Chapter 5: Ghosts of the past

I didn’t have it in me to go with grace

- My tears ricochet (Taylor Swift)
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The semi-dark room was a mess at first glance.

There were papers littering the floor and sprawled over the desk in a messy way, the modern plush chairs in front of the desk upturned and there was evidence of a mental breakdown in the form of broken tokens and everyday items.

At first glance, one would barely notice the slumped over figure in the chair behind the desk, pale hand under dark hair supporting his head on the edge of the desk surface. There was an almost-empty bottle of whiskey near the hand, a full tumbler alongside it.

The air in the room was stale and stank of cigarettes and whiskey. The figure didn’t seem to mind, almost careless in his demeanor.

Sasuke lifted his head from the table with effort, sitting up and grabbing the tumbler of whiskey before leaning back in the chair. He brought the glass to his lips and took a deep gulp, letting the bitterness tickle his throat as the beverage moved down.

Then, there was a sharp ringing in the room when his phone started vibrating somewhere. It grated at his nerves. He tried to ignore it and it worked for a moment when the room went blissfully quiet.

The ringing started anew.

“Fuck,” he muttered, leaning back his head and closing his eyes. Everything was annoying, his head was pounding and he felt like he’d been run over.

Everything hurt.

He looked around his office, trying to figure out which side of the room the noise was coming from. He didn’t remember where he’d flung his phone after he’d arrived at his office yesterday, hazy in the red he was seeing, before he started breaking shit.

He finished the tumbler in another two sips before mentally preparing himself to stand.

The room seemed to spin horribly when he stood and he staggered, reaching out a hand to grip the table edge. He blinked once or twice to come back to his senses. “Shit,” he muttered.

The ringing started again.
Sasuke started to look for the source before he stumbled to a corner, where the noise was the loudest. He sank to his knees amongst the broken picture frames and wooden trinkets and searched for the fucking phone.
His hands closed around the metal frame and he brought it out of the heap.

Nara

The name displayed on the phone screen annoyed him further, even as he picked up the call.

“What?” he snapped.

“Oh you’re alive,” the other man sounded as annoyed as Sasuke felt, “Good,”

There was the sound of a child crying in the background. Sasuke’s mind fogged for a second as he wondered what Shikamaru would be doing with a child. Then he remembered.
The hazy feeling of the alcohol gave way to a sharp stabbing feeling in his chest as he temporarily lost his ability to breathe. Right. That was his son.

Sasuke had a son.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately worried.

“Oh, just the fact that the kid wants his mother,” Shikamaru snapped. “Apparently they don’t like living with strangers for prolonged periods of time,”

Sasuke sighed, dragging a hand over his face before he attempted to stand. “How long has it been?”

Shikamaru was silent for a while and when he spoke, his tone was softer. “It’s been 3 days since. Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking this whole time,”

He had not. He had in fact gone first to his office after leaving Shikamaru that night and had indeed ended up tying all loose ends in Suna so there wouldn’t be any suspicion regarding Hinata’s sudden departure.

Afterwards, he had called his second in command, Sai, and told him that he wasn’t to be disturbed about anything.
It was only later that he had turned to his personal shooting range and alcohol to numb the pain.

The mafia boss cursed in his mind. He couldn’t afford so much time to be vulnerable. He couldn’t keep drinking away his pain. “What about her?” he asked instead, walking over towards the wall to turn on all the lights in his office.

“I…took care of it,” Shikamaru said. “She’s obviously not okay, but she’s been getting everything she needs,”

“And…Daiki?” he asked hesitantly.

“He’s been fine,” Shikamaru said, “Quiet kid. Not much trouble. But he obviously keeps asking about his mama and when she’ll be back from work,”

The lights turned on under his hand and flooded his senses. He cringed, the sudden change too much for his eyes. He blinked a couple of times.

“I’ll be back today,” he said to the other man instead.

“Yeah, otherwise fuck you and I’m taking them both and getting them out,” Shikamaru warned.

Sasuke looked around the room. It was a mess. It would need to be renovated. He hummed in contemplation. There was a glass wall in front of him. He didn’t like the man he saw in the reflection. It looked too much like his uncle.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he told Shikamaru absentmindedly while staring at himself in the mirror.

“Alright,”

“Nara?” he asked, allowing this one last crack of emotion in his voice. “Thanks,”
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He’d called Sai to enlist some of his men to take care of the mess in the office while he’d gone over to fix his appearance before anyone saw.

Sasuke took his time shaving his face, showering and wearing a custom suit. He felt in control again, by the time he walked out, even though his chest still hurt like fuck. He supposed it couldn’t be helped.

He made his way to the Uchiha district, towards the compound.

He inexplicably felt like a small child about to enter the compounds after his parent’s death. He remembered the scene vividly; his shaky breaths, his trembling hands and his tachycardia. Back then, there had been the reassuring hand of his older brother at his back.

This time, he walked inside alone.

He could have made his way through these halls in his sleep, in the dark, blindfolded. The house was carved into his flesh and bones. He didn’t need to pay attention to make his way towards his childhood bedroom.

The door was locked from outside.

Sasuke opened it in a single gesture and opened the door.
For a second, his heart ached at the sight that greeted him. The room was messy, packs of takeout on the table and on the floor, water bottles littering around the floor. With her back to him, his wife sat slumped on the bed.

She straightened at the sound of the door opening, turning around to reveal her features contorted in anger. She stopped short at the sight of him.

“Sasuke,” she whispered, turning her body around to face him properly.

She was still clad in the silk night suit he had dragged her here in, her shoulder hair length messy and her skin pale.

“Hinata,”

She launched herself towards him, letting out a small shriek of anger. “You bastard!” she snapped, gripping the lapels of his suit jacket as she rose on her tiptoes to reach his face. “You-,”

He looked at her impassively, even as his heart stuttered in grief at the sight of being seen like this by the person he had loved the most in this world once.

“There’s no need for theatrics,” he told her, grabbing her forearms and bringing them down in a single try, pinning them at her sides.

“Where’s my son?”

“Our son,” he corrected her with a snap.

“He’s not yours,” she snapped, struggling against his grip as he stepped closer to her.

He raised his eyebrows in amusement. She really was desperate. “Then why does he look exactly like me?”

Hinata’s eyes became glassy with tears as she averted her eyes, still struggling against him. “Let me go,”

He sensed the irony of her words. But he had never been good at letting go of things.

“Hinata, there’s no need for tears,” he crooned, grabbing both her wrists in a single hand to bring his other one towards her face to touch her eye. “They don’t work on me anymore,”

“I said, let me go,” she screamed.

He felt a wave of revulsion at himself and at her; at what they had become. It was so strong that he actually did let go of her wrists and stepped back. She seemed just as surprised at his gesture as him.

They both remembered him dragging her out of her house in Suna with him.

“If you’re not going to speak to me civilly, then I guess I’ll have to go,” he told her, the chill creeping into his voice. “I’ll return some other day if I feel like it,”

He turned around to leave.

“You want me to speak civilly after you abducted me and my child from our home and are holding us captive?” she asked incredulously.

“Well you also pretended to be dead for almost 4 fucking years and failed to inform me that we had a son, so consider this the initiation of my attempts to get even with you,” he snapped, looking back.

She had the grace to look ashamed before reverting back to anger.

“Where’s Daiki?”

“He’s with me,” he informed her shortly.

“Please…let me see him,” she pleaded.

Maybe it would have worked on the Sasuke she had left behind. But he wasn’t here anymore. He simply looked at her. “Next time I come, act with decorum and we can have the conversation we desperately need to have,”

The click of the door was loud behind him.
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