Lesser Daughter

Disclaimer: Naruto and all its characters are Kishimoto's legal property. I'm not making any money off this story; however, all the Original Characters, Original Plot-lines, and Original Themes are my own.

Rating: Written for mature readers due to content that involves violence, sex, and language.

Chapter One

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Motion is emotion, her father said when she had asked of him to tell her more of his wondrous eyes—his final legacy from a clan forgotten in Leaf's soil. He did not come often to their abode; he spoke less than his visual sense, a red pronounced in his eyes which splotched with memories un-telling. Red was his colour, his manner, his emotion; and albeit it had flourished inside her eyes, too, it was a lesser red than his: it was robbed of a heightened state of passion he and his brethren knew of since birth.

Uchiha Sasuke: she knew little of the man; as his daughter, she knew less; he came and went, a quietness wrapped round him like a vestment she could never see. In appearance, he was perfect, like heavenly princes from tales of yore at which hope-less women swooned: white, powerful, beautiful, he stole hearts and breaths as he walked about on streets during days and nights—sun and moon, most kind to his physical effects, unto him which Nature gifted.

Of his beauty, power, stature, she had inherited little. A coarser mirage—she was his in name and bit of blood, perhaps, that which she could name her own—at least, she had a little of him in her, if only in itty-bitty breaths, bloods, bones. Was that enough to know of his heart? No, she would often muse; yet he eluded her red faster than rain. What did he like? She did not know. What did he dislike? She did not know. He was a man. He was her father. He was a man of perfect mien. That was all . . .

Spring left leaves under a less benign yellow; summer's orange, a pulpous gooey egg yolk, burnt their shades, turned them into a listless tangerine that adorned forests, too; rain, omnipresent in Leaf during Fall. Sun, a moribund luminary, tossed greys about, and, in its hue, everything was shackled; come winter, its binding would be deadly, white, under which spring's death would be sure.

Save winter, she could see no colour of seasons in him—perhaps grey? Yes, grey! There was a sombreness that oozed from him, and he cast it about wherever he went. By shadows, it festered, a shade that left him be and haunted the house. His red was deeper, sharper, lovelier than the youngest Higanbana that smiled stark like a wounded runaway's signs in tall foliage about at night in graveyards. It frightened her, but she . . . loved it, too?

By night, he would sit in the living room, reading; and she would go to him and sit by his side. Silence—yet she was bold in the way she would grab his hand to draw his attention to her, smiling, blushing, trembling. Then she would look upon him, unable to hide her red; at which, his would come in answer. A ghost looking through his eyes, it spoke, speechless, and she was reminded of how little she knew of him. A neophyte of his people's history, she chased after ghosts; yet she wanted to know more of him—if only to feed the sleeping love in her breast, bring it to the fore, set it free from her eyes in tears and something more.

Her mother would come by, too, a hopeless maiden, food in hands; he would not look to her with a red in his eyes—an absence of passion as she had come to know. He slept less often in their house—a stranger. She did not know why; yet he had gone in to the woman with spring hair, her mother, brought forth her. She was old enough to know of physical rituals men and women performed for conception, and his distance told her more of a colder side that he possessed.

In silent nights, she had heard her mother weeping in their room, lying on her side, her pink rough in shadow, their bed empty and grey; so she had asked Shizune-San of loves, and she told her that Sasuke, her father, had fallen out of love, that people fell out of love, that men fell out of love—often.

Was this true; had he stopped drinking from spring love's brew? Strange, her mother's memories of him were ghosts that visited upon the house; like voice-less echoes, they ran about her past; and she chased, unable to catch even one. What did he like? Her mother did not know. What did he dislike? Her mother did not know. Her mother frustrated her, angered her, often. Clueless like girl children, she fancied—only.

Upon her world, he supervened, a bruise un-healing, darker than her love; yet in his daughter's world, he was . . . lovely, a specter of love, a desert rose. He went out; she followed. He had built a cenotaph behind this house, a farewell to his kin; she wanted to ask him of them, but it was too soon to be bolder than she was.

He whiled away by the streams when he came to Leaf, a countenance softened by memories from past that hurt less; and by his side she sat, beholding trees' shades sun threw upon his visage. In water, his white was murky whilst fish spun in circles at the energy he exuded. He was special to all—to her, he was more than that, though she lacked the words and wisdom to grant voice to what she felt.

She looked up at the sky, nebulous shades bursting about at dusk and dawn. They were less constant than he . . .

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