Had he ever consider the Leaf Village to be his home? A topical, yet longstanding question. Many have asked and none have ever received an answer befitting to their bias ( if they were to get an answer at all ). Sasuke was forever a ghost drifting between realms, phasing through the walls of varying cultures && constructs to allay the vacancy within his heart.
Shikamaru, however, was a man the Uchiha had considered known for his rigidity. A creature of structure and deliberation. In being so far away from the boundaries of Fire Country, Sasuke's presumption casts forward with the notion to beg pause. Either there was a system of unique danges he had not accounted for in his hunting grounds —
— or, there was an unaccounted variable.
" You can ponder whether or not I consider Konoha my home. I wager your answer would be closer than what other's have guessed, " he said, breaking into the stabs of spare light, granting detailing to his shaded form.
An assessing look takes to the Uchiha's watchful gaze. No accursed Sharingan, not yet, but potential teemed within the border at first strike of flint, should the proverbial stone ever appear.
" Of all who wander, my unset course is predicted in all precautionary guidelines. Dare say, it is expected of me, " his voice is measured with practiced stillness; monotonous in ways that delineate from any semblance of personality within him. Neither scornful nor questioning. Vigilance crowns his priority and he wore it well.
The Nara smirks as if he were shrugging off the phantom thread at the borders of his shadow technique. Sasuke noted this without expression in return.
" If you seek escort, then I will, but you don't, " he asserts, " I am at the command of no one. I do not seek you. "
Allegiance laid bare, the Uchiha is like a hawk where he stands.
" Anyone who comes this far usually has something to hide — or something awfully important to execute, " his voice testing," and I see no lost soul haplessly stumbling in the dark. "
