The Third Uchiha (Now 'Dark Paradise)

❥ 62 нeld down lιĸe an angel wιтн no wιngѕ

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QOTC

Yes, and you are my student. More importantly the disciple of the Fifth Hokage. Three years in the shadow of my office and yet I have never given you my blessing. May I?

Tsunade

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I've been locked up for 149 days.

I count the fingers in my hands. Ten.

Dozens of lines are sketched in my skin.

It's a little knowledge of what I know about time. All I know is that when the sun sets up in the horizon it's another day, and when it's dark sometimes I stand at my chair to look up at the stars from my window.

I have just come to think that some things aren't meant to be real. Blood Prison taught me a lot of things. I lie whenever it's lights off. When it's nighttide and everyone in prison are asleep, I touch the walls and outgrow cherry blossoms in them. It's one part of me that yearns for that validity--that as I wake up the next morning I would still see the vine that grows, which represents life--I realize it would only whither by the end of the week. 

I watch a battalion of deadliest criminals go in and out of their cell, while I remain in my household bittersweet and alone. They all sport tattoos in their arms, and I wonder maybe I should get one. If that's what it takes for my friends to save me from this threshold. I hug my knees and a tear escapes from my eye--I look into the walls I've painted, of the garden that came from my own creation, and another leaf falls. 

I use magic to let it come to me. I hold the orange dry leaf in my hand and grip on it, hard. 

It was a cold night in Konoha when I was imprisoned. I was sick and screaming, my nightmares were running out of control that Naruto called for an ambulance. I've rarely retailed all the details because the last thing I've remembered was being dragged away from my best friend's arms. His teary eyes. A metal vehicle. People facilitated in Grass. Cell. 

The door creaks loudly, and Ibiki enters. "You have a visitor."

Ibiki guides me out from the grey castle as he leads me into the cafeteria. Different kinds of lights beamed through me and I squeak my eyes. The person who sits to my table is someone I can't recognize that quick; he has Sasuke's raven hair, pale skin...  

"How are you, ugly?"

I make an effort to streak the hair out of my face. "What are you doing here?"

He raises the brown pack. "I've brought you lunch."

Sai escorts me back into my cell after I finish my meal. Paints the walls with pastel colors and helps me make my bed. I do not say a word after he sleeps, then I lay down pretending to be asleep.

I begin to sing. At the shower, in my window, in my sleep. Hour and hour of ballads, love songs, hymn to the seas. Of the melodies I could still recall in and out of the village. All the songs Kakashi has taught me before I grew, for certainly there has been very little music inside me since. What's amazing is how clearly I remember them. The tunes, the lyrics. My voice, first soft snd edging up on the high notes, warms up on something splendid. A voice that could make all ravencrows fall silent and tumble themselves to join in. Days pass, weeks. I watch Cherry Blossoms fall on the ledge outside my window. And in all that time, mine is the only voice I hear.