation of the dining table. Then Itachi would smirk and father's eyes would soften and mother would let loose a throaty laugh; and Sasuke . . . Sasuke would be happy. Happy. Happy, if only for a few moments, because his family would go back to being a family, and not strangers bound to each other's company by a thread of duty. He remembered all this still, though the memories were so remote and so far removed, that it felt at times like the happiest dream he had woken from.

He contemplated going to the kitchen to greet mother, but mother would tell him that he talk to his wife; she would chastise him, as she had on the day of his wedding, for not taking his duties towards the girl more seriously, and for seemingly resenting her for no fault of hers at all.

So he skipped that, in the hope she would understand and forgive; made his way to his room, blessedly empty; and, without changing, collapsed into his cushy bed. He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.