He knows it happens, though he doesn't see it. He feels it: like ocean waves, cutting off his breathing circulation and leaving him useless.
He can almost gasp through the current – almost. In the distance, there is a flash of sincerity, and it isn't a light, not exactly, not in that direct aspect. Yet he knows it is his.

He flows without a reason to the surface. All he knows is that there are forces: orange and blue and yellow in their power, and they revolve around him until he is helpless, without a choice but to be sucked into their vacuum.
He engulfs in that energy. It is so wild, so free, so favorable in its being that for a moment he doubts it is his. Nonetheless, there is nothing but water beneath his feet – masses of silvery blue, fading to black and expanding, on and on with the aura of that who travels for eternity. He doubts his own expansions, and more ethically he doubts the dark.

"No one here, but me."

He breathes into the air, if only to question that his words would land anywhere at all. Then he is certain again: there is no one to hear his words, no body at all to catch them.

Orange, blue, yellow. They are colours so random they almost feel familiar. He puzzles this over in his head, but only briefly, and then he courses into them, and as he does, he thinks 'this must be it. This must be my final chance, I must at last be saved.'

And as he thinks these thoughts the orange seems to double in its vastness, and the blue seems to stretch out before him, and the yellow seems to be as bright as nothing he has seen before, brighter than light, brighter than existence, brighter than the sun itself.

It becomes his world. There is nothing, nowhere, no one, but three shades of three precise colours, and suddenly, they are Sasuke's universe.

As time goes, and without a sense of a clock or a signal he can only assume that it does, he comes to realize all that is constant. Faintly, he remembers, what seems a lifetime ago, the smell of seawater and the ever-persistent desperation that failure to drown sometimes brings upon a person. Back then, it had seemed there was no constant: rather, that being pushed by a current more alive than one's own being was all the change in the world. He would look upon the sky and his eyes would burn with tears and salt, and all his hopes would almost seem to shatter.

That was his norm, and the sky would be light years away. There would be no escape, but a state of questionable death, an unpeaceful dark. Of course, that is when the colours had arrived.

To be aroused and find that one is capable of sleep after unbearable sufferings is a priceless treasure. It is something Sasuke had only the pleasures of experiencing once, or twice, and upon awaking he would always doubt.

'Is this real?' he would ask, and in the silence that follows, his heart would almost shatter – almost.

There would always be that protruding shade of blue; strong and ever optimistic, and it would catch him right before he'd fall, and catch the pieces of his heart, cushioning and pampering and purifying, until finally he would be effortlessly put back together.

It is in his most vulnerable moments, right before his heart flutters against hard ground, that he would sometimes look back to his past. He would remember a fleeing feeling that maybe, just maybe, he was not completely alone.
In his vulnerability, he would find comfort.

It is a strange thing, stranger yet each time it happens. Blue is not a shapeless colour, lest it is irises, blinking down at him with a most earnest look. He thinks he may have seen it before – maybe, maybe in a less shallow life, maybe in a day where he has known more to existence but the taste of boiling waters and angry seas. It is on the tip of his tongue then: a word, four letters at most, or a name, something about something about fishcakes.

And then it is gone, as easily as it had came, and his vocabulary fails him. Sometimes, it evades him completely, and he wonders whether he ever knew how to speak.

Time passes a little slower afterwards. Sasuke comes to learn that no matter how constant something may be, it never completely is. He learns that there is no such thing as a hundred percent.

With that in mind, he heals.
The thoughts of a weak resolve and stronger waves almost fade. He works through them with a bright view, a sharp yellow that is almost blinding.

Yellow – that particular shade of yellow, at least, becomes a shade so dear to him that sometimes he may think it is the most precious thing in life. Sometimes, when he wakes, he thinks that it is not life he is grateful for, and not sleep, but that particular colour of elite strength and magical inspiration.

It is that same colour and that very shade that keeps him together when he realized that he has healed only to the most of his capabilities, and that the memories of something evil and terrifying will always border at the corners of his universe.

One day, it occurs to him that his world lacks an edge.

Orange, blue, and yellow don't exactly have an end. They melt into one another sometimes, and the start of one is only as constant as the end of the other: not at all. They vary in their appearance, and yet they mix into one another as if they are precisely the same.

He ponders about this for a long time, and when he realizes why, he feels all the more dumb for it. There is only ever two things in his world: three colours and his own existence.

He knows then, that the three are very one and the same, and the two are entirely separate. Despite his earlier doubts, he is more and more than sure now, these magnificent shades of colour are not a part of his very energy but something entirely different. They are a blessing, brought to him from elsewhere, and he doesn't know where exactly, but he knows that they are not his.

He wonders, only faintly, whether there is someone on the other side. Whether they are given to him by someone elderly and kind, or given to be shared with him, and someone else, maybe someone as young and equally fragile.

The thought makes his heart race without reason, and so he unwillingly lets go of it.

In the end, it is the orange that drives into him and crashes him to the ground. It is the orange that is fierce: more fierce than he is, because he falls easily below its pressure, and folds in against himself.

His eyes shut tight against it: against the very fabric of it, orange and burningly so. For a moment, he thinks maybe there is something else too, something that sounds like red but he soon realizes that he does no longer know what the word means.

When he opens his eyes, it is orange again, and there are no traces of blue or yellow but a humongous orange that seems to fill farther than his sight can reach.

He is dumfounded, if only for a moment, because there is an ache in his heart somewhere and he knows it is for the lack of that other colour, the other two that he had loved just as much as he loves this. But then the shock passes, and he feels with his arms, and stands on his feet and runs.

He searches, with his entire being and heart he looks and looks and looks, and he doesn't know what for. It is just a certain pang at his heart and a certain insistence in his surroundings, and he thinks that if he had more of an imagination, he would almost hear it talk to him. It would scream and rage at him to find – and something about that scares Sasuke, scares him more than the blackness had, more than drowning.

In the end, he finds it. He doesn't know that he has, of course. He simply walks into Naruto's hold, and then he wakes.

This time, the orange has a scent. It is ramen and sweat and that sweet taste of someone who means everything to him.

It has a voice too, and it is whispering his name, "Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke."

When Sasuke looks, the blond's eyes are closed shut, and he is talking in his sleep. Sasuke smiles anyway, because he knows that shade of blue will smile back at him at any moment.