My other half! Sasukex oc. [Slow updates] (under editing)

The truth and the casket of lies🔵

The air in the room remained thick with the ozone-scent of her released chakra, the stone walls scarred by the black tendrils she'd unleashed in her panic. Sasuke didn't let go. He kept his arms locked around her, feeling the violent tremors racking her small frame.

To anyone else, Sasuke Uchiha was a cold, untouchable weapon of vengeance. His gaze was usually a frozen lake, but as he looked down at the girl trembling against his chest, the ice cracked.

He remembered a different Misaki.

The Misaki he knew in the Genin days wouldn't have whimpered. She had been a shadow—aloof and quiet, moving through the Leaf Village with a calculated distance that even he had respected. Back then, her strength was a sharpened blade, hidden behind a shy exterior. She didn't scream; she observed. She didn't collapse; she stood her ground with a silent, iron-clad resolve that made her one of the few people he considered a true peer.

Now, she felt like glass.

"Misaki," he murmured, his voice low and grounding, stripped of the jagged edge he used with Orochimaru. "He's gone. Focus on your breathing."

Her short, jagged red hair brushed against his chin, a jarring contrast to the girl he used to know. He remembered the length of her curly black hair, the way it moved like silk when she turned, dark as a moonless night. He remembered her eyes—not this chaotic crimson, but full, serene pools of turquoise, clear and steady, always reflecting a mind three steps ahead. The girl in his arms now was a chaotic map of Orochimaru's cruelty.

The white freckles that once looked like scattered stars across her cheeks—delicate marks of a gentler life—now pulsed with that sickly, unnatural light. The horns—alien and cold—were a physical manifestation of how far she had been dragged away from the girl who used to inspire him to do better as a ninja, the girl who always used to somehow be ten steps ahead of him at all times.

Misaki's fingers dug into the fabric of his cloak, her breath hitching in broken intervals. Her jaw worked, her lips parting as if desperately trying to force a sound out, but her throat remained entirely locked. Only a faint, ragged gasp escaped her—a choked, silent panic as the shadows threatened to consume her mind.

"They will," he commanded softly, answering the terror in her eyes as his Sharingan faded back to coal-black, forcing his own reacting Curse Mark to recede. It took a monumental effort of will. "I won't let them touch you. I'm not that weak Genin anymore, and neither are you. You're still in there."

He shifted, pulling back just enough to look her in the eyes. He searched for the strategist. He searched for the calm turquoise depths that used to analyze an enemy's weakness in seconds. Instead, he saw fractured red pools, strained and desperate, trying to piece herself together through a haze of agony and a crushing, mute paralysis.

"Listen to me," he said, his jaw tightening as he felt the lingering heat of her fever. "Orochimaru thinks he 'perfected' you. He thinks he owns what you've become. But he's wrong. You're going to take this power, and you're going to bury him with it."

After some time, Misaki finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep, her rigid, clawing grip against Sasuke's sleeve slowly fading. Sasuke didn't move for a few moments before pulling away to stand by the edge of the bed.

The memory of her broken body on the forest floor sat like lead in Sasuke's stomach, a weight he hadn't been able to shake for two years. Standing in the dim light of the hideout, watching her chest rise and fall, he felt a jagged edge of irritation cutting through his relief.

He wasn't angry with her—never with her—but the cold, analytical part of his mind was spinning. How? He had seen the light leave those turquoise eyes. He had seen the blood. He had felt the crushing guilt of leaving her behind to chase a ghost, only to find her a ghost herself.