“Can you animate yer people drawings too?” Where would this conversation head? Probably nowhere good. “You could make good money drawin’ hot dates for losers.”
@turbidwaters
the memory digs clawed fingers into his mind with a physical pain, he is back in a dark room late at night, tiny figures dancing at his feet as he tries to copy their steps in the faint light of a candle. how many nights had he spent like that before he’d been caught, punished for his tiny acts of rebellion? three? four?
he can still taste the thing he’s come to know as dread on his tongue, watching his minder stomp the little ink figures into puddles, the black footprints he’d left behind as he’d advanced on sai. the harsh grip of his hand in his hair when he’d dragged him to danzo-sama.
sai clamps down on the memory, ferociously, with teeth, and shoves it to the back of his mind. his face doesn’t change, but he leans back a little, giving suigetsu a blank look while he gets a hold on his current surroundings once more. his hand has frozen too long, and the ink from his brush is pooling on the paper beneath it, ruining the boring mountainscape he’d been painting. he pulls the brush away with an absent frown, lifts the paper and watches the ink run and then drip from the page.
“better money than you, anyway.” the usual sickly-sweet tone he gets in this kind of situation is missing, the tease gone from his voice. his response is mechanical. perhaps that is enough painting for today. “or, would you like to be the loser with the chakra-ink date?”