Chapter 566: Avoidance
"...I have no hostile intent toward you right now. And I don't involve innocent people. Least of all an infant."
Young Sasuke's feelings were complicated. Just a few hours ago he had believed there was no one left in this world he could call family. He had been certain he would never have that again -- not in any real sense -- and then suddenly, without warning, he had a sister. And a nephew.
A living, sleeping, completely oblivious nephew. The feeling was so strange his mind could barely process it.
But Yuu's guard did not ease even slightly.
Her arms stayed wrapped around the child in exactly the same way. Not tight in the way of squeezing, but tight in the way of enclosing -- protecting. Her posture was deliberate. The curve of her arms formed a circle just large enough to hold him comfortably without pressing. Her fingers rested lightly on his back, ready at any moment to pat, ready at any moment to soothe.
Uchiha Yo knew nothing about any of it. He simply rested against his mother, his small head tilted against her chest, mouth slightly open, breathing shallow and light, entirely indifferent to whatever was happening in the room around him.
He did not know someone was interrogating his mother. Did not know the boy standing in the doorway shared his family name. He knew only that his mother's arms were warm, her heartbeat was a good sound, and her temperature was exactly right.
"I'll get straight to the point, Uchiha Ita--"
Young Sasuke's voice hadn't finished before it was cut off.
"Wrong."
Yuu's voice rose sharply. Her body shifted back almost imperceptibly, and her arms tightened around the child for one involuntary instant before she caught herself and loosened her grip, afraid of waking Yo.
Her face was written over with avoidance and refusal -- not directed at young Sasuke, but at the name itself. At the name she no longer wanted.
"My name is... Uchiha Yuu."
Young Sasuke watched the avoidance and refusal move across her face, and something clicked into place.
When people face the things that frighten them -- when they stand before something that would unmake them -- there is an instinct that moves before thought does. Turn away. Don't think about it. Don't reach for it. Don't look at it directly.
Yuu was not afraid of death. She was afraid of something else. Something that, for her, was worse than dying.
Young Sasuke tightened his fist. The question that had been sitting at the bottom of him for years finally surfaced, and he asked it directly.
"Do you regret it?"
"That day, you made decisions about the fates of a great many people on your own. You tore lives away from where they were supposed to go. You caused deaths. Do you regret it?"
He looked into Yuu's eyes. He needed the answer to be there.
He had waited long enough. He had been waiting for years. He had to know.
Yuu did not answer immediately.
She looked down at Yo in her arms. She rocked him gently, slowly, her face unreadable. But the arms holding him had grown tighter than before.
Time moved. The hallway was quiet enough that you could hear the faint circulation of air through the vents, and the occasional distant footstep, and the barely-there sound of Yo's breathing.
Sasuke stood there and waited. Kept waiting. Was on the verge of asking again --
"...This child."
Yuu finally spoke.
"His name is Yo. The character for sunlight."
She lowered her face toward Yo's forehead. "He's genuinely fragile. Fragile enough that I can't take my eyes off him for a single second. He doesn't know anything -- he cries when he's hungry, sleeps when he's tired, stays calm as long as someone is holding him. He doesn't know who I am. Doesn't know what I've done. Doesn't know how many people in this world despise her. All he knows is -- when I'm here, he isn't hungry. When I'm here, he isn't cold. When I'm here, he's safe."
"Wait a moment--"
Sasuke frowned, trying to drag the conversation back.
"He really is adorable."
Yuu continued as though she hadn't heard him.
"When I'm holding him, I feel genuinely warm. He's so soft, so small -- he fits against me exactly right. He depends on me. He trusts me. Completely. There is not a single person in this world who trusts me the way he does."
"Hold on--"
Sasuke's composure finally broke. His voice shot upward, sharp with frustration and confusion wound together.
"What are you talking about?! I didn't ask about this child, I asked about those people! The Uchiha clan! The clansmen whose fates you rewrote! Uncle Teyaki! Aunt Uruchi! All those--"
"Mmm..."
A small, soft sound came from inside Yuu's arms.
Uchiha Yo's tiny face nuzzled against Yuu's chest, apparently registering the sudden change in volume as some kind of complaint. His eyelids shifted. His mouth turned down at the corners. He looked precisely like someone who was about to cry.
"Shh, shh. It's alright, sweetheart, don't be frightened..."
Yuu's voice transformed instantly -- quiet and soft as cloth, she lowered her face and pressed her lips to Yo's forehead. "Mama's here. Mama's right here. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all..."
Her palm moved in slow pats across Yo's back. Gradually the small face relaxed. The faint complaining sounds faded. He sank back into the deep, knowing-nothing sleep of a newborn.
Young Sasuke unclenched his fist.
He looked at the infant sleeping again in his mother's arms. At a scene he had never once imagined he would witness in his lifetime.
The heat inside him went out, just a little. He didn't know how to face a Yuu like this. Didn't know how to ask "do you regret killing those people" to someone who was in the middle of rocking her child back to sleep.
"...If I don't get an answer, you're just going to stay there, aren't you."
Yuu's voice came from across the room. She had finally turned toward the question.
"I've thought about it many times."
"And honestly -- I do understand. What right do I have to still be alive? What right do I have to still be holding a child? What right do I have to carry hope in this world, to go on living in it?"
She said this without self-contempt. Without anger. Without any trace of someone who had accepted their own execution and made peace with it.
"But... I can't think about it right now."
Her voice began to tremble.
"I can't let myself think about it..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She couldn't. Because if she did think about it -- if she sat down and asked herself honestly where she had any right to still be breathing -- if she laid out every single thing she had done, piece by piece, and looked at them in sequence -- she was afraid.
She was afraid her arms would lose their strength. That her hands would open. That she would discover she had no right to stand in sunlight, no right to hold a child named Yo, no right to call herself a mother.
She would break. Collapse. Come apart into pieces she couldn't gather back together. And then what would happen to Yo? Who would hold him? Who would soothe him? Who would pull him close in the middle of the night when he cried himself awake? Who would use their body heat to tell him: don't be afraid, mama's here?
So she couldn't think about it. Didn't dare think about it. She kept herself wrapped inside a thin shell, not touching those things, not looking at those things, not asking herself those questions.
She knew the shell would break eventually. Knew those things would eventually come for her. Knew she would have to face them one day. But not now. Not today. Not -- while Yo still needed her.