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

The price of survival 🔵

Sasuke's pov

The silence that followed was the longest stretch of peace I'd felt in months. Beneath the heavy fabric of the blanket, Misaki's weight against my chest was warm, solid, and entirely real. She didn't fight the embrace this time. Though her posture carried a lingering, rigid trace of her stubborn pride, she eventually let her forehead sink against my collarbone, her breathing settling into a slow, even rhythm that mirrored my own.

For an hour, maybe two, we just lay there in the gray twilight of the room. I kept my ears tuned to the corridor outside, half-expecting the soft, rhythmic click of Kabuto's sandals or the heavy, suffocating pressure of Orochimaru's chakra to return. But nothing came. The iron bolts on the door held the rest of the world at bay, leaving us in a vacuum where the past and the present could finally stop bleeding into each other.

But peace in this place was always an illusion, a temporary truce with the monsters down the hall.

As the dim light in the room shifted from slate gray to a pale, washed-out amber, I felt a subtle change in the air. The static hum of the linked Curse Marks on our skin flickered, sending a brief, icy needle of phantom pain through my left shoulder.

Misaki stirred.

It wasn't the explosive, lethal movement of the predator I'd seen in the forest, nor was it the sharp, irritated squirming of the girl who wanted her space. It started with a shallow, ragged catch in her throat. Then, her fingers—which had been resting flat against my chest—began to twitch, her thumbs rhythmically digging into the white cotton of my shirt, pulling and twisting the fabric with a sudden, frantic intensity.

My eyes snapped open, my teeth grinding as a familiar, toxic coil of dread wrapped around my throat.

*No. Not yet.*

"Misaki," I muttered, my hands instantly tightening around her back, trying to anchor her weight against me before the slide began. "Stay here. Look at me."

She didn't look up. Her head remained tucked against my neck, but her small frame began to tremble, a rapid, involuntary vibration that started in her shoulders and traveled down her spine. The rigid, defiant kunoichi who had given me a side-eye just an hour ago was dissolving, melting away into the dark corridors of her own mind. The crimson in her eyes, visible as she blinked rapidly against my shirt, lost its sharp focus, turning wide, glazed, and hollow.

The realization hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. The clear, stubborn version of my girlfriend hadn't been a permanent recovery; it had been a temporary flare, a brief structural alignment of a mind that was still profoundly broken.

"Misaki, focus on my voice," I growled, a frantic edge leaking into my tone despite my best efforts to keep it flat. I shifted, rolling her slightly to the side so I could cup her jaw, my fingers pressing firmly against her pale skin. "Don't go back into the dark. You're in my quarters. Orochimaru isn't here. You're safe."

Her hands abandoned my shirt, flying straight to the crisp white sleeves of her tunic, her fingers tearing at the cuffs as if she were trying to rip the fabric away. Her leg began that violent, rhythmic shaking against the mattress, the rustle of the new black dress sounding like dead leaves scraping across stone. She was drowning again, the chemical conditioning and the trauma reclaiming her piece by piece, pulling her back into the blank, stoic void where she couldn't even name the terror she was feeling.

I stared at the jagged black markings on her cheeks, my jaw locking so tightly my teeth ached. The irritation from earlier rushed back, hot and suffocating, but it was entirely swallowed by a profound, agonizing helplessness. I was an Uchiha. I had the Sharingan. I could see through genjutsu, track lightning, and predict a foe's every move—but I couldn't reach into her mind and pull her out of the cage he built for her.