[Cy is right. There is no road to walk without trespassing on the final resting place of one of his clansmen. All of them were killed here — in the open, fighting back, or hiding within the privacy of their homes. Their deaths are irrevocably burned into his mind, such that as he navigates the path inward, he sees it all around him again, slumped bodies and vacant faces and so much blood. His hand only tightens on Cy's, weathering this, ensuring that what they view now in the illusion of the Sharingan is the quiet serenity of a neighborhood beneath the noon-day sun.
There are shopfronts arrayed down the center street, where once his aunts and uncles were busy at work, calling out to him as he would run past on the return from school. Those places look desolate now, empty and hollow, strange as skeletons in the severe shadow created by bright daylight. Sasuke is silent the entire way; it is the bereavement of what was lost, but also a reverence and respect for the dead, that keeps him from speaking.
Eventually, their walking takes them to the home he remembers. They pass through a wooden gate. A plain footpath leads to the single-story house, an engawa wrapped around the outer walls bridging manmade structure to gardens — a koi pond, hanging paper lanterns, a stone pagoda, hakone grass, a sōzu, small fenced-in plots for crops. There are summer flowers in bloom, a colorful flurry of hydrangea and camellia and osmanthus, fragrant scents brooding in the open air. It is not an excessively large house, but clearly elevated in a display of status as head of the clan.
He gently tows Cy with him, up onto the back porch, and then stands there looking into the garden with his head slightly bowed, hair slipping into eyes.]
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Date: 2024-03-16 04:32 pm (UTC)There are shopfronts arrayed down the center street, where once his aunts and uncles were busy at work, calling out to him as he would run past on the return from school. Those places look desolate now, empty and hollow, strange as skeletons in the severe shadow created by bright daylight. Sasuke is silent the entire way; it is the bereavement of what was lost, but also a reverence and respect for the dead, that keeps him from speaking.
Eventually, their walking takes them to the home he remembers. They pass through a wooden gate. A plain footpath leads to the single-story house, an engawa wrapped around the outer walls bridging manmade structure to gardens — a koi pond, hanging paper lanterns, a stone pagoda, hakone grass, a sōzu, small fenced-in plots for crops. There are summer flowers in bloom, a colorful flurry of hydrangea and camellia and osmanthus, fragrant scents brooding in the open air. It is not an excessively large house, but clearly elevated in a display of status as head of the clan.
He gently tows Cy with him, up onto the back porch, and then stands there looking into the garden with his head slightly bowed, hair slipping into eyes.]