Chapter Text
At first, he thinks everyone can see the lines.
They are so glaringly bright, and he feels vaguely embarrassed when he looks back at the past and realizes that he used to criticize people about not seeing them.
Of course they couldn’t see them.
Only he could.
But its pretty hard to convince yourself that no one else actually sees what you see.
He’s even subtly, or as subtly as a child can, asked a few of his relatives about them and no one else seemed to know what he was talking about.
And if he’s being honest with himself, he got lucky when he asked about the lines as a child early on.
If he actually went through with his plans of not saying anything, then he would’ve been screwed over when he was older.
He still thinks back in relief, because everyone had chalked it up to a child’s overactive imagination.
Generally, he likes to think that he’s a fairly smart person, or at least brighter than the dobe, but he isn’t afraid to say that it took him quite a while to process the fact that no one else saw the lines.
The lines themselves are neon bright, and sometimes he thinks that he’s going to go blind over all the lines that criss-cross all over Konoha.
They seem to never end, and he’s learned that the hard way as a child when he first started to see the lines.
He, as all children with curiosity, followed the lines throughout Konoha and he inadvertently sent the Uchiha Police Force on a wild goose chase for him.
It ended up with him getting the scolding of a lifetime.
But when he thinks back to those happy days, back before…the incident happened, he can only think to sigh at his younger self.
Because, at that point in his life, his father had never even said a word of acknowledgement to him, and then suddenly he got all this attention out of the blue.
And he, as an attention-starved child, took as much advantage over that situation as he could. He milked that attention, even though it was only scolding that he got, and he followed the Ley lines for days after the first scolding.
But at some point, they gave up on him.
They had soon realized that he could, indeed, find his way home on his own.
He's even managed to wander into the Nara's forests—by accident—and still found his way back.
The amount of Ley line concentration in Konoha is like a lamp in the midst of a starless night.
It's a glowing beacon, who's lines stretch across the Hokage Mountain and deep into the battlegrounds from the fabled battles he's read about in textbooks.
There's still so much out there.
He can't even imagine the amount of lines that could exist in other countries—other villages even—so much rich history waiting to be uncovered.
Sasuke wants to go there.
It's like a pull, the lines wind and wind around the distance—in the horizon—and it's so enticing.
So close, and still a world so far.
He wants to grasp onto the lights, and let them pull him into a world of the unseen.
His hand reaches for it, but it never touches.
"Stop wandering around, Sasuke. You are better than this. Uchiha do not stumble around the village like lost puppies."
"I'm sorry."
Eyes flicker in dismissal, "Learn your lesson, and do not let this happen again."
The end is aimed toward the shadowed Uchiha standing in the corner.
He leaves.
(Sasuke pretends he does not notice the guard—does not remember the conversation—as he disturbs the fish at Naka River.)