33Forgiveness has never come easily to Sasuke.
Even before the Massacre, he's always known that he tends to cradle his hurt like one might cradle a seed, hoping it will bloom.
And Sasuke's hatred did bloom, watered by the blood of his slain kin and the memory of Akari's limp body held by the throat by the man he had thought the world of.
Sasuke knows he isn't the forgiving type.
After all, forgiveness is not the way of the Uchiha, at the very least, not in Uchiha Sasuke's eyes.
Maybe he learned it at Akari's side, in the womb when the world hadn't seen it fit to separate and harm the twins. And even now, the two are so tightly woven into each other, sometimes forgetting where one ends and the other begins, and so instead, Sasuke holds grudges like he holds Akari's hands, tight and never once faltering.
It is a shameful thing to admit, but Sasuke could never see what plagues his twin sister's dreams. Could never fathom what makes her dead to the world, a hostage to Itachi's torture till she forgets that she lives and has not died with the rest of their Clan.
Though he is Akari's brother - the eldest by a few seconds because even then, even then the twins could not bear to be apart from each other - he cannot take her suffering, cannot take away her pain. it tears him inside. makes him seethe at Itachi, at Konoha, at the world for making his twin sister curl into herself as if she is not everything that is good and precious in this world.
after all, how can someone who loves as beautifully as Akari be anything as good?
(Perhaps his definition of good is not one that many share.
God knows what Naruto thinks, thinks of being a hero - the epitome of goodness - yet would sooner sacrifice his team for strangers who will never thank him for it. If Naruto is good, then Sasuke doesn't want it, doesn't even want the smallest possibility that he forgets what it means to love his sister, too caught up in trying to love a cruel world instead)
To be frank, the Uchiha heir thinks he loves and hates Naruto in the same breath. Loves him because Akari loves her sunshine and they are two halves of a whole, and so Sasuke loves the boy with the sun for hair too. loves him because he is Naruto, the dumbass that understands what it means to be feared by the Village.
But Sasuke does hate him.
Hate his blind selfishness, his blind hope in a world that is rotten and wretched and cruel because how can their sunshine forgive and love a world that has cut Akari in pieces till she no longer remembers how she was before and has rebuilt herself with bloodied fingers from the shards?
Sasuke has promised - the first time that Akari held him once he woke up, his sweet sister with trembling limbs that held him so tight as if she dared not to let go and lose him - to protect her from the world.
From Itachi.
From all that could harm her.
And as he stands before Akari's hospital bed where his twin sister lays, pale and unmoving, he doesn't know what to do.
Sasuke knows that his sister isn't dead.
He would have felt it otherwise.
Felt the other half of his soul die, and he thinks that the world would lose its colors if it lost her, would lose everything that made it bearable.
But it hurts.
It burns.
How could he fail like that?
How could he fail and fail and here she is, once again hurt by a world Sasuke could not keep at bay?
It's Kakashi's fault for keeping him weak and sheltered.
It's Naruto's fault because the boy cannot take a life.
It's Konoha's fault.
It's Itachi's fault.
(It's Sasuke's fault.)
The guilt gnaws at his heart, a ravenous beast that was birthed by Akari's screams.
Sasuke doesn't know if those were real, the ones that Itachi showed him, showed his sister be murdered again and again and again, but he will never forget them. Will never forget how agony and hatred had lost all meaning when he heard those heartwrenching screams and he felt like he was shattered and remade by coarse and uncaring hands.
"She looks so small," Naruto whispers from his side, too close to Akari's hospital bed. Sasuke clenches his hands till they form fists, till his nails dig into his flesh instead of Naruto's stupid stupid eyes. "I never thought Aka-chan could be so small."
Because she does.
She looks small and frail, the most vunerable that Sasuke has seen except for their mornings. Swallowed by thick blankets and the constant and steady sound of her heartbeat.
His twin sister looks alone in the bed.
Fragile in a way that only Sasuke has ever gotten to see her, and he almost wants to claw at Naruto's eyes and remove that sight from him because he doesn't deserve it. doesn't deserve to see Akari's smile, to get a taste of her kindness - true and untouched by the courtesies she must play for the world. doesn't deserve to call her so softly when he almost killed her.
"Don't call her that." Even Sasuke is surprised by the bitterness that clogs his throat and makes his words hateful. But once it has slipped, once the damn has opened, Sasuke finds the words too easy to spill, and so he carries on. "You don't get to call her that. Not when you abandoned her."
Naruto blinks and stutters, at a loss for words, and his gestures grow frantic, like a man will hold onto the nose that hangs him for dear life, his last desperate attempt at living.
"I didn't abandon her," the blonde protests and Sasuke's hand is quick, too quick, but maybe it's because a child will always turn to its parent's exemple and Father has always been quick with his hand too.
They are both surprised, two friends - or the closest thing Sasuke could ever come to - simply staring at each other, eyes wide and Naruto, a hand to his already reddening cheek.
Sasuke could have said sorry.
But Father never did apologize. And Father was respected as much as he had been loved and if Sasuke had wanted to be Itachi before the man showed his true colors, every child wants to become their parent, thinking it means to be loved.
"You let Sand live," Sasuke spits as he digs his heel into the floor, into his anger. "Your mercy almost killed my sister."
"b-but," Naruto's voice trembles, shatters, but the dark-haired boy has no kindness left for his sun. "it's not my fault."
The laugh - bitter and scornful - slips from Sasuke's lips like a well-rehearsed scoff.
"Isn't it?" Sasuke is sardonic, biting in his answer and before Naruto can try to respond, he carries on, voice growing louder and louder, like a wave that will crash into a ship grows larger in the midst of a storm. "You were the one to spare them. You were the one who believed they were harmless." Sasuke's pointed finger digs into Naruto's chest, presses as though it could pierce skin and make the blonde bleed. "And like always, my sister has to pay for it!"
Naruto doesn't answer.
He stands frozen, eyes unblinking, staring at Sasuke, and the Uchiha heir, who thinks he sees the beginning of tears forming in them.
"Mahh," a voice drawls and Sasuke's eyes flash scarlet. His teeth dig into the soft flesh of his cheek and it is only when copper spills on his tongue that Sasuke glances back.
He wishes he didn't. Didn't have to look at yet another failure, yet another proof that it is them against the world and no one else can matter if he wants his beloved sister to be happy.
"Akari-chan wouldn't want her favorite boys fighting, ne?" Kakashi teases and if Naruto melts into his hand as their teacher ruffles his blonde hair, Sasuke bristles like an angry cat and slaps away the gloved hand that tries to do the same to him.
"What do you know of my sister, Hatake," he sneers, lips curling into a derisive grimace, hateful and wrathful.
"Now, Sasuke," Kakashi's eye crinkles, but Sasuke knows that his poor excuse of a teacher is tense, and has curled his height as if shame weighed heavily on him.
Good.
Let him choke on it.
"Don't be so mean to your teacher. You know we all love Akari-chan here."
"Don't you mean Rin?"
Hatake Kakashi freezes at the name.
And suddenly, Sasuke can finally, truly see his teacher. Not as this mentor like figure that - in a Konoha that fears his progress more than it wants it, sees a monster in Sasuke's shadow for his only crime is to share that same monster's blood - had allowed him to grow stronger but instead as the wrecked, completely shattered corpse of a child soldier.
you guys are all the same, aren't you? Sasuke thinks bitterly.
The same as every adult who sees whoever they want to see, who sees no child but instead a blank, fleshed canvas to mold and carve to whatever they wish.
They are the same.
Father had seen Itachi in Sasuke's shadow.
Sasuke isn't blind. He had seen how Father had searched for Itachi's genius in his second born's every step, had seen the love that the golden heir bore and then lost, and Sasuke gained for a few months and is it wrong to sometimes miss it?
But he had never wanted Akari to bear that same hurt.
"Who is she?" the question is quieter than what Sasuke means. The beginning of a storm instead of its devastating wrath.
But it is as though Sasuke cannot wrap his head around it, around the mere idea, and so, he cannot help but be incredulously soft when he asks, "Who do you love instead of my sister?"
Kakashi doesn't respond.
His eye, lost to something that Sasuke will never see. It makes him think of Akari, who sometimes wakes up with a heartwrenching cry, and her eyes are still lost to whatever horror she had just lived.
But Sasuke cares not for his teacher the same way he cares for and adores Akari.
his heart has been shattered too often, is the ruins of the Uchiha massacre and it only holds Akari.
and who is to blame for it?
the child?
or the adults?
"What-?" Naruto's eyes dart between Sasuke and Kakashi. "What do you mean? Kaka-sensei loves Akari."
Sasuke scoffs, his lips curled and his teeth bared into the mockery of a snarl as he turns to the silver-haired man.
"Go on," he says, taunting. "Tell him."
Tell him that your love is a lie.
Tell him that you broke my sister's heart.
Tell him why we should have never trusted you.
But Hatake Kakashi is a coward when it comes to his ghosts, and with Minato's son looking at him and Obito's ghost grim smile, he cannot. "Of course I love her," the older man reassures Naruto.
And Sasuke
Sasuke laughs.
Because he is Akari's brother.
Her twin.
and yet he couldn't protect her from this fucking world.
Betrayals are odd things.
Cruel, too, but they are odd all the same.
They taint you.
Not in the way that blood stains your hands, stains it so crimson no amount of washing will make it go away.
Instead, it takes the world's colors.
It's warmth.
Ah.
Perhaps Akari is being dramatic.
Hadn't she say so before?
She's used to betrayals. Has come to expect the knife sooner than the kindness so few tried to bestow on her. she sees enemies where friends are. sees monsters instead of humans, but is she so wrong?
She won't make the same mistake. Cannot because this time around, it is just not her - not just her shattered and beaten heart - at stake, but something good that should not know of the agony it comes with.
Sasuke would have worried if he knew where she is now.
Her brother worries like that, likes to take her hands and press kisses to its knuckles, regardless of how bruised they are, or how the blood she has already shed became scarlet gloves she will never be rid of, not that she wants to.
Akari has grown to like the scarlet, likes it better than the scars that littered Stella's wrist, the proclamation of her weakness for the world to see.
In the middle of a decrepit cementary with more vines and plants than stone, the gravestone she is standing before is standing out like a beacon.
It is well taken care of.
Polished, untouched by the trials of time. she wants to destroy it. destroy the proof of a love she had thought was hers, but in truth, was not even hers to laid claim on.
The name Rin is carved into it. Surrounded by lilies.
Nohara Rin.
Akari's teeth grit as she chews on the soft flesh of her cheek.
Blood spills on her tongue.
A fitting offering before the altar of her suffering.
Nohara Rin.
She must have been perfect to be so loved.
Akari's lips part. They tremble, waiver as words form themselves, and then die on her tongue a pitiful death. grief has made a shackle of her wrath, and instead of hurting the one who did her, she turns the knife to herself. like she has always done.
"I wonder how you died."
The words are callous, but Akari cannot bring herself to care. And once the damn has opened, there is no stopping the onslaught of words from tumbling from her trembling lips, words that only her and the dead will hear, but if someone would have heard her, maybe they could have saved them all.
"I wonder how amazing you are," she hesitates there, bites violently on her bottom lip. "It's not fair." She sounds like a child, and maybe she is, but no child should grieve, not a friend, but instead the sweet illusion that dad loved me.
But Akari has always been good at it.
To see what she wants, to hold with wavering and weak hands something that will never stay.
"Kakashi loves you more than me." The very thought is an unhealed wound, and Akari falls to her knees. She takes a hold of the gravestone, pressing her forehead to it as if it could save her. "You're a corpse; you died, and yet he loves you more. It's not fair."
The wind howls and bites at her calves, but Akari does not feel it. Her fist clenches, claws at the stone, and the grass dies with her heart, becoming yellow and frail.
"Why couldn't he love me too?"
Oh, little girl.
You ask that as if you were deserving of love in the first place.
It is only three weeks after Sand's invasion that Uchiha Akari and Nara Shikamaru exchange vows as their betrothal contract is signed.
It is an intimate thing, between the two of them alone and none of the Nara Clan is any of the wiser for they would not like a vow that demands from their heir what they believe is not needed to be given.
Duty, after all, has never been romantic.
And forever is but a meager dream.
But Shikamaru loves Akari enough to give her this, signs even an additional contract, promising to care for her own Clan as he does his.
It is a sweet promise.
But the ghost of Kakashi lingers behind Akari, and a faceless girl haunts her every time she catches sight of her reflection. Though the Uchiha heiress doesn't know what that ghost looks like, has never seen its wretched face, it does not stop the voices from purring, from looking between both girls - dead and buried - and laugh. Laugh because though the two girls are dead, only one is still loved.
Only one is worthy to remember.
Stella wonders if Ryan will remember the girl who died so that he could live.
She wonders if it had been worth it.
(it hadn't.)
"Why did you send me a proposal, Shika?" Akari asks.
She's with her friend, and though they have become murderers, child soldiers, they are still Shikamaru and Akari at the end of the day.
Still, two children who have had their backs curved under the weight of the world.
Two children who have vowed forever, and Akari wants to carve that vow in her chest and his, till their blood have spilled into a crimson river and their flesh have been torn by each other's hand, and Shikamaru won't forget.
There are many things that will happen in the future. Things that neither can control for the world will spin and spin, uncaring of its mortals that falter beneath its cruelty.
But for now, the future is still far, kept at bay from their little clearing where only the past and the present exist.
Shikamaru's hand is warm in hers. Warm and grounding.
"Why ask now?" he says. Evades, and Akari's scars are raw, cruel and the whispers echoe everywhere and anywhere, and so, Akari's grip tightens on his hands, tightens and tightens like a nose around the condemned neck till he struggles no more.
"Answer me," she says, and Shikamaru winces. She does not care for his wince, not when she has been shattered and remade, not when she has crumbled and died a lifetime ago. "Shikamaru."
It's a plea. Not quite begging, never again, but it is a close thing, so similar if you closed your eyes, it would feel the same. Her grip tightens, warms till it becomes scorching. "Akari!-" her fiancé snaps. "Let go, you're hurting me."
And sure enough, there are bruises beneath her hands, blue that has bloomed under her touch and she thinks of yellow spots on molten skin.
You're hurting me.
It never stopped anyone before.
But she isn't them.
She isn't the same as those who laughed as they slaughtered her.
Right?
Akari loosens her grip, reluctant as if she will lose him if he lets go, yet she does loosen her grip but only slightly, and Shikamaru rolls his eyes at her. She thinks it is fond, but she doesn't quite know anymore, is not as surefooted as she once had been.
"You ask why I chose you?" he asks once more, as if making sure that this is the bed she chose to lie in.
Akari nods. After all, there is nothing quite as tragic as the desire of a wounded person for another wound. Nothing quite as loathsome as that, too.
"Because it was the best logical choice," Shikamaru answers, straightforward and uncaring even as a future - bright and innocent, the closest to a fairy tale the world would ever permit - shatters beneath his feet and thoughtless words.
Or perhaps, they aren't as thoughtless as they seem, and the cry of Rin, of Kakashi's lie echoes in Akari's head as she swallows a hurt life like it is poison.
It shouldn't hurt, not when it draws line that Akari needs to be aware of, and yet it does.
Perhaps it is because Shikamaru says it so matter-factly, as if it has always been his sole thought, the sole motive behind his proposal, and what happens when Akari is no longer the best logical choice?
What happens when he sees you without the lies? Will that forever still be yours?
His brown eyes then turn to her, softly inquisitive. His thumb rubs the callous on her palm, intertwines, and takes hold of her hand, but unlike Akari's touch, there is no blue or yellow that blooms.
Instead, she thinks it shatters something within her, a shard becoming smitters beneath his hands.
"You?" he asks.
Akari isn't quite sure if he asks because it is the polite thing to do, and as heir, he's always used to falling back on his training.
The Uchiha heiress has found it happening more often, how the world takes away her best friend bit by bit till she keeps hold of his shadow better than she can keep him by her side.
Their vow aches like a missing limb. Ashes on her tongue, the innocence of a bride burns.
There were few reasons why she had accepted.
Because Shikamaru will be Sasuke's best ally.
Because the Nara Clan is noble and strong.
"Same here," Akari answers with a smile. Beautiful and loving, the very opposite of the world she has been born into.
Althea is laughing.
There. In the corner of the room, seated on the white couch, she has always liked to haunt.
Akari smiles at Shikamaru because it is the only thing she knows when yet another piece of her heart is shattered.
"It's the logical choice." because you are were my best friend.
And Akari drops Shikamaru's hand as Althea's words echo once more.
you just weren't worth it.
Uchiha Akari once said that it was her and her brother who were against the world.
She has never once wavered in that regard.
Because the sun will die so that the moon will rise, and Uchiha Akari will always choose her brother.
In a way, she thinks with twisted lips and a heart so full, it is Sasuke's in every way, it is almost like choosing 's born loving him.
She will die loving him. Akari has always known it.
Sasuke glances at her, eyes furrowed, worried even as he throws in yet another shirt in his bag. If anything, she feels flattered, that he cannot tear his eyes off her.
It is a stark constrat to Jean's eyes, Jean's eyes who always seemed to drift elsewhere, always more mesmerized by someone better. Akari smiles and steps closer to him till she can gently pull him into her arms, burying her head into the crook of his neck till she can feel his heart beating as though it is living in her chest.
"Are you sure?" Sasuke asks. His arms wrap themselves too around her, warm and so familiar as his voice washes over her like purifying rain. Althea's laughter has faded away, as has Ella's voice. Instead, all she can hear is Sasuke's heartbeat, his breaths.
Akari drops her cheek on his shoulder. "I told you before," she says softly. With the patience of a girl, you could tell a thousand times she was worthy, but she'd never believe you. With the understanding only the other half of your soul could hold. "It's us against the world."
"It might be us against the world, but," Sasuke disentangles from her, and she feels almost empty, the shell of a person without its heart and everything that makes it human, "you've done so much already. You've given so much for us." He craddles her face into his hands, callouses kissing the softness of her cheeks that have not shed the last of the childish roundness. "Let me do it for you, too. Let me be the price for once."
Akari shakes her head, tries to, but her brother's grip is as strong as it is loving. "I don't want you to pay any price," there, her words grow bitter. "Not anymore."
"And you think I can bear you paying it instead?"
But isn't that the way the world works?
Isn't that the truest form of life, where you use one another till there is nothing left, where you build cathdrals and palaces on splitered bone and decrepicts corpses?
"If I could," and her brother whispers it like a confession, like a lover whispering sweet nothings under the cover of the moon, but God, Akari wants to believe it. "I'd create this world anew so it won't hurt us anymore."
But no Gods can make something beautiful, nothing holy ever is, and humanity has always have found it easy to instill a violence in itself, a violence so deeply drilled into their very bones that nothing can make it less than theirs.
Monsters and humans.
The reflection and its mirror.
"But you can't." Sasuke's lips press into a thin line at that. "I could. Orochimaru would make me great."
Great enough to change the world his fervent eyes promise her, but Akari remembers a different time, a different life where she would have carved herself opened, ripped her gut opened and everything else if it meant that something would change.
If it meant for something in this damned world would be gentle.
But there is nothing gentle in the autopsy of a broken girl Nothing but bloodspatter and rot that has settled till you remember that that very same broken girl has been alive at first, and not this corpse you now see.
"There's always a price." Akari's eyes flicker to Sasuke's lips, then lingers on his cheekbones. They've grown sharper - not because her twin brother is growing older, but rather because he had not eaten when she was in a coma. As if he has stopped existing when she did. And maybe, it happened. It wouldn't surprise her. If anything, it makes her smile, and the sight alone is enough for Sasuke to slip away the mad grief he's taken to wear - ragged and all sharp edges - till he is no longer a shinobi, no longer a killer, but just Sasuke.
Just her brother.
Just her heart.
"It's a price I'd gladly pay," Sasuke murmurs back. Unlike Akari, his gaze hasn't wavered since it dropped to her lips, though his thumb slowly caresses the apple of her cheeks. "You know I don't mind it."
Akari doesn't answer.
She does not think he would like her answer.
Does not think that the other half of her sould will not like to know that his twin sister has long since wrung out her girlhood like death, has become the beast that has taken a taste for blood as she licked her own wounds. that his sacrifice is a lifetime too late.
"Akari," he says her name like it is the only thing that matters, like the sun will set by her will alone. "I need to do this."
"What if I asked you not to?"
What if Akari asks her brother to stay?
To stay in this village that will sooner feast upon the ruins of their legacy, that reviles and loves them in the same breath because it is safer.
Safer in knowing that Akari has weaved her web, weaved it so that nothing can dare and harm hers without strangling themselves.
What if Akari asks her brother - the same brother who lives not for her, but for his revenge, lives for the specter of a family that had not cared enough - to choose her?
don't break my heart.
Sasuke's thumb trails down her cheek. Down the curve of her jaw. Settles on her bottom lip and his finger is warm, like a brand. "Then, I'd stay."
Akari's breath stutters.
She falters as her chest collapses onto itself, suddenly no longer able to breathe, no longer to do anything but beat for Sasuke.
he'd stay.
he'd choose her.
No one ever did.
No one chose Stella.
"You know I'd never leave you behind." but everyone did. There, the voice sounds young. The shattering of a child. Stella's voice and it trembles, trembles and breaks.
Akari doesn't respond.
She doesn't breathe.
Sasuke takes a step forward, their chests meeting as if their hearts were longing to reach each other and finally become one.
His eyes meet her own.
Soft.
Loving.
They hold a gentleness Akari never could.
Not if she is looking at her reflection.
In face of Akari's body, she cannot help but hate it.
But Sasuke?
Sasuke looks at it as if it is perfect.
"You know I'll always put you first."
"You shouldn't." Akari isn't sure who is speaking, her or Stella, her - the mad, broken cusp of a burned out star or the burnt child who loves the fire that burns her every time. But she does speak, flinches away like she always does, the wave retiring into the ocean. "It's rotten work."
"Not for me." Sasuke shakes his head. A curl tumbles close to his temple. Akari wants to tuck it away. To twirl it around her finger. "Not if it's you."
"And when you grow tired of it?"
Because it is not an if, it never is, because the deadline is nearer and nearer, the Damacles sword falling prey to gravity inch by inch.
There, Sasuke's grip becomes harsher. It is still love, but she recognizes Father's touch in the harshness of his grip, the flickering of embers till a fire is about to be birthed once more.
"The past already haunts you so much," her twin brother quietly observes with the grief of a mourner. Akari flinches and he grows frantic. Like he is afraid she will wilt. Then, frenzy melts into begging. "Don't start grieving the future too."
He shifts, his weight settling on the tip of his feet instead of his heels, and he presses a firm kiss on her forehead. "I don't think I could bear it," his voice dies into a whisper as Sasuke repeats himself. "I don't think I could survive it."
"Shika?" Nara Shikamaru hums under his breath, eyes flickering towards the girl with who he will spend the rest of his life with.
His best friend.
his duty
His future wife.
The mother of his future children.
It's a sweet thought, one that makes his lips curve softly at the mere thought.
The weight of his genius and of Konoha hangs heavily on his shoulder, yet there is something almost liberating in knowing that Akari will be there.
She's a constant of his childhood, the puzzle that grew and grew and never fails to make him wonder about her.
And though he cannot see Akari's eyes, the mere sight of her nestled into his side is enough.
After all, they still have eternity left together.
"Yeah?" he says softly. His voice rumbles into his chest, like the soft hum of thunder, and he wonders if Akari can feel it as surely as she hears the race of his heart, pressed as she is to him. He wonders if she can hear how easily she could make or break him.
"Do you think anything will change?"
Change?
Well, Shikamaru supposes that change is inevitable.
Evolution cannot come without change, though he does know of the frail balance they must keep.
Change can unravel as much as it can uphold, and Konoha is already a beacon of strength, already the best in all things that matter, so why would you change something that is already working?
But it is Akari who asks it, Akari with her voice soft and brittle, as though it is made of glass, and he thinks that it is a rare sight indeed. Shikamaru presses his cheek closer to the crown of her head, molds himself closer to her till he thinks they are only Shikamaru and Akari, not heirs to their respective clans, not shinobi of the Leaf.
"Things always change," he responds. But his fiancé is left unsatisfied with his answer, he can feel it.
"But us?" she insists.
It's odd.
Akari is a dutiful, sweet girl and has never liked to seek any kind of disonnance, any kind of conflict with those she loves.
Shikamaru wonders with a child's innocent hope if it means that he is closer to her than the rest of the world. Even closer than Sasuke, who is her twin, her past, but there is a future looming before them all, a future in which Akari is to stand by his side, his other half, the one to shoulder the weight of the crown alongside him. Sasuke's sister she might be, but she will be Shikamaru's wife.
His future.
Ah.
Nara Shikamaru has never been the type to linger on the future, on the tangible dream of what will happen. There are already too many things to take notice of, too many variables and webs that make it hard to navigate through its treacherous depths.
"Nothing between us has to change." Akari shifts and there, Shikamaru's breath hitches, hitches because her eyes have always been beautiful, but the scarlet in them is as mesmerizing as it is tragic, for Shikamaru has read of her clan's lineage, has read the cost and thinks he would have rather her never to unlock such power.
As the Nara heir, as a Konoha shinobi, such though is blastemy, treason that Shikamaru conceals into his chest like a well-loved secret. But as Shika, simple and love-struck Shika, well. Shikamaru wants Akari to be happy, to feel as though nothing will harm her for Shikamaru is her future husband, the shield that will take away anything that would dare to try and harm her.
"But if it does?"
Never has he heard her so unsure.
It tears at his heartstring, breaks something in his chest because who dared to make her so hesitant, so wounded when she is Uchiha Akari, Nara Akari, the sun and the moon of this village?
"It won't," Shikamaru affirms, pressing a kiss to her forehead, lips soft and insistent on the softness of her skin, and he hopes she feels the love he tries to pour as if it could cleanse all of the tragedy she has seen before.
If Sasuke could not protect his twin sister, could not stop her from baring sight to something so heartwrenching her eyes turned from black to red, well, Shikamaru has no choice but to step up, has no choice but to take Akari's hand and never let go.
And though his fiancé does not respond, Shikamaru knows her well enough that something inside of her eases.
There's something almost beautifully ironic how the mere thought of falling in love with you is a chapter
I will never allow to be written, before the ink even has time to dry and settle onto the page.
For here you are
As if merely asking me questions was like pulling needles and pins
As my heart was a gruesome sight
That if you could choose
You'd close your eyes to
And I guess I cannot hold it against you
Not truly
You owe me nothing
No love, no kindness
But I think I would have liked
To think that someone thought me worthy
To know From each stem
(if love is the way that Sasuke knows me, then you do not love me)
What if Akari told you that she fell in love once. Would you believe her?
Perhaps not Uchiha Akari, not the girl who knew duty better than anyone, whose family had turned against the world, and she had been too young to differentiate attention for affection.
But Stella had fallen in love. She had loved wholly, and that, Akari thinks, is something that rings through a lifetime after. It has slipped into the brokenness that makes this shadow of two girls, the culmination of rotten hopes and dreams, turned into ashes.
Never the poem but the poet.
Never the beloved but the beholden.
"I'm sorry, my lady," the guard is soft, as if speaking to a child. A civilian, Akari recognizes, notices the lightness of his shoulders, the absence of wounds clear on the softness of his skin. He's new to the Nara Clan Guard rotation. Akari has never seen him before. Though she guesses with the Sand Invasion, most of their more capable force has been sent out to assure the world of Konoha's strength.
But Akari disgresses.
"I am sure my fiancé would not mind me waiting," she insists. The ghost of Mother lingers, claws into her clothed shoulders as if wishing to draw blood. where is your smile, dearest? it asks. what an unbecoming sight you have become without it.
But the guard shakes his head. "I have received no clear instructions as to your visit, my lady, I cannot."
your visit
The sting is sharp, and though the words do not mean to cause harm, they draw blood nevertheless. A Nara civilian, intelligent he may be, does not understand the intricity of words. Of hidden messages. Akari smiles and it feels like a knife. "But you have received instructions."
"I did." There, the guard bites his lip. He's older than Akari though not as much as to appear any less different. And, she guesses that in Konoha, well, their age never does matter, only that they are able and loyal. However, they are things that children know not of, have yet to learn, be it at the hand of an adult or at this world's darkness, and it is only the more prevalent in this guard - a child playing at dress-up with its youthful cruelty. "He just didn't mention you."
Ah.
It seems as though he finally registers the weight of his words, the blunder he has done because a Nara must always aid the liege, always serve the main line and soon enough, Akari will be part of it. "I did not mean it like that, I-"
Akari lifts her hand.
Regally and the civilian shuts his mouth. She has no need for his empty words, after all. She should be kinder, she knows. Kinder and mature, what the others wish her to be, always the dutiful one, always the one they need not to worry about.
But Akari has never been good at it as she would have liked, though she holds onto her masks with the desperation of a wounded child, sometimes, when you pretend for so long, wear the mask for too long, it melts onto your skin, settles on it till you need to carve it out.
"Don't," she says, and the guard shifts guiltily. As if he knows there is something wrong, knows that there is something to be saved, but he is but a cog in the machine, something so unsignificant, it matters little if he does anything at all.
"It's fine," Akari's lips feel heavy as she stretches them into a polite smile. "It's fine."
She can still catch Shikamaru another time, still try her best to carve herself into his chest till he does not know what it means to love another than her.
After all, they say distance makes the heart fonder, but Akari is not content with only having fondness as a string, as a leash to hold on.
Perhaps it is unfair, to weave such a web around Shikamaru. To want him to need her as though she is the sun and him, a starved plant. To love her the only way Akari knows love when it isn't Sasuke, obsessive and wrong, a love so twisted that he will sooner lose a limb than lose his love for her.
It is not healthy, nor kind of her to wish such thing on her best friend fiancé.
But it is necessary.
You know, Stella had been in love once.
So fully, she had not know what to do when the boy she had loved so fully made a home in her chest and then left it a gaping wound. As if she is without a limb and a heart, and she must make do, but every breath she takes, she remembers that there is something missing and instead of being whole, she is a patchwork of something else.
As for Akari
well, Akari does not love Shikamaru.
Not in the way she had loved that first love of hers.
Not in the way that Akari loves Sasuke as if it is the only good thing she will ever do, as if it is the only thing to be done.
But she thinks she could learn to love him.
But for all the duty that Akari pretends to uphold, she is Sasuke's twin sister before she is anything else, his before she is the world's, and her brother needs to leave.
Too stifled among the Leaf, Sasuke seeks absolution outside of the village that has ignored the massacre of their kin.
If Konoha will not see him rise as it is his right, then Orochimaru will have to do. Will have to do to quench her beloved brother's insaistible thirst for power, for something that will keep the world at bay, for a knife to threaten all those who would seek to harm them. Sasuke still flinches at the monster's shadows, at those shells of humans, more monsters than mortal flesh, unused that he is to see the world the way that Akari sees it.
It is a shame the Hokage died before he could witness the fate he has condemned himself to.
It is a shame the Hokage died a hero and not as the coward and loathsome man that he is, so content in his own hypocrisy he does not care for collateral.
It is a damn fucking shame Akari could not rip his throat, dig her fanged teeth into the softness of his jugular, feel the stuttering of his breath, of his heart as he realizes what apathy and cruelty can make of someone.
Look, she wants to shout at the ground, at the graves, at all those who died never knowing of the monster they helped carve, piece by piece, one hurt and betrayal and cruel apathy at the time. Look at what you created.
Look, she smiles with blood beneath her nails and she does not know who the blood belongs to, her or her victims. And understand that you should have packed my grave tighter
If you did not want me to crawl out of it.
Sasuke packs their bags within hours and is ready to leave within a fortnight.
It is almost saddening how easily they can erase their presence from what they have called home since their birth.
But if the Uchiha compound had been grand and noble, with a manor for the Main line and wealthy kin with a taste for luxury, even gold tarnishes beneath years of neglect, and the twins have never been quite good at keeping everything intact, not when the ghosts are still there, haunting and watching them as though they only exist to have an eye on them.
Oh, sure, the blood has been washed away by their toddler hands, scrubbed till only the faintest copper lingers, especially on rainy and stormy nights, but it is hard to live in a compound built for a clan, for families when you are only two children who disdain the quiet that has settled over their home in the same manner a graveyard usually is.
But if packing their things is a quick thing - their most precious things are things you carry with you, living and breathing and Akari knows that Sasuke would never bear to leave her, not when she begs, settling their affairs without making it clear to everyone and their mothers that they are leaving Konoha is slightly more tricky.
Well. For Sasuke that is, because Akari has few if barely any affairs to settle, and those she does have, well, pretty lies would not be enough to salvage all that she has done. All that she has given in the name of her brother.
Danzo has never been a kind master, but he holds her leash regardless, and sometimes, in the same manner, children are beholden to their parents - born to love them and carry on their shoulders their dreams and hopes - she is Danzo's soldier, beholden to the economic exchange they have once agreed.
He - who associates traitors and death in the same breath - would not forgive her betrayal, not when he has invested so much in her kunoichi career.
"You are my daughter," her dad says with cold, uncaring eyes. Stella feels small beneath his gaze and flinches as though his voice is a particularly cruel whip.
And maybe it is, she sure has enough scars beneath her flesh from it, from its sting and lashes, and those scars have grown with her, went from small knitted lines of a young girl to the festering marks of a woman.
"I do this because you are my daughter."
But what if I don't want to be your daughter? Stella thinks.
It's a treacherous thought.
Children, after all, should love their parents.
And Stella is a daughter, a daughter where daughterhood is a long and silent scream stuck in the back of the throat. In which you are beholden to the ones who gave you life, mother and father, but in truth, you, the debtor, them, the debtee and you trade in love and guilt because they are your parents and your jailors in one skin.
"You are leaving the Leaf," Danzo does not need to raise his voice as Stella's father did to make her straighten and have the air cut at her lungs sharply.
No, the old war hawk is much too poised, powerful for that. But then again, Stella's father would not wield a kunai as Danzo might.
He takes a sip of his tea."I must admit, Akari," there is no honored honorific that Danzo uses with her anymore, not when she is the hound that begs for scraps, begs for power. "I did not think you so foolish."
"I like to think I'm not."
"Yet here you are, taunting me with your treason."
"Just because I am leaving does not mean committing treason."
Danzo scoffs, tilts his chin ever so slightly towards her and Akari is suddenly forced to her knees, Bear and Robin forcing her down, making her spine curve in submission.
"Do you think the Leaf will welcome you back once you join Orochimaru?"
"The late Hokage never named him a missing-nin. Orochimaru is still Konoha."
"Hiruzen is the only sentimental fool enough to believe that."
"But wouldn't it be advantageous to have access to Orochimaru's research as though he actually is loyal to the village?"
"You think pretty words will absolve you of your contract?" Danzo's eye gleams.
"I'd still be part of ROOT. Only on an undercover, redacted mission for your eyes only. The new Hokage has yet to gather enough support, and you alone will receive my reports. Plus, not being in Konoha means I can take more delicate missions. I can serve you better." Akari bargains.
The older man sits up.
Slowly, as though he is a beast waiting for his prey, something monstreous playing with his food, he steps forward as his cane clicks onto the marble floor. Akari lowers her eyes deferently, still on her knees, still forced into submission by faceless shadows, and she watches as Danzo's shadow looms over her. "That is right," he says. His voice washes over her like a poisonous wave. "Do remember Weasel who holds your leash." He then steps closer, gestures something and suddenly, Akari's face is met with the marble floor, cheek pressed onto it. "Remember who you owe your power to."
She has said it before.
If Danzo is alike her father, he is a kinder master than him. But there is one thing they do share, their need to remind her that at the end of the day
AkariStella will always be theirs to puppeteer around.
And in the end, we were all just humans drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.
The clock has already struck three, when Sasuke grows too impatient and calls out to her.
The moon had time to wane, the darkness of the sky still as tangible as it had been a few hours ago. Konoha has never been a village that thrived in the darkness, both ficaracully and literally and there are few around, and none who realize that the last two Uchiha of the Leaf are lingering by a hill close to the Academy.
"Akari-" Akari doesn't dare to glance back, glance and witness for herself the heartbreak that her brother wears in her place.
After all, Akari has learned the bite of disappointment early, and after a while, you grown numb to it, now more a wound that is never healing, one that constantly bleed rather than a fresh one. She doesn't think she could survive watching a face so similar to hers wear the sorrow that she tries to swallow back.
"Ten more minutes."
Because she is leaving, leaving her friend behind and she owes him a goodbye.
A semblance of closure, a semblance of a promise of see you later, for him not to wander in the unsaid, in having voices fill in the silence she has left behind, all the more cruel than the other.
it's what Stella had never gotten.
"Akari- he's not coming."
But that cannot be right.
"He said he'd be available," Akari brushes off, but her voice is a whisper, almost a question truly if one was to look closely enough. "He said he'd be there."
"It's been hours."
Hours waiting in the dark, seated where they used to nap and linger back in their Academy days and she cannot look at the oak tree without thinking of Shikamaru, without feeling the sun's kiss on her cheeks
Hours waiting because Shikamaru said he'd be there.
He hadn't noticed how urgent her request had been, his eyes quickly losing focus even as she pleaded for him to come, to neglect his duties if only for one dark night and early morning. Yet his absence is a slap to the face, the snip of yet another string.
He has always been a logical and dutiful son, her Shikamaru, and though she can find it endearing, finds that she can understand his mind better than most, it scares her. Sometimes it is as though Shikamaru is always scheming. Always calculating his next move, always weighing the advantages and Akari's breath stutters when that happens, stutters because there is a bomb on his love, a limit set that will take everything she had tried to build.
"Akari-" Akari shakes her head, hugs herself tighter as the wind bites at her skin. Sasuke grabs her hand, his left one holding one of their bags. "It's us against the world," he reminds her softly.
The Uchiha heiress shifts, tucks the Nara pendant inside her cloak, checks if Hiroto-sama's jade momento is still in her pouch, before nodding.
It's us against the world.
There is no need for things as trivial as goodbyes.
Naruto knows he isn't the sharpest kunai in the pack.
It is a fact that he has always accepted, embraced because though it is true, as Aka-chan likes to remind him, it does not mean there is nothing good to him.
Though not sharp, Naruto is strong, the brawl to the twin's cleverness, the outburst and fire to their cold detachment.
It is something that works somehow, makes Team Seven all the more precious and an unit few if any dare to breach.
In fact, it's only dumb Shikamaru who tries to get in between them, but between Naruto and Sasuke, the lazy Nara has to work hard to prove himself worthy of their Akari.
But yes, as Naruto was saying, being the jinchuriki means to be particularly adept at knowing that there are people wishing to see him fail. Naruto knows that. Knows that most would rather see him dead than well and breathing, but when hatred is all you've known, when acceptance was dangled in front of you, both a taunt and a promise if only you were a bit better, well, it is hard to take it away once it is learned.
The blonde knows it is not quite healthy, not quite right to long for everyone's approval as much as he does, but in the same way Aka-chan seems unable to stop herself, unable to see the line between hard work and self-slaughter during trainings, Naruto easily confuses the warmth of the sun and the scorching heat of fire.
Can you blame him?
Oh, how Naruto wants to be loved.
Loved the way Uchiha Akari is loved and loves in return.
And that is the thing with want, Naruto imagines Aka-chan whispering. Desire is an ugly thing. Incessant. Shaped like two hands wrapped around a throat till you are suffocating.
But Naruto is clumsy with his want, clumsy like a child not quite knowing what he is doing.
Most already scorn him, after all. See fit to condemn him for something he does not control, sees fit to tear him apart without giving him a second chance, and the sheer unfairness of it all galls the blue-eyed boy.
We deserve a second chance, he thinks with something too angry to be desperate, but too fretful to be conviction.
The first time that Naruto spares an enemy, Sasuke looks at him as though he had just said that the sky was green.
Wide, incredulous eyes, as if not believing what has just happened.
Naruto cannot answer as the boy - the boy who is becoming both teammate and brother - grabs him by the collar and shakes him, yelling and yelling, telling him that he cannot endanger their team like that.
That it's us against the world.
The Uchiha twins like their motto the same way they like their fire, and the two of them seem to have carved it into their very flesh and soul.
To be frank, Naruto doesn't understand it. Never can quite wrap his hand around that philoshophy of theirs, so very different than the one they learn, the one the Academy is sure to repeat and repeat till they can remember the Will of Fire in their sleep.
It seems a bit selfish.
A bit destructive.
As if stabbing yourself to gut an enemy, to pierce both bodies even if it means that you bleed too.
Or perhaps it is because Naruto is different in that regard.
Instead of looking for the knife as the twins tend to do, the blonde prefers to hope for the better, prefers forgiveness and shares sympathy over the narrowed vision of black and white the Uchiha paint their world in.
To be frank, Naruto did not think much of it.
Even as Akari lectures him, makes him promise never to choose an enemy if it comes to it, and Naruto pledges to always put the team first with the naivety of a foolish child, not understand the weight his words hold and how the others take it as a vow, as a pledge instead of an empty agreement.
The second time Naruto spares an enemy, there is no insult. No anger, no outburst. Instead, it is silence that greets the jinchuriki and his mercy, though the twins' disapprouval is a heavy thing that lingers in their gestures. In the stillness of Akari's hand even as she continues to ruffle his hair.
Naruto thinks that it is a fitting price if it means he can have the best of both worlds.
What is a bit of silence, a small coldness that wanes under Naruto's good cheer and Kaka-sensei's bullying next to the ever crushing guilt that Naruto cannot expect kindness when he gives none of it.
That is what he thinks, and he is content in making it his grave to lie in till he isn't.
The third time he spares an enemy, Akari is sent to the hospital and it is as if his world has just turned itself, remolded itself and suddenly, Naruto is at loss, a babe in a world that wants none of him. Sasuke never quite forgives him for it.
You might call Naruto dumb, almost painfully naive, but he has always been quicker when it came to the heart, when it was the difference between dislike that came with spoiled food and outright hatred, and poisoned goods with it.
But Naruto thinks he can bear it, bear the resentment his teammate nurtures because they have the rest of their life to live, to forgive and forget, and they have said so themselves: it is them against the world, the team against the world.
It is Tsunade who breaks the news to him, honey eyes quiet and sad, his aunt more than the Hokage.
"The Uchiha twins left Konoha last night or early morning."
Naruto freezes. His heart stops beating, constricts and contricts as though it could wilt into something more lovable, as though it could shield itself from the pain he feels, the ache in his chest that makes him stop breathing.
"W-" Naruto's voice stutters, falters and breaks beneath his tongue and he thinks he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe and there's a pressure to his chest, pressing as if wanting his ribcage to shatter. "When are they coming back?"
Naruto has never liked pity and he finds it a worse sight on the Hokage's delicate features.
"Naruto," Tsunade says softly. Apart from Akari, she is the only one who says it as though it is something worthy. Naruto shakes his head vehemently, denials stumbling from his lips clumsily as though they could rewrite reality. "They're not coming back."
It's them against the world.
The team against the world.
The twins have always told him that.
But as Naruto falls to his knees, fingers clenching the fabric of his jumpsuit, a fist pounding on his chest as though it could relieve some pressure and make his heart start beating again, he realizes
That to them, Naruto is part of the world now.
Author note:
Merry Christmas! Please enjoy this little gift of mine, the Christmas spirits have blessed me for a last writing sprint for this chapter! What are we thinking?
As you can see, this is our first Canon divergence: there isn't any rescue team sent after the twins. I wonder how come huh? ;)
I'm thinking of doing a time skip with some interlude chapters before establishing the new arc. It'd mainly be different Outsider POV as the aftermath of the twins' defection starts to unravel. Or perhaps, I'll continue the chapters as I am doing now, but I fear it might take a lot more time and work to get to the next arc aha.
Can you believe that this story was supposed to be finished by chapter 15? As you can clearly see, this is far from the case. I blame you guys for your support and comments ahaha; not only are they amazing and something I truly cherish, but reading your enthusiasm, analysis, and even demands sends me into creative spirals, and as such, Akari and her story only grow under your attention.
So thank you. This book wouldn't be possible without you guys.
As always, don't be shy to let me know what you think! Lots of love and happy holidays!