Chapter 39
Uchiha Sasuke appreciated silence.
Whether this inclination was borne of his natural disposition or a lifetime of far too much chaos, it didn’t really matter. It was what is was, and Sasuke didn’t question it. He cultivated it, encouraged it, embodied it. Silence and stillness went hand-in-hand, and Sasuke was fine with that, too.
He became an untouchable lake upon whose surface nothing could impact, a force of nature outside the realm of tangible understanding. The tattered leftovers of his soul stormed lowly under the surface, captured within his frigid control, not even a single ripple marring the surface of his still waters. For years, he basked in the stillness. The silence, only ever interrupted by the low peals of thunder inside of him, and the icy depths of his repressed feelings.
He moved through life as a shadow, the village hidden in the leaves chattering around him incessantly, a never-ending stream of attention he’d never wanted. Even so many years after returning, still he caught his name in strangers’ mouths, their eyes trailing over him, equal parts suspicious and curious. He paid them no mind. He did his duty and went on missions, both alone and with the fractured remains of Team 7, and he returned to a home as empty as he was.
He moved over the threshold of his home wordlessly, his every step silent, and slid the door shut behind him. The sun was already inching towards the center of the sky, so bright he squinted. Hand tucked in his pocket, Sasuke moved through the desolate compound he refused to leave abandoned, and never moved his eyes from the central path leading out into the rest of the village. Dark eyes steady, eyelids heavy, he slid the gate closed behind him. There was no one around this part of the village, ever, and that wasn’t surprising. The Uchiha compound was a ghost town, a burial ground, and many believed it haunted. It was widely avoided. Sasuke was fine with that, too.
He valued his privacy, after all.
Not that he was doing anything that required privacy. Frowning, Sasuke tried not to think about the boredom he refused to admit to feeling. Boredom was safe. Boredom was fine.
When he made it into the more populated areas of Konoha, people moved around him like he was magnetized. He barely noticed the wide berth everyone gave him anymore, trailing along at his own pace, hand still stuffed in his pocket. It was only when he reached his destination—a rundown little shack that sold rare scrolls and weapons of surprisingly fine quality—that he felt the tension in his facial muscles. He purposely relaxed his scowl, eyebrows and lips freeing from strain. He pushed aside the strips of material hanging from the front entrance, bowing slightly when the owner called out a greeting.
He moved towards the back corner of the shop, ignoring the way two patrons immediately left the establishment the moment they saw him enter. A few others merely cast curious looks his way as he moved past, and a lesser number paid him no mind at all. He ducked under a barrage of shuriken hanging by thin strands of thread from the ceiling, glistening in the sunlight beaming through the entrance. They were unusual in design, and Sasuke thought offhandedly of the girl from his year who did her hair in little buns, and wore dangling earrings.
Sasuke moved around a display of explosive scrolls—sealed with personalized chakra locks—and stopped in his tracks. There was someone in his corner.
He had yet to see anyone other than himself perusing this particular section of the shop, and he’d been here countless times. Outside of simple curiosity, there were a limited number of people in the village who could actually make use of their optical chakra pathways. In fact, there were only three kinds of people who could make use of these texts: One lived in a compound much like his own, and certainly the Hyuuga had shelves upon shelves of personalized tomes specific to their family bloodline limit. They would have next to no need to visit any other library, especially one as trifling and nameless as this.
Another was he who wielded the Rinnegan. Which was Sasuke. And the last was he who wielded the Sharingan. Which was also Sasuke.
So why, then, was there a woman standing on tiptoe in this corner Sasuke had come to think of as his own? His eyes trailed up from her flexed calves, over the long fall of dark hair grazing her tailbone, and up to her outstretched hand, pale and delicate and desperately reaching for a tome overhead. Sasuke was not unobservant; he knew her.
Hyuuga Hinata—Hyuuga royalty. Heiress of her clan. Strongest living Byakugan user.
Naruto’s girlfriend.
His chest felt tight, rigid; something that ached like longing rippled outwards. Sasuke’s fist clenched, then released. Hinata’s fingertips weren’t even grazing the edge of the tome she longed for, and she had no more height to add, having already moved to the tips of her toes. Her pulling motion stretched her jacket across her shoulders, dragging the material up enough to offer a glimpse of skin just as smooth and pale as that of her exposed wrists. He could hear her saying something under her breath, though the words were lost to him.
He wanted to turn around, walk back out of the shop; move away, head back towards his compound, the training grounds, the forest, anywhere but here. Far away, and quickly, and quietly, silently, so she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t realize—he fought with himself over the cowardice of the feeling, refused to admit even to himself that what he wanted to do was flee, like prey, but instead found himself stationary, fixed and unmoving. His heart seemed the only part of him that moved, and oh, how it moved.
Still like prey, he thought, as she seemed to realize she had an audience and turned to glance at him over her shoulder. Caught in her web.
But it wasn’t fair to think her a predator when she had done nothing but exist, had never done anything so offensive or threatening but exist, right there in front of him—so close he could reach out and trail his knuckles under the curtain of her hair, except that he couldn’t, because she wasn’t his; she had never been his and he’d always thought himself untouchable but this, this inability to reach for her because of an invisible boundary was the unbearable truth of the term he hid beneath—
“Uchiha-san?”
Boundaries. Even the way she called to him added distance, until even the image of his hand in her hair faded away, too unbelievable to even exist in his mind. He could feel the edges of his expression shifting, frustration at himself sharpening every angle in his face. His eyes must have been pits of darkened flame, turbulent and sparking, and yet Hinata turned to him completely, unafraid and unguarded. This should have bothered him. It did bother him, only, not enough. Not nearly enough. Conflict arose within him, a familiar warring feeling under his skin. Perhaps if he were someone else, with far more freedom to feel, she would’ve been able to see the impact she had on him.
But he had had a lifetime of practice in this. Locked inside his heart with everything else he repressed, among the softness of prized intimacy, the quiet whisper of secrets, and the memory of his mother’s smile, there was this: interest.
It was because of this interest, and the way that it pierced holes in his iron control, that he wanted her to be afraid. He wanted her to add barrier after barrier between them, layers and labyrinths of defenses. He wanted her to push him away, to use his surname and only look at him after he’d been the one to look first. He wanted her to protect herself against him.
Because for her, for some inexplicable reason he couldn’t even fathom, he felt.
A lifetime of repressing his emotions under the weight of an entire ocean of untouched apathy, and with a single look from her, his control fractured. Ripples moved through him.
Blood on his hands, fractured friendships, distrust and incessant gossiping chatter about his life and the secrets strangers had no right to and the questioning almost apologetic expressions on Naruto’s and Sakura’s faces whenever they looked at him—none of it stirred him. He was as frigid and depthless as they thought him to be, still water with storms underneath. They could not touch him. At best they could feel the lightning inside of him. But they could not touch him.
But Hinata—
The first time he felt it, the jarring impact of someone breaking through his emotional defenses, she had a bleeding child in her arms. She didn’t notice him at the time, not even when he moved to her side, not even when it was his fingers that applied pressure to the wound in that child’s side. He remembered her hands, steady even while her voice shook. The maternal strength in her eyes as she clutched that child close and shielded his frail body with her own when an explosion nearby sent shrapnel spiking into her shoulders. Sasuke could still feel the impact against his own, and along the outer ridge of his arm where he’d tried to shield her, too.
Hinata had not even hesitated, despite a cry of pain. She didn’t look at Sasuke, either, only used his hand to aid her as she pulled from the dregs of her chakra to heal a nameless, dying child in her arms. He remembered the sudden rigidity in his chest, the palpable heaviness of a heart he’d desperately tried to forget he had. He remembered the way it awakened within him, and how the smell of singed flesh tore into him, proof of the trails of blood that arose from the lines in her palms; an incredibly late and daunting sign of chakra exhaustion. She never wavered, even as her chakra faltered, breaking and sputtering. She never looked at him, but he remembered.
She became the jade that broke the surface.
He still felt it. Years later, the war behind them, that child breathing somewhere in the world because of her, and her heart someone else’s to hold. Her heart belonging to his best friend.
It was unfathomable. He had never had a claim to her, not once, not even when he was the child prodigy the entire village fawned over. Not when all her peers idolized him, put him on a pedestal he could only come crashing down from. Not when he returned to the village a man that made others take notice, no longer boyish and misguided, but sharp-edged and confident.
No, he thought shakily, fighting to rein in his emotions even more strictly. For Hinata, there had only ever been Naruto.
Sasuke took a step towards her, unable to do anything but be pulled into her orbit. Still, his expression hardened. He held his shoulders so harshly they strained, but he moved beyond her, ignoring her call. He reached up and grasped the tome with ease, tearing it form the shelf. He could feel her eyes on him, and when he turned back to her he found uncomfortable solace in the gentleness in her eyes. That he wanted that tenderness so much made it that much more uncomfortable to see. He shoved the book towards her, fingertips already leaving the hard cover before she’d completely grasped it against her chest.
He was unbearably rude, his mother would be ashamed of his behavior, but the alternative was worse. He wanted to pull her in close, to smile against her neck, laughing at her. He could imagine an alternative reality where he reached around her, hoisting her onto his shoulder, supporting her with his hand on her waist, lifting her to the tome. She wouldn’t have to strain for it. She might even laugh, and how he longed to hear it. Naruto made her laugh so easily, it wasn’t like he’d never heard it. He’d just never heard it because of him.
Sasuke flash-stepped out of the shop and didn’t stop moving until the front door of his home snapped shut behind him. His back pressed up against the wooden paneling, and he slammed the back of his head against it for good measure. Get ahold of yourself, he berated, gritting his teeth. He closed his eyes and brought his hand to the hilt of kusanagi. The threads under his fingertips were a familiar sensation, bringing him back to the battlefield, where he could lose himself in memories of chaos he had control over. He understood himself well enough to know that it wasn’t psychologically or emotionally sound to find solace in the memory of taking lives.
But ever since his brother had murdered their family, their entire clan, Sasuke had never really held himself to the same sane standard as everyone else.
There were some things that a person just couldn’t come back from.
Sasuke pressed his head back against the door, gritted his teeth, and breathed through the memory of his own killing until his heart slowed, and slowed, and slowed.
He wondered if memories could ever be enough to get it to just…stop.
Stop.
✧
“Wanna fight?” Naruto asked him cheekily, playfully bumping against Sasuke’s shoulder. They were heading away from the Hokage tower after reporting in, freshly returned from a joint mission. It had been months since the encounter in the weapon shack.
Sasuke ignored Naruto, tucking his hand in his pocket. Sakura had left them at the tower, insisting that she had business with some official who’d apparently skipped his rehabilitation session. Sasuke did not envy him.
“What, really?” Naruto laughed, an added skip to his step beside Sasuke’s languid pace. “Since when do you not wanna spar?”
Sasuke cast him a snide look. “We’ve been back within village limits for less than an hour.”
“Exactly!”
Sasuke shook his head. “Idiot.”
“Well, if you don’t wanna fight, what’re you gonna do?”
Sasuke said nothing, and Naruto sighed.
“Do you even have any hobbies, bastard?”
Sasuke paused to think about that for a moment, and when he came up blank, he cast another scathing glance in Naruto’s direction. “Shut up,” he said, instead.
“You need to get a hobby. Or a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. A partner. A significant—”
“Shut up,” Sasuke gritted out, jaw clenching.
“What? Blame Sakura-chan. Ever since she and Ino started dating she really grilled me on the whole open-minded thing. You can’t just assume, y’know?”
Sasuke didn’t mind that Naruto had completely missed the point and thought him irritated because he’d used gender-neutral terms rather than mentioning a significant other in the first place. It was a subject Sasuke wanted nothing to do with. Naruto and Sakura had both grilled him enough times to understand that Sasuke was, as they called it, picky. Selective, Sakura would say with diplomacy, trying to help him out a bit.
He hated discussing it, and they both knew it. If either of them ever learned the true reason why, he and Naruto would undoubtedly both lose their remaining arms. Glancing over at his closest friend, who had begun rambling, he wondered not for the first time how he would react if Sasuke was honest.
“I have nothing to go on, because you have hermit tendencies, and love being difficult,” Naruto was saying, talking with his hand as they moved through the streets of Konohas. Sasuke watched idly as people recognized them both, turning their eyes quickly from Sasuke to beam at Naruto. He interrupted himself several times to return greetings to passerby, meanwhile Sasuke kept his eyes forward and ignored everyone like usual. He felt no inclination for false pretenses.
“So I’m really just floundering here, trying to come up with things, but it’s not easy, y’know. Sakura-chan likes Ino, who’s loud and blond…”
Naruto’s rambling paused, and Sasuke could feel his gaze moving over him. He turned to find Naruto squinting up at him, suspicious. Sasuke could only dread what he was thinking, as he ran a hand through his own blonde hair. Unashamed, Naruto didn’t even hesitate to ask:
“You into loud blondes?”
Sasuke’s lip curled, and Naruto immediately waved his hand, placating.
“Alright, alright. Definitely no loud blondes. Or blondes at all. Redheads? Dark hair? No hair?”
Sasuke wanted to punch him in the throat. He wanted him to stop asking. Subtle as he was, he picked up his pace until Naruto had to jog a little to catch up. His pocketed hand fisted, and Sasuke refused to acknowledge a word Naruto said.
“Okay, maybe I’ll just go off of my own experiences…”
Sasuke almost cut him off just to snap at him, wondering how in Naruto’s mind he figured his own experiences would have any relation to Sasuke’s personal tastes. Sometimes he could understand Naruto impeccably, and other times, he was completely flummoxed by his lack of logic.
But then he realized that in this particular case, Naruto’s dating experiences were actually directly and perfectly related to Sasuke’s taste in significant others. He could feel the tension of a headache building behind his temples.
“When did I realize I loved Hinata,” Naruto mused absentmindedly, tapping his chin. Sasuke’s stomach dropped. “Well, I always knew she was beautiful. Dark hair is best, after all. Don’t tell Sakura-chan I said that.”
For the briefest of moments, Sasuke closed his eyes. The image of his knuckles sliding under the curtain of Hinata’s hair flickered in his mind, and his eyes snapped open to disperse it. He unconsciously shifted aside to allow an elderly man to move seamlessly past him down the street, and turned to gaze at the hand reaching for Naruto’s arm a moment before it made contact.
“Excuse me,” the man interrupted, bowing slightly. He was all eyes for Naruto, pulling him aside to ask a few questions that Naruto immediately focused in on. Sasuke kept walking. He took several paces ahead before he heard the scuffing of feet on dirt, and turned to see an elderly woman a few steps down the nearest alley. Her trembling hands were reaching for her shoes, one of which had slipped off of her heel, but she couldn’t quite reach from the angle she had. Sasuke blinked at her, wondering where her caretaker was. Surely she wasn’t traveling through the streets alone if she couldn’t even manage to stay in her own shoes.
After several blank moments and no help arriving, Sasuke turned away from his path and approached her slowly. He was too quiet for her to notice him approaching, and when he was close enough that the edges of his ninsandals came into her view she gasped. Her eyes leapt up to him and fear filled her blinking eyes, the weathered skin around them creasing as she shied away.
Sasuke pretended not to notice that she recognized him, and that she was terrified. He could hear the chatter of Naruto and the man behind him, still deep in discussion. He thought he heard a softer voice join them, but paid them no more attention as he crouched down, his right knee hitting the dirt, and reached for the heel of her shoe. The old woman’s hand came out in a flash, surprisingly quick for her age and stature, and attempted to bat his hand away. He allowed the contact, his wrist batted away, but he only brought it back again and managed to secure her shoe completely on her foot before she could prepare a second strike. Her ankles were so delicate he could have reached the fingers of his hand all the way around them.
He worried for a moment that the impact of her smack may have injured her—if her ankles were this frail, her wrists were probably even more so. However, when he studied her hands, he found them healthy, if still trembling slightly.
While he studied her hand and wrist for injury, she watched in some semblance of awe as the Uchiha clan survivor knelt before her, slipping her dirty, sock-covered foot back into her slipper with his remaining hand. When it became clear he just wanted to help her, though he remained silent and icy all the while, she began to relax before his eyes. There was still a guardedness to her; she didn’t trust him completely, even as he lifted out his hand to gently grasp her wrist. He helped her to rise along with him, ignoring the puff of dirt on his knee, the rocks still sticking into the fabric. He steadied the woman in front of him and then pulled away without a word, his chin dipping good-naturedly. Then he turned from her and headed out of the alley, with only a last trace of care concerning her well-being before forgetting about her entirely.
When he came out from the alley, Naruto and the man were both looking over some manuscript the man was holding. From Sasuke’s angle, it looked like diagnostics of some sort. A weapon? No, that wasn’t right. Regardless of what it was, why this man would bring it to Naruto, of all people, Sasuke had no idea. Before he could even begin to guess what the diagnostics were for, the hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end, and he subconsciously glanced overhead. He caught a flash of lavender, the trailing scent of something like vanilla and something sweet like fruit, and watched Naruto turn instantly to greet Hyuuga Hinata.
Naruto breathed her name in welcome, and she moved towards him distractedly, dipping in to gently kiss his cheek as she turned over his shoulder to look at Sasuke. His heart pounded, and he looked away. Naruto murmured something for her ears only, checking in with her, and Sasuke saw from the corner of his eyes how she nodded and soothed, reaching out to playfully trail her fingers through the longer hair by Naruto’s ears. Naruto laughed, and turned from her to rejoin the conversation with the stranger and his manuscript.
Sasuke could hear Naruto asking, “So as far as prosthetics go, these are influenced by chakra? How?”
Sasuke stopped listening. He knew Naruto had been looking for a prosthetic replacement for the arm Sasuke had ripped off. Sasuke wasn’t in the market for replacements. He was fine with just the one, and besides, it was a sort of penance, after all. He still had so much to atone for.
With Naruto distracted, Sasuke offered Hinata a single nod in greeting, the reminder of how rude he had been to her the last time they’d seen one another pushing him to be better-mannered. He thought of his mother, her scolding voice still pristine in his memory, and added a quiet, “Hello.”
His eyes moved away from her, but not before registering the surprise that rose over her expression, lifting her brows. She smiled so softly it hurt to look at her, and Sasuke made to take his leave, continuing on the path he’d deviated from for that old lady.
Before he could take a single step, however, Hinata’s voice pinned him down.
“Uchiha-san,” she said, “It’s nice to see you again.”
Sasuke stood frozen for a moment, awkward in a rare bout of uncertainty, before turning back to her with hardened eyes. He didn’t mean to scowl at her, though she didn’t seem to mind. There was something jovial to the gleam in her eyes, the curl in the corner of her lips. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve guessed her amused. At him? For what?
He didn’t respond, and that didn’t seem to bother her either. In fact, she took a step closer to him and butterflies threatened to take flight inside his gut. Was it really nice to see him again? Even after he was so unquestioningly rude to her the last time? Did it really even matter?
He stretched his fingers, an idle gesture. Hinata moved until she was within reach, lowering her voice as she glanced over his shoulder with a kind smile. The old lady from before moved past them with a polite nod of her head, of which Hinata returned with a bow Sasuke thought too deep considering her status and the circumstances. When the elder moved on, not saying a word to him nor casting him a single glance, Sasuke felt an unknown tension fade from his nape, stringing his shoulders too tightly, like a bow.
Hinata turned to him with those soft, striking eyes, and it was a different kind of tension that strung through him anew. She said, “That was kind of you, you know.”
Sasuke stared at her lips for a moment before forcing himself to look away, not acknowledging the statement at all. He felt heat building in the shells of his ears. He had thought no one around when he helped that old lady; never would he have imagined that someone had been watching his random act of kindness, and that that someone would turn out to be Hinata.
“Foolish,” he said at last, lifting his arm as if to cross it over his chest only to remember that he no longer could. He let his hand fall awkwardly back to his side. “She shouldn’t be traveling alone in her condition.”
“Perhaps,” Hinata agreed, not without consideration. “But even the elderly deserve their agency.”
Sasuke shook his head, irritated with her impartiality, but not truly invested enough in caring about that old woman’s health to discuss it. He looked back to Hinata and could see that she thought otherwise—no one ever looked at him with such kindness. He could tell with just a look that she thought him a better person than he was, with better intentions than he truly had. She caught him helping an old lady, and now she thought him kind. It was misplaced optimism, a fool’s hope he wanted to squander. He wasn’t what she thought him to be.
What he actually was, was this: a hardened criminal, a willful traitor, a proven murderer, one of the most dangerous and lethal shinobi in the entire village system. People looked at him with mixed parts disdain and suspicion, at times curiosity, occasionally envy or admiration, but there was always distrust. A curled lip here, a glare there. Sasuke had even had people spit at him before, calling him traitor to his face. And they had a right to. He’d given them that the moment he abandoned them and their safety for his own gain. He didn’t deny them their wrath; he knew what it was to have others trying to cage you, suppress you, control you. He wouldn’t.
But that didn’t make him good. Hinata looked at him like he had a right to the second chance he’d been unethically gifted; like he was still someone who could be saved. Like he was someone who deserved to be saved.
Did she forget who it was that tore the arm off her beloved?
Sasuke’s lip curled, and he turned away from her and took those retreating steps at last. He couldn’t stand to look at her anymore, with hope so brazen in her eyes as she traced over his features. She had the wrong impression of him, and though somewhere deep in his heart he wanted to be that person she saw, anger made him turn away, back to the shadows of who he actually was.
Maybe in another life, in another time, where she was his and he was hers, maybe he was a better person because of her.
“Oi! Where’re you going, bastard?”
But reality always came crashing back into his life, one loud blustering word at a time. Against his better judgment, Sasuke turned over his shoulder to cast Naruto a snide glance and regretted it instantly. With his arm slung over Hinata’s shoulders, Naruto was rushing towards Sasuke, intent on catching up. Sasuke didn’t even consider running; he’d already lost too much face in front of Hinata as it was.
When they sidled up alongside him, Sasuke’s eyes leapt to the heat under Hinata’s cheeks, the color a side effect of the arm over her shoulders, he was sure. He swallowed, and looked away.
“That man has incredible designs, Sasuke. You should really give him a chance.”
This, too, was a discussion they’d had several times before. Naruto thought him ridiculous for refusing to commission a prosthetic arm. He knew vaguely that Sasuke refused any prosthesis because of what he liked to call, “some lame form of an apology,” but even knowing that he still continued to push.
“He has different types that he offers—one of them is a claw. Can you believe it?”
Sasuke sighed, and between them Hinata laughed under her breath. Before Naruto even turned to her, she said, “It’s your choice, Naruto-kun…but I would prefer something other than the claw, if I get a say.”
Naruto deflated instantly, but he laughed. “How cool would that be though?”
“Idiot,” Sasuke muttered, and Naruto turned on him in an instant. “Hey!”
The three of them continued to walk together, with Hinata moving between them, holding onto Naruto’s hand over her shoulder. Sasuke stared straight ahead as Naruto continued to discuss prosthesis options, highlighting what types seemed coolest, before seeming to remember something important.
“Speaking of types,” he prefaced, and Sasuke felt dread curl inside of him. He deliberately did not look at Hinata, staring even harder in front of him. Several people walking past blinked at him, startled by the cross looks he cast their way. He even heard someone passing by ask their companion, “Man, who kicked his puppy?”
Immature as it was, Sasuke’s frown deepened. He was a cat person.
Naruto chattered on ceaselessly, stoking the fire of Sasuke’s irritation. “Don’t think I‘ve forgotten what we were talking about before! I’m going to get to the bottom of this, believe it. You will tell me what type of person you want to kiss!”
Sasuke’s temper overturned, spilling out in frigid blasts.
His voice was cold enough to burn, sheets of rapidly thinning ice Naruto so carelessly treaded upon. “And what business is it of yours what kind of person I want to kiss, idiot?”
“I’m your best friend! Of course it’s my business.” Naruto’s words were matter of fact, with no sign of weakness and no intent to back down. Sasuke almost growled, his throat wanting to rumble with his displeasure, but when he turned to glare at Naruto he had to look over Hinata’s head to do so, and the wintry storm inside of him subdued.
“And besides,” Naruto continued blithely, uncaring for the danger he could so clearly read in Sasuke’s eyes, just this side of bleeding into scarlet. “You deserve to have someone who you can take care of, and who’ll take care of you—”
Sasuke stopped walking, and it was easy to convert the sudden ache in his chest into the rising anger he’d been pushing down. He couldn’t look at Hinata and hear Naruto telling him he deserved those kinds of things, knowing how badly he wanted them despite a lifetime of telling himself he didn’t deserve them, and knowing he wanted them with her when she had never been his, and never would be.
He stared hard at Naruto, and his voice was cutting.
“I changed my mind,” he said, reaching over Hinata’s shoulder to press two fingertips to the ball of Naruto’s closest shoulder. “I want to fight.”
And before he could gather the etiquette to apologize to Hinata in some way, he transported himself and Naruto into the deep green of a familiar training field.
Uchiha fire had already laced his lips.