(closed) everything you feel, and everything you think

[chokuto]

WHO: Uchiha Sasuke & others.
WHERE: Around Stygia.
WHEN: Month of October.
WHAT: Catch-call for event prompts / other scenarios.
WARNINGS: None atm, will updated if needed.


[ ooc — plotting comment for the event here, comment for the general CR meme here. flexible to do things outside of the event as well!]

Comments

[wrists]

[ the festival itself is reminiscent of a routine dinner in arles — excessive food, excessive drink, and excessively misplaced hedonism. there is far too much languid affection going around to feel normal in a place plagued by such darkness, so laurent spends his time fitting together the pieces of this falsely glimmering puzzle, observing behaviors and patterns until the picture begins to become clear in his mind — and not a moment too soon, because his pale hand grips a dewy glass he doesn't remember accepting, smelling strongly of spirits.

it's in the drink. the food. inhibitions lowered, poison in the bloodstream. he studies his drink and ignores the prickling cold at the nape of his neck, the sense memory of hazy pliancy, silken sheets, heavy hands holding him down. at least these memories, these terrors, are his own, brought on by a logical thought pattern, not inflicted by drink or a poisonous morsel. there are far too many people here controlled by whatever they've consumed, so laurent takes his leave, moving quietly to the streets and carelessly tossing the contents of his drink aside.

only — the drink splashes directly onto someone currently busy withering beneath a streetlight. laurent just barely refrains from lobbing the glass, stopping short when he recognizes the dark hair, the mismatched gaze. his shoulder gives a sudden throb, healing nicely but protesting the reminder of his first night, of soft fabric clutched in his hand, of pitiful words falling senselessly from his mouth. sasuke. he'd made a point to discover the man's name after the fact, of course not by asking him directly but by other means. his plan was to never speak to him again.

now sasuke smells like strong drink, and he looks like... well. laurent can tell right away he's consumed one or more of the mind-altering substances being served like children's candy at the festival. ]

You looked so pitiable, I didn't notice you. [ laurent reaches into an inner pocket of his dark jacket, pulling out a silken handkerchief — a royal blue, embroidered with a golden sunburst — and offers it out. he meets his gaze steadily. ] My apologies.

[chokuto]

[The drink splashes a plain, white, high-collared shirt buttoned to a spot just beneath collarbones where it gapes to show skin; the stain blooms dark over the fabric, and he can smell it under his nose, sourly acerbic. It brings him out of the dark daze of his thoughts, but the look he turns onto the stranger is glowering, a snap of irritation that isn't smoothed by the nervy composure he feels on better days. This is a worst day — as the silken piece of cloth is offered out, Sasuke looks at it, then past it, then snatches that slender wrist and yanks in an almost perfect imitation of their first meeting, whipping Laurent around and throwing him against the streetlight he had previously occupied. The same arm falls over Laurent's chest like a steel bar, unwilling to let him move from beneath its pressure.]

You again. [His eyes are burning, iridescent red and pale purple, like two vivid candles.] I considered breaking your arm last time, should I do it now? There's nothing you could do to stop me if I tried. I can tell that you're weak.

[His thoughts are mired in a film of darkness, and for a moment it isn't a stranger in front of him, but another blond-haired, blue-eyed young man, and he had promised that person once that he would end his life. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭?

Sasuke's brow wrinkles, the crease tight between his eyes as the hazy cloud of intoxication floats in and out of awareness. That crushing pressure eases on Laurent's chest; he takes a deliberate step back.] You're nothing like him. Who are you.

[wrists]

[ this reaction is not entirely expected, considering this time laurent is offering a handkerchief instead of brandishing a blade. clearly, the details make little difference. he's caught like the prey he feels too much like most days, though he doesn't quiver in this snare, remaining perfectly still as he gazes back into the pair of dissimilar eyes. the senses on this man are far too sharp for the colors to be a defect of some sort. ]

Me again. It's very irritating, isn't it? [ he listens to the show of bluster, though there is no doubt strength behind the threat — laurent can feel it in his musculature. but there is something else here, a wavering, and it's because of this that laurent doesn't struggle to free himself despite the bruising force at his chest. his shoulder gives a throb. it becomes slowly apparent that sasuke is not entirely in control. his shadow, maybe. too much food or drink back at the stalls. or a worrying combination of both.

sasuke is alone, as laurent had been. it would be easy to leave him here — and it's quite a compelling thought, once sasuke relinquishes the heavy pressure of his arm, but laurent makes the mistake of assessing him too intimately, recognizing the disoriented haze that he knows all too well, memories from childhood that cling to him too strongly even now. his gaze hardens. ]

Laurent. [ he makes himself nonthreatening, even casual, though his eyes are sharp as they follow sasuke's movements. he's still holding his empty glass in one hand, which he lifts now, carefully, before tossing it into the bushes. in the other hand he holds the silk square of cloth, once rejected, but sasuke is still wet from laurent's earlier carelessness, and he makes a second attempt at an offer. ] Who did you think I was?

[ he's not altogether expecting an answer, but he does step closer, this time pressing the cloth directly to sasuke's open collar. his skin does not make contact, but he can feel the damp seeping through the silk, wetting his fingertips. ]

Take it. [ he withdraws his hand and rolls his shoulder before crossing his arms over his chest. ] You have friends. In your state, you should go be with them.

[chokuto]

[The threat passes, though clarity continues to prove some hopeless dream. Before him, Laurent is ghostly and unreal — familiar and wholly alien to him at once, whatever features recalling the most significant person in his life washed out to the realization they are not the same. Laurent is paler, leaner; his hair is longer and his gaze is colder; he is a glass doll to a monument of stone. Sasuke exhales through his nose, closing his eyes for the brief moment it takes to hear that voice speaking to him and process its meaning.

He looks again only when there is pressure on his chest, and there is a minute flinch of reflexive muscle in his body, but he holds still.]

No. [Friends. Is that what it is? It's exactly the word Naruto would use.] In this condition, I can't. I am dangerous to them.

[The hand of his right arm lifts as Laurent withdraws, passing contact in the graze of a wrist over the backs of delicate knuckles to ensure the handkerchief isn't dropped now that it's no longer attended. He presses his palm flat to the damp silk; it feels as though he's holding it over a wound.]

... His name is Naruto. [Hesitantly, this confession slips from his lips unwilling — the part of him that viciously guards such secrets now weaker, depleted, unable to keep up its guard tonight.] I thought you looked like him, but you don't.

[wrists]

[ naruto. the blond, loud one. laurent has been trying to learn the citizens that arrived around the same time, not by getting to know any of them, really, but by watching and listening. some of them seem to get along well. sasuke seems to have known this one from before. ]

He's your friend. If you go to him, he'll watch over you until your — state has passed.

[ he's reciting information he has an understanding of but lacks experience in. laurent has not made any friends or allies of his own — not here, and not back home, if arles can be called that, and has never had anyone to watch over him. not since auguste, and the little boy that used to look up to his brother no longer exists. if not for sasuke, on his first night here, he likely would have found himself lying vulnerable in a gutter somewhere, ready to be exploited by the first hands that found him.

it bothers him, enormously, that he'd come so close to such a fate. that he's already lived it, again and again, stained in a way so permanent that no amount of time and effort will save his bloodline now that auguste is gone. and now he owes sasuke a debt, because he hadn't taken his coins or his stolen goods, and owing the man chafes against his desire to never speak of what transpired in the first place. ]

If you mistook a stranger for him, he's at the forefront of your thoughts. [ best to push him toward someone better suited for this rotten work. ] Is he at the festivities? I'll fetch him. I'm certain he'll come if you ask.

[chokuto]

I said no. Didn't you hear me?

[The words are snapped out, shaped from a sharp tongue. His head aches. He wonders, exactly, how he's come to this state of derangement — and how easily it would be to allow himself down its slippery slope into a darker, unhappy place. He'd told both Sakura and Naruto he could handle himself. He's done it before; he knows what this is like. And still they had continued to interfere with him, and worry, and insist... just as this other man, Laurent, does now. Knowing nothing of who he is or what he's done or 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐨. It's aggravating, that seemingly in his decision to go on with his life he has still ended up here in the end.]

I have no intention of burdening him right now. I won't see him like this. [He hates the admission, but it slides off his tongue unbidden nonetheless. Naruto is present; he can sense him, as always, like a flaming beacon somewhere on the fringe of the festivities. He doesn't tell Laurent this.] I'm fine. Substances in the food and drink have altered my mind and body, but it will pass with time. I've endured worse symptoms than this. [Mild in comparison to the experiments of Orochimaru's design.

Sasuke steps closer, glowering still, hand fisted around the silk handkerchief as his arm lowers to pocket it.] And you, why haven't you left?

[wrists]

You could say it with a bit more feeling. [ dry. if laurent cowered at every slight and intimidation, he would be vere's prettiest laughingstock. it would lend credence to every rumor his uncle has spread about him. as it stands, his expression remains impassive, his eyes luminous beneath the streetlight.

the more sasuke speaks, the more he reveals — perhaps unwillingly, with what he knows of the man. his friend, naruto, is more important than laurent realized. maybe more important than the two of them even realize, though he hardly has the time or inclination to examine that relationship. it's the sort of thing that laurent has always stood outside of, the gap of what a young man of his age should have experience in growing wider as the years pass. but he does have experience in mind-altering substances, and it's because of this that he still can't walk away. ]

I'm waiting to see if you'll succumb to your shadow. Some of us are intent on gathering information instead of panting after our friends in the hopes that they might turn an affectionate eye toward us. [ laurent leans back against the streetlight, relaxed and seemingly at peace. his pulse ticks up. ] For all you say that I'm weak, I suspect the same of you.

[chokuto]

[In the light of day, in the marketplace where Laurent first approached him, those insults and crass language were easy to deflect. He'd dismissed all implications; he'd stood unbothered beneath their insinuations, because they were impersonal knives. Yet now, what Laurent says to him is like a hot, burning needle to his nerves, not because of the crude underbelly of it — part and parcel of this man's evident identity — but for the history it threatens to uncover. The target of his most important connection, and all of its ugly mess, and everything it has been mended back into.

As Laurent leans back, Sasuke moves forward. He is usually particular about the barrier of personal space he keeps around him, but he is too close now, perfectly eye-level — an intimidation reserved for preludes to battle where he is near enough to breathe the same air, eyes narrowed to cold, gleaming points, the concentric circles of Rinnegan dizzyingly magnified. The body language is a threat; all of it is a threat, not that he suspects this man wishes for anything else with the things he says.]

Who is Auguste?

[How's that thin ice, Laurent.]

[wrists]

[ all hopes of forgetting that first night, of firmly pretending none of it ever happened at all, shrivel before his eyes. it's a familiar feeling, the weakest of candle flames snuffing out. laurent does not put much stock in hope because he has not lived a life that's displayed evidence of its usefulness. but every once in a while, youthful foolishness overcomes him, and every time, he is disappointed.

he must have spoken, in his delirium. auguste is a wound that has never healed, and the pain of it is never far from the surface. of course when overwrought with his injuries or poison or insufficient doctoring he would lose hold of his careful impassivity and reveal too much of the festering hurt that lives just beneath the cold brush of his skin.

his grief is no secret. all of vere had mourned his brother, none of them harder than laurent. this is not the same as the complicated truth of his uncle, the hidden shame of what was done to him in the dark, the deadly plot of his life that he navigates in isolation. if the question had been about the regent, he would lie. if the question had been about his akielon slave, he would lie. but there is no world, alive or dead, wherein laurent would lie about auguste. ]

My brother. [ he hardly notices the threat of sasuke's closeness, his heart pounding now for another reason. he has never spoken to anyone of this who did not already know the power his brother held over the people of vere, the love and adoration and respect he'd earned on the merit of being better than a good man. ] Auguste. He was everything that I had. Everything. My friend. My protector. And when I was thirteen, he was slain in single combat on the battlefield. The war ended with his death.

[ he barely breathes as he says it, his eyes on sasuke but somehow looking through him. he feels like a boy again, his hands idly gripping the pole behind him, his spine taut where it leans against the metal. this truth won't kill him. his entire kingdom has poked and gawked at this wound, the little prince wearing a crown far too big and heavy, knowing he will never fill the void auguste left. laurent reorients his gaze, dull pain frozen in his eyes. ] He was the crown prince of Vere.

[ and he would not have abandoned this man, no matter how cold his gaze. laurent does not pretend to be as good as auguste, but in this moment, he feels a pressing desire to at least be adequate. ]

Is your shadow speaking to you?

why do you hurt me

[chokuto]

[The admission douses the flame of his ire as efficiently as sudden rain. Sasuke is quiet, drawn into himself with the viciousness of stark self-reflection, heel taking him one step back. There is room and air to breathe between them now. In digestion of that sentiment, he himself is a child again, reduced to the barest threads of memory. Don't leave me. Don't go, Laurent had begged him in the feverish dark that time. I need my brother.

He had begged, too, although in different words. He remembers curling up on the floorboards with the ferocious weight of grief, as loss tore a hole straight through him. Could there have been a different world like the one Laurent describes? He looks at it from another point of view — but in the end, the reversal doesn't change anything about the emotion. Laurent lost his brother the same as him regardless of the circumstances. He has no way of knowing that honesty isn't deeply, privately personal. He did not genuinely believe Laurent would answer. He would not tell a stranger about what he feels for Itachi — would not even tell those who do know him, not with any willingness — so what Laurent says to him is raw and vulnerable enough to silence his murky, choleric thoughts.

Sasuke turns his head away. His left eye, previously red, changes to inert charcoal black.]

So you took his place. [Royalty is a concept he knows abstractly. There would have been an ascension, similar to the oldest sons inheriting the responsibility of fathers within clans.] ... The shadow isn't a separate voice in my mind. It doesn't speak to me, but I can tell when it's there. There are others who might not notice the difference. I don't know how it is for them. Or for you.

[He's had practice with these impulses, violence laid out in his wake like a bad dream. The next confession comes loosely; and only because of the drug. He feels almost empty, almost numb, even burning in his skin.]

I had a brother. His name was Itachi.

angsty babies gotta angst

[wrists]

Took his place. [ he repeats it with a cold amusement. no one could ever take auguste's place, least of all him — the weaker brother, less liked, more prone to petty cruelty, a mouth made for silver-tongued manipulation in the face of auguste's golden nobility. that laurent would ascend at all was unheard of, with king aleron in good health and auguste primed for the throne. then laurent had lost both, suddenly thrust into the viper's pit with no preparation or protection. ] I am to ascend, yes, with my dear uncle holding the seat for me until I come of age. Just a few months now. But then I came here.

[ here, to face a different set of horrors. laurent has turned his mind to uncovering the secrets of stygia so that he doesn't have to think on all that he's left behind — not that it had been much, considering he has no friends or allies to speak of. but his uncle holds the throne. his men are alone. damen. before a set of complicated emotions can rise to shift him off balance, he neatly seals away all thoughts of his slave, squeezing his heart mercilessly into submission. auguste goes next.

and without either of them to lean on, laurent looks at sasuke and feels a spike of anger. that too, he tries to suppress. he often wishes to feel nothing, and to no avail. but he has the distinct impression that his vulnerabilities have been manipulated, and he itches for his sword. ]

And how did he die? [ laurent looks at him now not as an aching child but as the icy prince that his men know to give wide berth to. ] An honorable death?

[chokuto]

[Perhaps it would have gone differently if Laurent hadn't turned those eyes on him, two blue points of ice, and asked that question. He resents the bare underbelly of his own words in the moment, how his tongue has betrayed him. Common knowledge to those who would know the Uchiha name — but that doesn't matter here. His clan is nothing in the Netherworld except a dark memory in his mind.

So Laurent's bladed retaliation meets his own, lashing cold with hurt.]

I don't know what that word means to you. Honorable. Aren't you attributing your own experience to someone else? It's different. You couldn't understand even if I tried to explain.

[Later, he'll regret it. In his atonement, it should be his desire to find equal ground with others, to be the one reaching across the gap, but it's against his nature. His Shadow — his own self — is too tightly wound around this grief.]

What do you want? If it's violence, then continue to provoke me and I'll provide it.

[wrists]

[ honorable. what does it mean to him? the word holds a bitter taste, sitting on his tongue like old blood long soured. laurent does not pretend to be honorable, but he knows intimately what it looks like — and the cost of such a gilded, foolish notion. ]

Auguste was slain because of his honor. [ this feels like a betrayal, to speak of his brother with scorn when his love should outweigh all the bitterness he feels for him. but with years to ruminate on his death, to wish if only he was a little less good, his hurt has grown an acidic, resentful edge. ] In single combat, he disarmed his opponent. And then gave him a chance to pick up his sword. Was your brother foolish with honor as well?

[ laurent sucks in a breath, his eyes glittering, merciless. auguste could have killed damen then. he hadn't. because of honor. and damen — who rode with his armies, who sat night after night with him to give him every tactical advantage, who saved his life despite his hatred — no, prince damianos had not —

worse than the swell of anger that crests over him is the hurt that threatens to shatter his entire being. hadn't he put all thoughts of his slave away? he reorients himself on sasuke's shifting eyes. ]

You refused to allow me to fetch your friend because you don't wish for him to see you like this. Which way would disappoint him? Seeing you altered with the substances you consumed, or seeing you reduced to your violent nature over a mere question?

[chokuto]

[Laurent's description is unlike any he's known in the world of shinobi. There is no honor is conflict; there is only the fealty of a mission. There is only loyalty to the country of one's origin. Would Laurent's brother have felt the same devotion to the land he was meant to one day lead? Yet against an opponent, on the decisive battlefield where every advantage should instead be extorted, he had allowed equality. He had allowed a fissure of weakness.

It brings another person to mind, vivid as Laurent goes on speaking, sharp-tongued and icy-eyed.]

I won't speak further of my brother. [His own inhale catches in his chest. Stop talking. And yet—] His death is one I will regret for the rest of my life, if we are not already beyond living.

You are the one who seems determined to turn this onto me. My nature. You don't know who I am. What of your own mind? Are your thoughts speaking of things you don't wish to hear? Are they about him? [Auguste.]