#sasuke ic

Sasuke shakes his head, chiefly undoing all the easy work his mother performed in fixing his unruly, stubborn hair. " No. No need. " Instead, he fulfills his role as elder now, grasping the teapot at the handle and pouring a short cup for her in return.

There was no greeting as the door opened; no warmth of a fire or scent of cooking. A single house-slipper flung across the entry-way, a splash of old blood across the stones before the door, the vase which had once sat atop the shoes-cabinet to hold seasonal flowers, now shattered on the floor.

When returning from his heedless campaign of contracts, Sasuke had hoped to be greeted with smells of the home; any invitation into a world not harsh nor cruel to him. However, the shell of his house turns on him. From the cockles of levity Chitose had urged his vacant estate to be, it had forsaken its growth into a sanctuary from the bloodshed imposed on it. Its floors were wet with all-too-familiar crimson stains splattered over the polished wood.

He steps through the door near strangled by the heat winding at his throat, threatening to suffocate him. Old memories dredge up ( the feverish cries of his baby cousins, the anguished squeal of his aunts, the death rattle of his mother clinging to the last unsung note of life as she bid her youngest son goodbye ) in his mind, arresting him at the wrists, bidding him through the halls in a rising frenzy.

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.

" Are you staying for the New year, Sasuke? " asked Kakashi.