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[hallowing]

@torontonian

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[hallowing]

Oh, well, in that case — I'll make the ring, you can make the gem. Can it be purple?

（ like, what's the spectrum we're working with here??? but he asks, mostly because he wants it to match the collar, but also the soft lilac shade of sasuke's left eye. he doesn't voice that innate desire for similarity, but he does lift a hand to skirt his thumb along the strong bone of his brow thoughtfully.

timidity begone. cy grins at him, warmed by the sentiment. ）

Sasuke, you could be offering me flaming shit on a stick, and as long as it was a symbol of love to you, I'd love it. Make me a jewel and I'll figure out the rest. We can design it together. Can you do metals too? I could work from a raw lump.

（ surprising literally no one, yes, he has in fact made jewellery before.

look, when ten thousand years old you are, bored of every fucking job on a terrifying number of planets you too will be. ）

[chokuto]

It can probably be purple.

[He sounds thoughtful, not quite making the connection between the selection of that color and anything related to him. It does match the collar, which makes sense. Perhaps Cy is especially fond of purple.]

I don't know. I'll have to try it out and do a few tests first. I've never done this before. Theoretically, metal should be possible too — and I'd like doing that with you. Making the ring together.

[It would be meaningful. Not that it isn't already, but... it just seems right. He reaches up, stroking along Cy's arm in an affectionate caress.]

But then if you're going to give me piercings, you'll also need to make the jewelry for that as well.

[hallowing]

Something in the 'lilac' variety.

（ yes he's not letting you get away with that ignorance, oop. he settles back in his place, that parenthetical curl around his side of the egg nest. idly, he starts the process of turning them, one at a time. ）

I'll teach you how to do it. No guarantees that metal is the only thing I'll be hammering, though.

（ look, sasuke brought this on himself by imprinting on the first hot man who sucked his dick, okay??? ）

[chokuto]

Do you like that color for some reason?

[Sometimes your boyfriend-turned-fiancé is Head Empty No Thoughts. He doesn't make the connection at all. Though he does reach to help Cy in the process of turning their eggs, instinctively following the man's lead.]

... [snort.] You shouldn't get distracted when you're handling delicate tools.

[??? Flirting? He's still not good at it.]

[hallowing]

Sasuke.

（ good lord, man. it's a good thing you're pretty. cy catches one of his hands as they turn the eggs carefully, and threads their fingers together. he will address the flirting momentarily, but first: ）

Sweetheart. What colour is your Rinnegan?

[chokuto]

[Oh.]

I forgot. Not that I forgot the color, I just didn't — think of that. You're the one always looking at it, so... [Help.

His relationship to the Rinnegan is already complicated, and whether he's consciously aware of it or not, there's a reason he sweeps his grown-out bands to the left side of his face most of the time.]

It's meaningful to you?

[hallowing]

It's part of you.

（ and he's aware of... some of those complications, to be sure. that comment about it being his brother's eyes haven't left his mind — but he can still choose to find it beautiful. ）

Of course it's meaningful.

[chokuto]

[He looks thoughtful for a moment, pulling Cy's hand close enough to press against his own cheek in an affectionate gesture.]

I never told you how I got it — the Rinnegan. It's different than my normal Sharingan.

[If there's anyone he would share this with, it is Cy. The only other people who know where there in person, or are now dead again.]

Do you want to know?

[hallowing]

If you're comfortable sharing it, yes.

（ he knows sasuke wouldn't offer otherwise, but also — there needs to be that freedom there, to refuse if he happens to change his mind. ）

[chokuto]

It was toward the end of the war. [Saying this, he realizes that perhaps some explanation is necessary.] It was called the Fourth Great Shinobi War, because it involved the leaders of every major shinobi village. We were fighting against one of my clan's ancestors... Uchiha Madara.

[Obito who? Fuck that guy.]

Anyway, I learned that I was a direct descendent of this man. No, to be more specific — reincarnation is possible in my world. I don't know if it's the case everywhere, but I discovered I was a reincarnation of Madara. And that this line of ancestry extended to the very first individual to introduce chakra into the world, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. She came from somewhere else. A clan from another planet. The chakra itself was... from something called a God Tree, a tree that grew from the blood-soaked soil of that era of endless war, and then produced Chakra Fruit.

[Lore drop feat. themes of war. Perhaps this is why he's never found it strange when Cy speaks of a greater universe.]

She had fraternal twins, Hagoromo and Hamura, who were like gods back then. They're considered the genesis of shinobi, and Hagoromo is my original ancestor. He had a son, named Indra, who possessed the Rinnegan. [is Cy mathladygif yet] ... Hagoromo appeared briefly during the Fourth War, and he granted me some of his chakra, which is what awakened that same power in me as well.

[He squeezes Cy's hand, looking down at the eggs.]

I've never spoken to anyone about this before. It's a lot.

[hallowing]

（ he listens quietly, and to anyone else it might seem that his attention is far away — gaze alit on some fixed, distant point. yet sasuke, who's spent enough time around him to be well-aware that his default is eerie eldritch thing rather than person, will probably recognize his expression for what it is: a redirection of energy and focus from coming across as normal to listening attentively.

as sasuke speaks, cy just worries his thumb against the side of their entwined hands. it dovetails in with the details he's done his best to hold onto, and some that slipped out of his fingers and were dragged painstakingly back.

(naruto — the boy, his friend. that name comes and goes.) ）

It is a lot.

（ reincarnation... doesn't surprise him, actually — perhaps there's some combined inheritance of war there, partly responsible for drawing kv's eye to him. not that sasuke's own life was much disparate from it either, but successively — hm.

cy's gaze shifts back to him, still flat. a curious cant to his head seems all he can manage in the moment, and even that isn't quite... right, being more rehearsed than smoothly done. ）

So, Indra founded your clan?

[chokuto]

He did.

[It's difficult to tell Cy's thoughts from that reaction, or that lack of one, but more than anything...]

Sometimes I don't know whether my actions are my own, or whether they come from — someone else. Whoever I used to be. Am I one person? Am I more than one, and if so, are my choices determined to always be destructive?

[Were Indra and Madara good people? Should it matter if they were? Should he consider their crimes against his own?

There's a sigh, gaze straying back to Cy's neutral expression.]

Sorry. Back when I found out, I didn't care. But I've had time to think. It's confusing.

[hallowing]

（ he sits up, dislodging the blanket as he does so he can scoot to the headboard of the bed and pull sasuke with him. he tugs him in between his legs so that sasuke can lay against him, wrapping his arms around him to reach for the egg bundle. with sasuke's help, they drag it between his legs and he fluffs the blanket back over them before he rests his cheek against the boy's dark hair. ）

I don't think you're asking yourself the right question.

（ the gods at severmeretha, after all, also reincarnate. it just takes the heat death of the universe to do it. cy turns to kiss idly at his head, then: ）

No one knows whether or not their actions are their own, or if they're driven by something else. The answer is, they're always driven by something else. No one in the history of the universe has ever made a decision that's completely without external influence. We are what our society, what our culture, what our families, what our lives make us. And those things impact what we decide, who we love, who we hate, the hills we'll die on, and the yokes we'll live beneath.

（ one hand skims against sasuke's chest, settling against his sternum. ）

We're all beholden to something. Someone. If being a reincarnation has some impact over what you do — sure. But you're also a shinobi that grew up in a culture shaped by war. You're also an Uchiha, shaped by how others treated you, by what you lost. Are you destructive, or are you hurt with no way to express yourself except with pain?

（ another kiss, this time pressed down against his trapezius muscle. ）

You're you. Whether it's the genetic inheritance of the Uchiha that shaped you, the trauma of what you've endured, or a soul that lives inside you, the only thing that matters is that you're the only version of yourself that exists right now, in this moment. You're the only one that's here with me, that's going to marry me. And I know you've changed, you've grown since I met you. You make me so proud, and so humbled by how far you've come. In the end, every person alive is just a form of energy that's borrowed from the universe. We all give it back, at the end of everything. So if right now, your energy is named Uchiha Sasuke, and it's been put into your body, and it's lived with your scars — then all those other lives can fucking suck it. It doesn't matter. Only the experiences you've had matter. Only the man you choose to be matters.

[chokuto]

[Sasuke is pliant to the rearrangement, pulled against Cy and into the cradle of the man's natural body warmth, nest settled between his legs. The blanket traps heat beneath it, fostering a shelter in their embrace that he sinks into with a sense of... safety. That's how Cy makes him feel when they're together. Safe, secure, and protected — against the past, the future, and all of his own darker thoughts in the present.

And he listens as attentively as he always does. Somewhere in the gentle exoneration of those worries and fears, he finds that he's started crying. It's not unfamiliar by now, but it still startles him; he doesn't feel particularly sad. But the emotion is acute — and from it, a few more eggs pop into existence, almost unnoticed in the growing pile they've accumulated.]

I believe you.

[A soft murmur. Truthfully, it helps. Cy has a way of working him through the worst shadows of his mind with such deftness and skill that it's uncanny, although he knows now that a great part of that is the breadth of Cy's existence across time, and what he's endured himself. Sasuke lifts his arm, caging it over the man's and wrapping both around his body to tighten the embrace.]

But I want to be with you longer than the present. [Forever. He's used that word before.] I've thought about it. If... that means a reincarnation of my soul, then at least it's possible. You won't be alone, even if I'm different.

[hallowing]

It wouldn't be the same.

（ he says that very softly, with another gentle kiss to his cheek, tasting salt. ）

And it would be unfair, to put that person in a cage of expectations, and to love the shadow of you in them. I couldn't do that to someone. （ there's not a lot he wouldn't give, to have one more conversation with tak. but even if he found him, some ten thousand years later, an impossible thing in the fabric of space, time and physics — he would hate every moment that was shared, was loved, was lost. ） I don't mind being alone, you know. I made peace with that a long time ago.

[chokuto]

[The response doesn't make him happy, even if it is logical, and selfless, and kind. The fact is still —]

It's not fair for you either. You shouldn't have to be alone. You shouldn't have to make peace with it.

[And his own resolve not to leave Cy to that fate only strengthens.]

Is there nothing that can be done?

[hallowing]

（ and that's the rub, isn't it? cy doesn't believe in fate or destiny — to accept that, he'd have to accept that it was the predetermined outcome of kulo vayn getting into his head that destroyed eleven worlds, that those people existed only to die en masse. and he'd have to accept, too, that out of all the billions of lifeforms in the world, he alone was fit to be ordained the god of war.

it may be fucking stupid, but the chaotic behaviour of the universe is something he can look at reasonably and logically from a mathematic promontory. one in a thousand quintillion is still a chance. fair? no, maybe it's not fair. but it's real, and there is no universal constant of fairness that rights itself on a long-enough timeline. everything moves towards entropy. order into disorder. ）

I know you can't stand the thought of me being by myself. （ that's said very softly, as cy shifts just enough that he can thread their fingers together, squeezing with a sort of tenderness that's firm and bracing besides. ） I love that about you. The gentleness, the empathy. You're truly a kind person. （ he brings sasuke's hand up over the boy's shoulder and kisses at his knuckles. ） Can we talk about this later?

[chokuto]

[It isn't so common for Cy to set a boundary, but when it does happen, Sasuke has noticed it is always central to the man's individual suffering — to his extended life, his existence leashed by the creature named Kulo Vayn entombed in his mind. And like the time before, when Cy would not let him intervene despite the efforts he'd gone to control himself — that self-executed drowning — Sasuke struggles not to push back. He wonders if Cy will defer and deflect it indefinitely, until Sasuke himself is too old and half his own life has passed before their eyes. Until it is too late.

But pushing invites the threat of Cy's distance or even abandonment if he goes too far, and he can't risk the only happiness he's ever had. It is like being pulled in two directions — but in that moment, it's easier to nod his head and accept it, swallow it, even if he doesn't want to. The softness of fatigue, the emotional responsibility of the eggs they've somehow fostered, takes precedence today.]

All right. [He turns his head, nuzzling against Cy's shoulder as best he can reach.] I love you.

[hallowing]

I know.

（ has he not demonstrated it at every turn, in every way?

one hand lifts, cupping the side of sasuke's head, corralling him for a kiss that's only slightly awkward. ）

I love you too. Get some rest. I'll keep an eye on the eggs for now, and I'll take a nap later. Comfy?

are we free

[chokuto]

Mm.

[He settles in after that kiss, readjusting their arms so the embrace is complete, easily sinking into the warmth of Cy's body and the reassurance of its solidity against his own. At some point, sleeping up against Cy had become — necessary, and to go without it for one night unfathomable. It takes little time for him to drift off like that, contented.]

revives this days later (text, 2 days post eggpocalypse??)

[hallowing]

u kno

these eggs are giving me ideas

[chokuto]

Do those ideas involve you bringing back something to eat while I'm watching over them?

[hallowing]

oh no they are markedly less wholesome than that*

*i have already picked u up fried rice w/shrimp and onigiri hopefully u like shrimp??

n e way.

unwholesome, lewd thoughts: what if i wanna stuff u full of (not these) eggs to simulate pregnancy tho 🥺🥺

[chokuto]

[He was about to answer that question, but — ??????]

You want to what?

What eggs? Where?

[hallowing]

fun eggs. not 'our precious magpie babies' eggs, but, u know. fun adult eggs designed exactly for this purpose.

there are dildos u can use that can lay them for lack of a better word. in an orifice of ur choice.

gotta be more careful w/the ass bc otherwise shit can get MAD lost up there