（ she glances up at herself under a fringe of dark hair, and she hopes her expression is as unreadable as sasuke's generally is — that it doesn't convey the way hope uncoils in her borrowed chest and is quickly quashed.

her fingers flex, caught in the strong grip of her own hand, and then she lowers it down. the bandage is kept enshrined against her palm like a temple offering. she doesn't know what to do with it now that it's half unrolled. roll it back up? she feels foolish just thinking about it, and so she fidgets with one frayed edge where she'd torn it from the tapestry of its native shape. ）

No. It's mostly just — （ a frown tugs his mouth into a more natural expression on his countenance, pensive and wan. ） It's heavy.

（ that's the closest thing she has to a description of how it feels, this strange energy holding court in the hollow of ocular bone — it's a weight. not literal, of course, but there's an intoxicating gravity well of power that lurks beyond the black patterned spiral. it must be exhausting, even for one accustomed to having it. ）

I would say I'm aware of it, of the strength, but it's almost like... how I can feel the byakugou.

（ a touch to the center of his forehead, where the diamond would sit if he were ever to master such a thing. gathered chakra, like the tip of a spear. the two aren't comparable, really — one is a birthright, and the other the concentrated effort of years — but certain strengths run along parallel lines. there is a quality to both, of something quiescent, waiting to be stirred up, called upon. the first time she called on the byakugou's power felt like falling into an ocean, and she thinks the rinnegan might feel similarly — except she can only imagine that it would be less like water, and more like an impossible, breathless void. ）