Chapter 2
Rated; PG [this chapter
Summary; Nestled between mountains, myths, and spirits is the house of Hyuuga—and Uchiha Sasuke, who has just been promised to its heir. Yet as the designs of men ebb and flow, Fate abides in an unalterable, ceaseless current unaffected by the desires of men.
Author's Note; AU, SasuNejiSasu. For Laur's (late) birthday and probably Christmas as well. Further comments at the end.
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Karou tosen.
A winter fan for summer heat.
- Japanese Proverb
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When Sasuke came into the dark room that belonged to the Hyuuga clan head, it was to find that the man was indeed seated in the dark save for a small white flamed candle that burned brightly on the table that he was seated behind. On the surface in front of him was a scroll lined with tiny characters too small for Sasuke to read at his initial distance, and even as he got closer, the glow from the candle was not quite bright enough to make them out without more strain than he was willing to exhibit in front of this stranger.
Hyuuga Hiashi was almost like a statue in the flickering light. His stillness was hardly alive, and the white light from the candle gave an even more ghostly appearance to his already pale face. It was a face lined only at the mouth. The rest of the Hyuuga's continence was serenely absent of blemish or wrinkle, and it was almost unnaturally pale. Wan.
Sasuke didn't like the look of him. There was no happy medium in his expression, no sensation of understanding in that hard gaze. Only the cool presence of a vast, searching intelligence that made no concession for fault, or desire, or need.
"Please forgive my nephew's impoliteness. He has no manners," Hiashi said when Sasuke had stepped close enough to hear his voice. It was oddly willowy, but the movements of speech sent firm lines and shadows down Hiashi's face—the voice was misleading. This man couldn't bend a centimeter.
"I see," Sasuke responded, his own voice tight.
"He offended you." Hiashi raised an eyebrow, and lifted a small cup to his lips that Sasuke hadn't noticed. He smelled sake. "He will need to be punished then—please, sit down."
There was a pillow in front of the table, but Sasuke did not slip into the familiar seiza position atop it, as his back was already to the door. Sitting down would put him at a greater disadvantage should the situation take a turn—it was a cardinal rule in any soldier's arsenal. Such a lack of trust on Sasuke's part was incredibly rude, and the fact that he understood that and was shameless in the face of it seemed to register on the Hyuuga clan head's face after a few moments had passed. Even so, his expression hardly changed at the slight.
"Did you find dinner with my daughter to be to your liking?" he asked instead.
"The food was satisfactory," Sasuke said without passion.
Hiashi smiled wanly. "Yes, my daughter is quite unremarkable, but she will make a good wife for you. She understands the ways of our family, at least."
The candle on the table gave an abrupt flicker, as if a draft had come through the room (though Sasuke felt no air—the house was remarkably well sealed from the outside), and for a moment it wasn't clear where Hiashi's eyes were focused. Sasuke's gaze stuck fast, but he said nothing.
"I'm sure you're quite tired from your trip," Hiashi said finally, waving a hand over the candle for a moment until he took a long stick from beside him to light the lamp sitting opposite the candle. "Please rest tonight. Tomorrow I would like you to carry out a small task for me…nothing, I'm sure, that you can't handle. Your father was very specific about his faith in you, but a smart man sees for himself before taking the word of a parent." The corners of Hiashi's mouth twitched up, and in the brighter light, Sasuke watched as the minute change in expression transformed him.
When he did not answer again, Hiashi waved a hand and took up a calligraphy brush, effectively dismissing him. "Hikari will take you back to your room."
After bowing blindly, Sasuke turned his back on the man and retraced the steps he had taken minutes before. Your father was very specific about his faith in you. Such a small thing, and it had made his heart climb the length of his throat to lie beating just behind his tongue.
He didn't even register the walk to the door, but when he reached it, Sasuke found that it slid open for him of almost as if by its own accord. Waiting for him outside, her hands folded atop one another, was the girl that had guided him through the house since his arrival.
"I can find my way back on my own," Sasuke said, though some small voice inside suggested that perhaps he couldn't. Not in this house. Not yet.
"Hiashi-sama has asked that I accompany you, Sasuke-san," the girl, Hikari, said. "Sometimes even we get lost in this house at night."
"Che…fine," Sasuke grunted.
As they made their way out of the interior of the house, Sasuke tried to pay attention to each turn they took, each scroll and decoration that marked the walls and turns and crevices. There were several blooming plants, some that crept curiously along the shoji as if conscious; ones with pale blue flowers, ones with white. None ventured out into the hall.
When they had reached the edge of the house—Sasuke could tell only because the light was dimmer here; none shone through the shoji on one side of the hall—he began to recognize the path they'd taken to the room where he'd eaten dinner. He was about to inform Hikari that surely she could leave now when there was a sudden shift of movement so loud that it could be heard even through the wood paneling of the outside of the house. It sounded almost as if a mountain had moved right behind the wall, though it was much less concrete sounding than that. More accurately, it sounded as if a mountain had been tossed through the air, so loud the woosh.
"What was that noise?" Sasuke asked his female companion, who looked over her shoulder with an expression that was almost vacant. As if she had not even noticed the noise that Sasuke spoke of.
"I'm not sure what you mean, Sasuke-san," Hikari said, and by that time they had reached his room, and she was kneeling by the door as she had done before, head tilted toward the ground just slightly. Sasuke cast his eyes down the hall, annoyed.
"Nevermind," he said, and slid the door shut abruptly behind him.
That night, after he had bathed and unpacked the minimal possessions he'd brought with him, Sasuke laid in bed listening to the low hum of rain against the roof above. The room was dark, but not black, and through the shoji lining the hall, Sasuke could see the dim silhouettes of undefined figures moving about a long way off. As it grew later and the rain came harder, they began to disperse and nothing moved at all.
When he'd drifted off to sleep, or thought he had, something rumbled its way past the outer doors of his room. Sasuke could hear the swish of rain, the rigid grate of something hard and rough on wood, and then that same rumbling sound that he'd heard earlier. That moving mountain.
This time, there was no one to ask, so Sasuke slipped out of the futon that had been made up for him and padded his way to the covered window, which he unboarded and peered out of and into the rainy night. The darkness was blinding for a moment, and as far as Sasuke could see there were nothing but puddles of water and rain and gray dark marring the even darker landscape. Yet the longer he stared, the more convinced he became that there was something out there.
There was something out there.
He couldn't see it for a moment, but he could see movement.
It wasn't well-known that the Uchiha clan had the gift of spectacular eyesight, or that the word "gift" couldn't accurately describe what it was that the Uchiha's eyes did. It wasn't spoken of in the household—it wasn't even mentioned. But from the time an Uchiha child hit puberty to the day he died, there was a disease in the pupils. A red, cloaking disease that gave its bearer the ability to see, the ability to memorize on that sight—but Sasuke had never seen quite like this.
It was as if the darkness slowly began to collapse, etching a rain-shrouded figure behind in the space that remained. It glowed like this house seemed to glow: not with life, but with purpose, yet as far as Sasuke could see, it was doing nothing at all to give truth to that theory. It was just standing out in the rain, back toward Sasuke. A man, or a woman. Standing in the rain.
The rain was falling right through it.
Sasuke leaned on the edge of the open window, felt the cool, almost biting night air as it flexed its fingers over his bare skin. He could almost register the splatter of the heavy raindrops off the ground feet away from the covered veranda, but dreams could be misleading—dreams could tell you anything. His fingertips bit into the wood hard enough to ache with the pressure.
The figure turned, and its face was dry and pearly white, stark against the strings of ebony hair that fell haphazardly in a frame against its rounded, childlike cheeks. There was nothing remarkable about that face aside from the four pronged helix that rested, blood-like on its forehead. And the eyes. Those eyes were as hollow as the sun looked against a blue sky.
Sasuke let out a low, shaky breath as the figure tilted its head slowly to the side, examining him as a curious child might a new guest in its house. Perhaps that was more accurate than it should have been.
Then with a sudden shift of space and time, with a blink into some otherworld, it was on the veranda. And slowly, almost as if it had begun to rain beneath that thick wooden covering, lines of water dripped down the figure's cheeks leaving wet, black tracks on an otherwise clear face. Its feet left wet footprints on the dry wood as it stepped carefully but quite deliberately toward Sasuke.
He stepped back from the window, suddenly quite certain that the creature desired to come inside. It was almost as if his body moved on its own and was observing some kind of nameless courtesy.
And then it was inside and that spell was broken. Sasuke felt every muscle in his body tense as the ghostly presence tiptoed through his room, its vacant, empty eyes on him every step of the way.
"What are you?" he demanded, finding his tongue as the figure passed his futon—and then it turned, and Sasuke was chilled to the bone with that new tilt of its head. Somehow, it came of no surprise when it was in front of him, looking up at him, twisting its androgynous features into a tight, intense expression that made each hair on Sasuke's body rise and prickle as if in some kind of ancient, latent defense that had been waiting all this time to rear and fight.
It was too close, centimeters too close. Sasuke could feel wet and cold radiating from the snow white skin, emptiness and hatred and loneliness emanating from its hollow eyes.
He flinched, a full-body recoil that nearly turned into a shudder, a compulsion so great that it almost forced him to step back. But he would not throw himself against the wall as part of him wished to do. Instead he swallowed. Took another shuddering breath as the figure seemed to stare right into him, eyes flaying each thought and emotion wide open for its own examination until Sasuke was but a child again, facing his old fears of monsters in the night.
"Mouth shut, eyes open," came the dry but vivid voice from somewhere in the room. It was like a wind shuddering through an old, empty house. Impossible to pinpoint and lonely. Incredibly, achingly lonely in the way that nothing but intense hatred could compare.
Then he woke up.
Sasuke was clenching the blankets so tightly and sweating so profusely that he thought for a moment that he had taken to fever and this entire experience had been a dream. But as he regained his senses and looked around, it was not to find the familiar room that he had spent his childhood in, but instead the crisp white ricepaper walls of the house of Hyuuga.
And on the floor was a set of fading waterlogged footprints that disappeared before reaching the door and catalogued his first foray into the mystery of the family that had come to harbor him.
Breakfast was a quiet, sparse affair. Sasuke did not dine with his bride-to-be nor anyone of her family, but instead was served his food in his room, alone—which was really the last place he wanted to be.
There was no sign of his visitor of the night before, however, only the puddles left from the rainstorm and an odd, shell-like pattern on one of the supports lining the veranda, which Sasuke noticed when he went outside to do his morning katas. He studied the marking for a long time, knowing that despite looking fresh, it could have been made with a weapon weeks before. Not a weapon of any kind Sasuke had ever seen, but it was a minor thought as he worked through his routine. The rest of his attention was focused inward.
Hikari came for him after he'd cleaned up and dressed, her timing nearly perfect in that respect. It was only then that Sasuke remembered his conversation with Hiashi the night before, and the task he was to complete for the Hyuuga clan head, whatever that may be.
After attempting to get more information from his Hyuuga escort—though he was beginning to think of her more as a guard, now—and failing, Sasuke resolved himself to his irritation. He had very little experience in these matters, but he was fairly certain that as a guest and match for the clan's heir, he should be treated more intimately. Held, perhaps, in higher esteem and without such a carefully distant hand. He was, after all, an Uchiha—that, at least, spoke for something.
Hikari's silence gave Sasuke an opportunity to further observe the place he'd been promised to. In the daylight, the interior of the Hyuuga house shone much more brightly, and they actually passed some of the other clan members, each of which carefully watched Sasuke only once he'd walked by. He took his time studying each face, his expression tight and unforgiving, but none wore the insignia on their foreheads that Sasuke had seen the night before.
Hyuuga Hiashi, too, looked different with natural light shining upon him. The lines of his face were no less deep, the structure of his jaw was no less hard, but at least now, he looked human. Like a man who could take ill or grow old, and that fact was oddly comforting to Sasuke.
When they met again, it was in the clan's dojo, which was so similar to the ones in the Uchiha District that it could have been the other side of Konoha that Sasuke had stepped into. But outside each open window lay nothing but jutting mountains and the cool, remorseless paths that led away from this ancient fortress.
"It's reassuring to see you well and rested this morning, Sasuke," Hiashi said, greeting Sasuke at the center of the dojo. They both bowed, Sasuke at an angle so shallow he almost thought he could feel the warm hand of his mother against the back of his neck, pressing him down, whispering Manners. He straightened, hiding a wince.
"These are the clan elders and my youngest," Hiashi said in the wake of Sasuke's silence, one pale hand slipping out of his robe to slowly gesture to the South wall where a line of five men and one woman sat, each as still as carved stone. Sasuke found each of them aged and ordinary, only noteworthy in the way they held themselves. The girl seated beside the woman had the look of a vulture—if a vulture could have been fresh-faced or beautiful. "They've come to see you fight."
Sasuke's blood rushed and he whipped his head back around until his eyes cut into the Hyuuga clan head's. "And who will I be fighting?" he demanded, voice strung so tight it almost ached in the roots of his teeth.
Hiashi merely regarded him calmly and mildly, his oddly omnipresent gaze focusing for a moment behind Sasuke, where the woman had leaned over to speak in a not so hushed tone to her young companion: It will take awhile to calm the flame.
"Neji," Hiashi said, voice lifted not in answer to Sasuke's question, but in a way that summoned. It was almost the way a novice falconer called a kite—practiced and smooth and expectant, but not at all with any respect for the bird.
A door behind Hiashi slid open and out came Hinata, who scurried her way around the back wall until she had reached the center the room's Eastern side, where she clumsily sat herself, folded her arms in her lap, and fixed her eyes on the floor. Hiashi looked so disapproving that Sasuke thought for a moment that perhaps Hinata had come out naked and he just hadn't noticed.
He hadn't though—at least not the arrival of the boy that Hiashi had called initially. When Sasuke looked away from Hinata, it was to find him standing a few meters from the door, almost as if he had been standing there all along, or had materialized in some great act of sorcery.
Sasuke was not at all surprised to find that it was the boy from the night before. The one who had bumped and arrested him in the same instant. Life seemed far too coincidental in this house to miss out on such an opportunity.
The Uchiha felt his features immediately twist into a scowl before tightening into a sneer as he shifted his position to a wider stance, already looking as if he was willing to fight. "Tch…your nephew, Hyuuga-san? And I'm to be his punishment?"
There was a slow wash of chuckling from behind him, and Sasuke didn't have to turn to see each elder's mouth peeking upward in an amused smile. Every jeer seemed to reflect off the boy's—Neji's—smooth white continence and glassy, mirror eyes, wrought somehow in an expression that was the complete opposite of joy, or mirth, or amusement. Hiashi was the only one that didn't make a sound, and out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke saw Hinata's shoulders convulse in a heavy breath or sob.
"You needn't worry yourself over that matter at this point. We just want to see what you are capable of," Hiashi answered finally. "Please, indulge us." It wasn't really a request.
"Fine," Sasuke replied, eyes not on Hiashi's already retreating form, but on the boy, who seemed as if he had been quite ignoring the situation in general, Sasuke most of all.
Sasuke stripped off his shirt because it was restrictive and he had not entertained the possibility of being taken directly to a sparring match. The pants he wore were of a lighter material which wouldn't obstruct him too much, and despite the cold that was washing in from the open windows, Sasuke felt much more relaxed falling into a fighting stance than he'd expected.
Neji was much less deliberate about his actions. He was already dressed for the occasion in a thin looking gray garment that covered his arms and legs completely, the jacket of which tied neatly at his waist. His long, brown hair had been pulled up and into a ponytail leaving ample view of his forehead, that symbol, and the refined, almost delicate features of his face.
There was a grayish pallor to Neji's skin that Sasuke hadn't noticed the night before, though; for all his youth and beauty—and impertinence—it seemed that perhaps this Hyuuga was not healthy.
"Feel free to take your time, Hyuuga," Sasuke said, voice not quite as kind as his words.
And then without even slipping into a stance, Neji began.
The Hyuuga's movements were so fluid, so shockingly graceful that Sasuke almost didn't register them at first. It was only after Neji's fingers had struck a blow to his upper arm (forearm too shocked to block) that Sasuke slipped out of his reverie, only after he had barely caught Neji's wrist as those fingers made a pass at his throat that he realized he couldn't predict the Hyuuga's movements because Neji had no tells.
A second moved, slow as an hour as Neji whipped his wrist out of Sasuke's grip.
In the interim, their eyes connected, Neji's cool gaze brimming with razor-sharp precision of thought so clear that Sasuke could almost read the intent as if it were written on a page. It was apparent in those seconds that Sasuke would never be this boy's true opponent, not in this fight nor any other—and that was almost as jarring as the thrust issued to his chest in the next moment.
Thrown flat against his back, Sasuke clenched his eyes tightly shut as he skidded along the tatami. The skin of his back burning, he thrust himself up on his forearms and met that gaze again.
If Neji was the picture of complete calm, Sasuke knew he must look the opposite; he could feel his blood rushing, his anger building—even here, even by this boy whom he'd barely exchanged words with, he was not being taken seriously. His eyes narrowed as the Hyuuga before him straightened.
The light that shone in from the open windows outlined Neji's body, hurting Sasuke's eyes as he struggled with his anger and breathing—with the seconds that ticked by slowly but seemed so much more debilitating the longer he remained on the ground.
Above him, Neji didn't look expectant or bored—instead he was shaking. His frame was shuddering within the outline of the light, but it was so barely visible, so minute that Sasuke wasn't sure why he could see it at all. No one else seemed to notice. Neji seemed only to hold the intensity of his clan, their stares on his shoulders.
And then he shifted, just a little, and Sasuke thought he knew that was going to happen.
Throwing himself up into a crouch, Sasuke balanced his weight against his knees for a moment, leaning, observing. He had thrown himself into battle with his father readily, and while his impetuousness had always served him well when facing any other opponent, it had cost him in that particular battle. Brought him down. If he learned nothing at all, Sasuke always learned from his mistakes.
As if sensing this new scrutiny, Neji began to move. He stepped lightly, his eyes still as a forest full of snow and alive as a tiger's.
Just as Neji stepped into Sasuke's blind spot, the Uchiha slipped into a seamless arc, one leg darting out to catch his opponent where he knew the ankle would be. When Neji jumped, as Sasuke expected he would, he was met with a rally of side-arm thrusts, each of which was matched with a grace so natural that it transcended any possibility of learning. This was inborn, and as much as Sasuke hated it (had come to hate this boy, in these few short minutes), he couldn't help but admire it. Admire and scorn at equal length.
While they traded blows, Sasuke was aware of only two things: this Hyuuga was perhaps faster than him, and Neji was holding himself back. No—was being held back. Sasuke could feel it in the way the Hyuuga moved, how his fingers blitzed their careful characters all about Sasuke's body almost too quick for him to reach the next and the next and the next block—It wasn't effortless, no, that much was clear. A dozen beads of sweat had gathered on the Hyuuga's smooth brow, exhausted before exhaustion should have hit. And still Neji was quicker.
But those muscles were used to more. They were used to streamline. Sasuke could see it in the way Neji moved, in the almost irritated look in his eyes. Such emotions were directed inward.
And then Sasuke became aware of something else.
As Neji shot a blow over his shoulder, centimeters from his face, Sasuke watched him retract and move again—but this time, Neji hadn't done it yet. His arm was still a straight line next to Sasuke's face, a breeze from the window wafting through the light material. It was as if he was seeing into another world, into a world of Neji's intention rather than his action. And as the Hyuuga pulled back to flip into an elegant angle that should have been unnatural, even impossible, Sasuke saw the edge of Neji's foot fly out from the left and catch him in the jaw…just before it happened.
He dodged.
He dodged so easily, in fact, that he almost overcompensated, expecting a blow where there was none. Recovery was easy enough—Sasuke merely pulled himself upright and fell back into his natural fighting stance, one arm extended to Neji in invitation. Bring your worst was whispered in the curve of his lips.
Sweat glistened on the edges of Neji's collarbones; there was no color in his face, none in his lips. But he didn't hesitate when he went for Sasuke next. In those seconds that Neji closed the space between them, movements struggling for poise, for the calm that his body had unduly forsaken, Sasuke could see Neji's end. As he pulled into the block that would begin that end, slipped into the complicated feat that would finish it, a voice stoppered the thick hanging silence that was strung about the room and halted all that had been set into motion:
"That's enough."
Sasuke was too disciplined to be unable to pull out of what he'd begun, but it was still awkward and still incredibly vicious to his muscles. Every joint screamed as he redirected his whole lower body midair and sent his knees crashing into the tatami instead of sending his shins into Neji's head or back. He landed gracefully enough for the circumstances, but it was with no sense of dignity that Sasuke lifted his head to snarl at Hyuuga Hiashi, only true, heartened indignation.
"Very good," Hiashi said, though he hardly sounded as if he were invested in that decree. "We are all duly impressed."
Sasuke seethed and stood. This was not how he wanted it to end—even that small sense of triumph he'd experienced was tainted by the fact that said triumph was at the expense of someone who was currently in no condition to continue fighting.
Glancing at Neji now, Sasuke never would have guessed that to be the case. He was still unnaturally pale, still with that sickly sheen of sweat (quite different from Sasuke's own), but with the way he was holding himself, it was hard to notice any of that. Head tilted slightly up, shoulders back, Neji hardly looked as if he had engaged in any strenuous activity at all. Within moments he even had his breathing under control.
Hiashi turned to his nephew. "You look as if you could haunt something. Get cleaned up."
Looking as if he were about to protest, Neji opened his mouth only to be cut off by a new voice. "Hiashi…can't you see that the boy is perfectly fine? Not drooping in the slightest, are you….Neji-kun?" There was a curious pause as the woman from the group of those that had been watching approached, her fingers perched precariously in a steeple against her mouth. She observed Neji intently for a few moments before she looked up at Hiashi.
"Setsuna-sama," Hiashi greeted, eyes moving distractedly over her shoulder. "If you would excuse us. Sasuke—"
"No, no, Hiashi, I want a moment to look at this boy who is marrying my niece. Go along. The others will be waiting for you—tell them that I won't be long. You stay, Neji," the woman said as Neji offered a bow, looking almost stricken. "Go, Hiashi! Hinata, you wait just outside, dear, that's right…"
Soon the room was cleared and Sasuke was left standing with this ancient woman—most certainly a great-aunt of the house—and Neji, who looked as if he could stand being here less and less as the seconds progressed.
Sasuke soon understood why, as Setsuna began to circle them both, her gaze unparticular. She could have been gazing at a slab of meat or the finest oxen in the land. In any case, that gaze made it clear that this woman considered them both—meat and oxen—to be of like kind.
After she made a couple of passes, Sasuke pulled a hand through his hair and gathered his shirt, which was resting near the edge of the dojo where it had fallen. When he returned, Setsuna (if she were to be called so) was angling Neji's face this way and that, fingernails like claws digging into his jaw line as if she handled something other than a human being.
"Ah, well…" she said with a sigh, releasing Neji's face as Sasuke approached. The trailing thought filled up the silence. It would have been foolish to ask more of you. Sasuke knew that silence well.
Instead of looking shamed, Neji merely looked angry. Hateful. His eyes blazed as Setsuna turned to Sasuke, ignorant of those white orbs that never left her face.
Sasuke was jerked away from his thoughts when his own jaw was apprehended, though much more gently than it seemed Neji's had been. Up close, Sasuke could see that the pieces of Setsuna's face looked as if they might, at one time, have belonged to the Hyuuga line. She may once have been an elegant woman, but age had taken its toll on her, leaving her with nothing but the clear, piercing white of the Hyuuga gaze. Even that looked yellowed and overdrawn.
"Seems you'll do fine, Uchiha," she said. Her gaze flickered to the necklace that Sasuke still wore, and under her eyes it seemed to flare with heat and life. Setsuna chuckled, and it was not a nice sound. "Best to keep all that rogue blood in the family." She patted his cheek.
Then, as if she were muscling her way between the two of them (though the space was comparable in size to a small river), the elderly woman walked to the door and slid it open, her eyes focusing on something outside for a moment before she turned back to the two of them.
"Neji-kun," she said sweetly, the tone of voice gilded, "why don't you take Hinata and her fiancée to the river? It's time Sasuke-san saw the town."
"Yes, Setsuna-sama," Neji said, voice perfectly blank. Setsuna smiled, and only then Sasuke saw that it was fake.
"Good. Get cleaned up first; you're a representative of this house. Hinata will meet you by the front gate." She turned and shut the door behind her, leaving Sasuke standing with Neji in the center of the room.
Sasuke turned to find Neji staring at him, those intense white eyes calm and flat. It was almost unnerving, but the Uchiha merely stared back, his expression carefully pulling into a well-designed sneer.
"What are you looking at?" he hissed, still caged by the aftereffects of his anger. The flames rolled and rumbled when the Hyuuga stepped forward, and Sasuke felt something thick and sinuous wind its way down his spine as Neji regarded him with a tilted head.
"Your eyes," he answered, and reached out to slip two fingers beneath the head of the magatama strung around Sasuke's neck. A cool wash of sensation worked its way over the Uchiha's bare skin from that point of contact, and when the other boy dropped the onyx carving back to its original resting place, the shock of heat barely registered next to what his skin had already experienced.
Neji pulled back and walked away. Sasuke didn't find himself concerned with where.
Your eyes…
He needed a mirror.
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Author's Notes;
One—Yuurei, Sasuke's "ghost," are spirits of wrath. Sasuke's ghost was, more specifically, a goryo—you'll be seeing more of her in the future.
Two—Expect more recognizable characters in the next chapter, as well as more Hinata! She has a role to play yet.
Three—I'm kind of drunk. Happy New Year!
Four—Reviews are loved and appreciated, especially with feedback on the fight scene which, again, is one of the harder points for me. Knowing what you liked and didn't is always a plus!