Sasuke ate my homework. I mean, my brain.
Ok, I admit this was one of my daily 300-word assignments for my writing class. The assignment was to vary the sentence structures as much as possible (which was harder than it sounds) and to loosely model your style on an author of your choice (mine was Arundhati Roy, which is why it does not sound like Naruto's voice at all). But the Sasuke reunion scene in Shippuden had completely eaten my brain, so that's what I wrote.
Title: Reunion
Words: 289
Characters: Team Seven (NaruSasu just a bit)
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Like a dagger he stood against the sky. His sharp silhouette cleaving the clouds, he loomed black and wordlessly from the cliff. Then, in the pale spill of a sunbeam, we saw him. Relief, thick, warm and viscous, washed meltingly over my insides. I had imagined such horrible things: the demon he had twisted into when I last fought him, with ashen skin and gnarled hands for wings; the inhuman face of his new master, with chill flesh and snake-slit eyes; or worst of all, a dry husk of a man, with just enough whisper left in his lungs to laugh at us and tell us we had come too late. I had imagined a nightmare; I now saw a memory.
He looked the same. In a loose-fitting white shirt and slim dark pants and one of those disgusting purple belts that marked his new allegiance, his body was whole, more beautiful than ever, all its edges hardened with training and time. Even his hair had not changed much, and his eyes did not burn red but shadow-black. If I’d been close enough, I’d have mined those cavernous eyes for a gleam of recognition, a shade of regret, a flicker of remembrance of that warmer world where all of us belonged.
Even a feeling.
But he was just out of reach. That was just one more thing that had not changed - the one thing I wanted to have changed, and the one thing I knew would not.
In spite of treason, in spite of poisoned blood and poisoned teachings, in spite of two bitter long and silent sleepless years, he was still Sasuke.
Somehow, I realized, it hurt more that way.
Title: Reunion
Words: 289
Characters: Team Seven (NaruSasu just a bit)
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Like a dagger he stood against the sky. His sharp silhouette cleaving the clouds, he loomed black and wordlessly from the cliff. Then, in the pale spill of a sunbeam, we saw him. Relief, thick, warm and viscous, washed meltingly over my insides. I had imagined such horrible things: the demon he had twisted into when I last fought him, with ashen skin and gnarled hands for wings; the inhuman face of his new master, with chill flesh and snake-slit eyes; or worst of all, a dry husk of a man, with just enough whisper left in his lungs to laugh at us and tell us we had come too late. I had imagined a nightmare; I now saw a memory.
He looked the same. In a loose-fitting white shirt and slim dark pants and one of those disgusting purple belts that marked his new allegiance, his body was whole, more beautiful than ever, all its edges hardened with training and time. Even his hair had not changed much, and his eyes did not burn red but shadow-black. If I’d been close enough, I’d have mined those cavernous eyes for a gleam of recognition, a shade of regret, a flicker of remembrance of that warmer world where all of us belonged.
Even a feeling.
But he was just out of reach. That was just one more thing that had not changed - the one thing I wanted to have changed, and the one thing I knew would not.
In spite of treason, in spite of poisoned blood and poisoned teachings, in spite of two bitter long and silent sleepless years, he was still Sasuke.
Somehow, I realized, it hurt more that way.