KnifeMan
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Summary
The Kin have always had a half-bull menkhu. Now that Oyun, the last, is dead, nature will fill the void - whether Artemy wants it to or not.
Bookmarked by KnifeMan
16 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Dankovsky had to come back. It was as simple as that – a survival equation, like September, eating stolen food instead of starving, pulling a knife if someone else was out for blood. Except this time, no knife to hand, all Artemy could do was hope. Need, wait and bleed, while time pooled just the way he’d been terrified it would and the light painted blank-faced portraits of itself on the windows, freezing the night in the shape of the Stillwater loft.
***
And it would have been easier if Dankovsky had gloated about it. It would have felt like running into a solid surface, a dam all that hurt couldn’t spill past. A scoff, a serves you right, might have stopped it short.
That silence, that open look in Dankovsky’s eyes, left nothing but room for it all to pour out. Artemy had failed in every way a son or a menkhu could. He could try to point the finger at those who hadn’t warned him, but as a son, as a menkhu, he should have known.
Dankovsky leaned forward from his seat. He couldn’t have needed the support of a hand on Artemy’s knee to push himself to his feet, but laid it there anyways.
And kept it there a second after he had gained his feet. “I’ll go and slice this,” he said, brandishing the loaf in his other hand. “You must be hungry.”
And for once, it didn’t feel like an out. A step off that road. Artemy, heartsore and hungry indeed, stared up at him, with no word for what he saw in those dark eyes that didn’t feel like misguided hope.
“I-”
“I’ll have to find something to serve with it, of course. Minotaur, like man, can’t live on bread alone. The shop down the street tends to have fresh fish on Tuesdays, doesn’t it?”
***
How could he have known then that it could be so easy- no, not easy. So inevitable, so irresistible, to become a myth like that? All it took was living through the worst, and then keeping on living.
***
– and stood obediently while Daniil fussed with figuring out a satisfactory shot.
And watched him while he did. Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky, small and breakable and serious and a hell of a lot kinder, and more justice-minded, than Artemy had taken the time to realize before.
***
second read omg
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Summary
Sasuke finds himself, somehow, still alive.
So he tries his best to do just that; live. He cooks. He reads. He takes care of the neighbourhood cat. He lays awake, dulls off, wakes up tired. Some nights, he listens to Naruto snoring. And some days, his old friends come over uninvited.
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Sasuke is here. In his dream.
That isn’t unusual: Sasuke has been in his dreams more nights than not since he can remember. Fighting Sasuke and winning, fighting Sasuke and losing, chasing after Sasuke and never catching up. Sasuke as a little boy, as a genin, as an old man.
But here, now, this dream―it’s one he hasn’t had before. -
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Summary
The short answer: you shouldn't. It is all consuming. Burning. Will leave spots in your vision that linger at the edges of sight until you have nearly managed to convince yourself of permanent loss. The sun is a great, burning anomaly that is equal parts beauty and pain. The sun takes. The sun is blonde, with blue eyes, and stares you down and demands and demands. The sun is oozing blood beside him on the cliffside and Sasuke is sorry for what has brought them here. The sun is smiling and asking Sasuke if he'll stay. If he'll slow down for a little bit. Sasuke stares at the sun, his eyes are burning with exhaustion and tears, and for once in his life gives in.
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Sasuke returns to Konoha and it isn't as simple or easy as Naruto thought it would be. Just when things can't get worse, he's universally hated by nearly everyone in the village, a new threat appears and Konoha is all too quick to place the blame on Sasuke's shoulders.
Series
- Part 1 of Towards a Solstice
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 97,895
- Chapters:
- 16/16
- Comments:
- 267
- Kudos:
- 1,010
- Bookmarks:
- 247
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- 28,083
Bookmarked by KnifeMan
26 Jan 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
he imagined that in another world, another reality, maybe he might have had a sister in Sakura. At one point, in this world. In this reality. He had. He wants to earn her back, but he doesn’t know how. There are many things that Sasuke does not know how to do, and it is only in those fractal eternities of forced solitude that he is able to confront this most world-bending truth.
“And so it is…” He murmurs to himself.
***
With his chakra sealed away indefinitely, his career as a ninja is decidedly over. Suddenly, he feels a rush of white hot rage flooding his veins at his own ability to trap himself. He isn’t able to configure how he is meant to spend his life, now. All he knows is violence. What is a life without violence? He doesn't know.
***
Sasuke pauses to consider what he will say before saying it. It is a tactic that he has only just realized he should deploy more frequently.
***
Would academy children, years from now or even days from now, be learning about the great traitor, Uchiha Sasuke, who had gone to such pains to eradicate their village only to fail. Would they erase everything about his clan that made them worth mourning? Remembering? Their endless capacity for love, the gentle way his mother had brushed spidery fingers through his hair and had whispered: Sasuke, I love you.
***
Naruto chuckles darkly. “Sasuke. I don’t think you understand how I feel about you. I loved you with your hand in my chest. I loved you with your sword at my throat. I’ve loved you at your lowest and at your highest and everywhere in between. You’re mine.”
“I’m not a toy or a thing.” Sasuke responds uselessly to disguise the lump forming in his throat. Naruto is the best parts of him. It hurts, sometimes, to look at him when he burns so brightly.
***
The Uchiha believe that love lives in the belly. That love crawls its way up the throat and neck—to either be expelled from the mouth as fire or twisted in the eyes like pinwheels. For the better part of the last decade, love has lived like an ulcer in Sasuke’s stomach. Painful, acidic, and shameful.
***
Had his mother longed to move as well? Had she wanted to claw her own weakened flesh from her body, disgusted at its softness and give. Had she found herself unrecognizable in an apron, two small children clutching to her and demanding feed me, feed me, gorge me on both time and love. Give me what is left of you, is what it meant. Not a woman's curse, but the curse of those meant to pause. Those for whom shinobi life grinds to an abrupt halt in the wake of marriage, pregnancy, or war. He had wanted to be soft, but softness has its time and place. Now, he needs all of his hardness and sharp edges back—so that he can protect Naruto and Sakura rather than the other way around—but they do not come. Doesn't even know how to begin looking for them amongst the soft, soft flesh.
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Summary
"I know what you mean" Sasuke spoke "It feels like I have known you forever. Perhaps in another lifetime. Perhaps in one where we aren't rent asunder by the burdens of our bloodline."
"I feel otherwise" Naruto let out a chuckle "I feel, in every lifetime, we have fought tooth and nail for our bond. And we came out victorious as we shall in this lifetime"
Bookmarked by KnifeMan
26 Jan 2026