Ball and chain|| Sasusaku

Chapter 18

"...looking for her..."

The door might as well have been left ajar when he caught the voice, syllables melting into each other like raindrops on a windowpane, as Sasuke sat himself down on the porch. He couldn't care less about voices. Not when a hundred of them were resounding in his head, pounding against the wall of his skull, raging to break loose. He dug his fingers into his shoes, letting each foot free and not bothering to arrange them. Searing white pain stabbed him as if hot, smelted iron had been forced into the back of his eyes. He leaned back, fingers pressed on the cool surface of the floor, heaving a sigh to soften the wince leaving his bitten lips as waves of agony lanced through his head.

Sasuke felt every pint of strength leave his body and wished for nothing but to deflate on the cold maple floor, let it rip his pain away and lull him to sleep. When was the last time he had slept? No nightmares waiting at his doorstep, starving for his screams. No distorted images heightening his senses, leaving him in traces of cold sweat; of hauntingly similar smiles and alien taunts; of his guilt and his need personifying. Sasuke felt a bitter tide of nausea crest in his throat.

He pulled himself up as if snatching himself away, struggling against gravity, and let his sock-clad feet drag against the wood creaking under his weight. The house smelled of artificial sandalwood, a flavoured candle his mother bought on a whim, and it felt like poison up his nasal tract.

"...been too long..."

"...can't keep going like this..."

Sasuke halted his steps before the mahogany door. Two, or was it three, years back, it used to be a sliding shoji door, the click of the now doorknob that feels like a key he is barely allowed to have replacing the frequent soft thuds that resonated through the house when they played catch; the door she used to barge in like the place belonged to her.

He held on to the doorknob, head leaning on the frame behind it, one hand coiling around it as the fragments of the conversation inside held him back from closing his eyes and passing out.

"That boy is hopeless. There's a limit to everything." He recognized his father's voice, if not from the low, masculine tremor in his voice then from the derision in his tongue, and Sasuke tightened his grip on the metal because he knew. They were talking about him.

"He just needs time," his mother reassured, her voice a desperate plea, unsure of whether it would reach where it needed to and unpleasantly sure that it wouldn't. "It will be easier for him now that the case is closed. We'll help him—"

"What do you mean—closed?" His feet had taken him in before he could comprehend, his mother's voice a broken record inside his head, a distasteful screech over and over. He met his mother's gaze and felt himself almost throw up in his mouth. Whether it was the fatigue catching up or the realization, Sasuke found himself losing more and more of his control over his own body, like loose springs falling apart. The fingers wrapped around the strap of his bag slackened and it dropped with a thump.

"Sasuke..."

"What do you... you... uh mean... close the case...?" He whimpered, voice breathy, coming out in a fit of broken syllables and a series of gasps. His eyes burned and feet felt cold, as cold as the time he had dipped them in ice water on Christmas eve as a dare. "You can't..." He shook his head, mouth hung open, his chest heaving violently. "Nuh–No you can't!" He yelled, "We... we just need to keep at it. I'm sure there will be some kind of hint. We can—" He paused mid-sentence, scanning his parents' faces as a flood of red-hot fury overcame him. Sasuke clenched his fists, teeth gripping hard enough to draw blood.

"She was family!" Sasuke cried out, voice hoarse and heavy.

"Sasuke, we tried! We care for her too. It's just..." Mikoto said, fisting her fingers. "She's gone now. She's no longer with us. And the people who remain need to accept it and move on."