It made sense, and yet -- Sasuke let the healing chakra dissipate from his hands only after the deep cut had closed, skin showing clean beneath the blood still smeared over the child's neck. Even with the seals faded from his eyes and mouth, this didn't look like sleep. It looked like the murder it was, even if Sasuke checked that the one starting his spine was gone as well, even if he wiped away some of the red with his own hands. Even if --
Even if it might have stopped a war.
Were these the stakes in a Kage's hand, in the end? Something at once cleaner-cut and viscerally deeper than the paper-games that Sasuke had watched Hinata work through with Obito. Lives ended there, too, but at least aboveground, at least with room to mourn.
And here -- carefully, Sasuke folded one cooling hand neatly over the other, lowered his head in a silent prayer: nothing he'd ever done before, even with a decade of being old enough to help at the annual grave-sweeping under his belt. And Uchiha funerals, half fire, half earth. Mikoto had shown him how to light incense and offer a proper greeting to the dead, and here: here Sasuke didn't ask for honour or glory. I'm sorry, he mouthed, I'm so sorry, until he stood with his hands still red.
"What formation for the flames?" He asked, looking out over the cellar. Such an enclosed space, and dirt-bound; they'd need to start a second one upstairs to properly finish the house if that was the plan.
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Even if it might have stopped a war.
Were these the stakes in a Kage's hand, in the end? Something at once cleaner-cut and viscerally deeper than the paper-games that Sasuke had watched Hinata work through with Obito. Lives ended there, too, but at least aboveground, at least with room to mourn.
And here -- carefully, Sasuke folded one cooling hand neatly over the other, lowered his head in a silent prayer: nothing he'd ever done before, even with a decade of being old enough to help at the annual grave-sweeping under his belt. And Uchiha funerals, half fire, half earth. Mikoto had shown him how to light incense and offer a proper greeting to the dead, and here: here Sasuke didn't ask for honour or glory. I'm sorry, he mouthed, I'm so sorry, until he stood with his hands still red.
"What formation for the flames?" He asked, looking out over the cellar. Such an enclosed space, and dirt-bound; they'd need to start a second one upstairs to properly finish the house if that was the plan.