It's been a long time. I'm very excited for this story.

oOo

The floorboards creak when he stands.

The four wooden walls which ensphere him immure with their weald-reek and stink. He stares at himself in the mirror, fastening clasp by clasp, the silver-gild latchings of his velveteen vest. From the rim of the mirror he finds that she, too, is looking at him. Some heartsick expression limned onto her lip.

"The orchids," she says. "Do you think he'll notice them?" With her white hand she reaches for her brush aside the bed and runs it through her tinted hair, pink like blemished cotton. "The lilacs your mother and I chose out for the hallway?"

She slides from the covers before he can answer. She is pale and wrapped in silk afore the window by the time she stands and leans beside it, toying at her fingertips. He tautens the cuff of his cutaway. Too tightly, and one button of three unthreads and springs, rolling to the niche of the floor ere landing underneath the bed.

"Sasu—"

"No," he says.

There is a vicious look in his eye, by the time he yanks his tie from its hanger and leaves.

oOo

Four floors in all. The way to the parlour takes time.

Itachi is there.

Their mother sits at the head of the table, sallow with fever. She coughs horribly for every silence that befalls them, yet she maintains her posture. Proud enough in illness as she is lavish, stately mirrored through the stygian gowns she often wears.

Itachi sits on the opposite side, facing Sasuke. His left hand cradles a goblet of wine, though for the next half an hour he does not actually drink it.

The clock ticks. Ticks. Ticks. Ticks.

"Will Sakura not come down to join us?" Mikoto's tone is gentle when she says it. "Surely she bores."

Sasuke shrugs one shoulder, loafing back into his chair. She smiles at him.

"Do you miss Dover at all?" She nurses her tea. It steams, clutched tight in her hands. "The ocean?"

"No." He toys with the tassels of the napery. "Nor do I grieve for its efflux of fish."

Itachi is peering at him now, the slow narrow of his eyes a wordless disfavor.

"Your father always wanted to go there," Mikoto continues. Sasuke begins to suspect she would have said the same thing, no matter the word he might've answered her with. "To the wharfs of southern England, its castled shores." She turns towards Itachi, attempting to smile. "Didn't he, Itachi? How he spoke so much of the old forts, of the harbors..."

"He did. He was never partial of Japan."

As always, Itachi's response appeases their mother, more than enough. She reaches out, stroking the skin of his wrist. She chuckles, wiping the dam of her tears.

The scene is piddling. Sasuke wants to laugh. It is no secret in the dark, after all, that Mikoto can hardly function, much less cry, without speaking of the man who'd hung himself in the anteroom's closet just five months back. The sole reason why they'd left the menial comfort of their homeland, and then of some blasted ferry-town he'd gotten partially adhered to someplace in the boggy coastals of Europe. A town they'd hardly remained in, courtesy of his father having figured it was time to've offed himself with the nearest cordline. And now, in tragedy's upshot, his mother's more blatant extortion of him.

What with abetting him off into an Americanized betrothment, some old wish she must've weaned for herself as a girl prior to her parents having married her off to a man like Fugaku.

Sasuke does not care for it.

Now they are in New York.

In some ancient villa, out in the flat outskirts of Manhattan. Bordered by coppice and with a perfectly needless viewpoint of Ellis Island which televises the coming and going of Italy's immigrants, along with the Polish and the occasional surges of Slavs. The reason, he thinks, why Mikoto has contracted such ail of disease. Added, the obvious sleight of her inexhaustible grief, whyfor they wait like fools at the table, for her newly appointed servant-thing, one that may cook and care for the dust of the floor and her medicines.

All week she has prattled of it. And if ever she's shown genuinity since the day she screamed bloody at the night of her widowing, it is in this moment in which she anticipates the arrival of her mendicant waif like cake and a present.

The hour stretches. Itachi is still as a rock while Mikoto coughs and mentions plentiful nonsense. Sasuke is on the verge of leaving by the time Sakura is heard descending the staircase, the clapper of her heels echoing across the estate.

Mikoto straightens, neatly tucking a loose ringlet of hair behind one ear which carries diamond. Itachi just sits there, staring at him.

"What," he cuts.

Itachi does not indulge him.

Rather, he veers his gaze not until Sakura at last walks in. He stands immediately, tall as he is lean, conceding her arrival in guiding her, palm-for-palm, towards an empty seat. She swans her neck and thanks him. Already Sasuke feels the initials of a headache pushing in. For the girl is aside him now, all apple balm and perfumes.

She glances in his direction, smiling at him. He averts from her, does not return it.

"So lovely, isn't she," Mikoto wheedles. "Proper. Like those dames we met in Leicester. Do you remember?"

There is a pause, as if she were expecting fully for Sasuke to blandish over and agree. He agrees to nothing, and the pause turns stiffly into indelicacy.

Instead, he looks towards Itachi, who for the first time that morning rouses and tastes the wine in his glass. There is a cruel cinch at the corner of his lip when he is done, one that only Sasuke has ever been able to unriddle and descry. A wasted second more, and Sasuke knows his mother rankles. And why would she not become this pestered, when she wants her wish of America more than she kneads her want of wealth. To be known and to be fawned and to be a part of its haut monde society as years ago she was amongst Yokohama's viperous nobility. This, at least, Sasuke has unearthed of her already.

In truth, he suspects he would not have minded much her insularity, had the girl beside him not become his mother's lucked out opportunity—through him.

Sakura starts to speak.

"If only my grandmother would agree," she offers coyly. "Are you feeling well, Mikoto?"

Thereon, they talk.

And talk.

Sasuke feels he might not bear it.

oOo

Soon, there is a belling at the foyer's entrance. It echoes through the walls, low and faint.

Mikoto's eyes light up. Her fingers go to dandle at her earrings. She turns towards Sasuke, beaming and expectant.

"Darling," she says. "If you would—"

He won't.

"I'll go."

Sakura stands, fingertips grazing lax against his shoulder. His mother gapes at him.

"Sasuke—"

"It's really fine," reassures Sakura. "I promise."

She tilts her head and leaves. The air reeks of her, like his shoulder, and it lingers like an insect mid his nostrils, even after she is gone.

When the smacking of her heels subsides, Sasuke reaches forth across the table, snatching for himself the bottle of Bourgogne wine. He twirls it by its neck atop the table. Then he uncorks it, quaffing it like water till the taste of grape numbs dry upon his tongue. And all the rest that is left inside it, he stands and pours onto the tablecloth. It roses out, hemorrhaging the napery. His mother half-stands, wheezing through coughs some gasping shock of degradation.

His brother sits there, staring blandly at the painting on the wall.

Sasuke sits.

He does not care for it.

oOo