I wondered my whole life about Sasuke. Since the first day I had seen him; since the first time I knew who he was, I wondered. I thought about him a lot when I was younger. He was like some silent idol I held in my heart. He was everything I wanted to be. He was strong, and smart, and fast, and more than anything else he was popular. The whole village loved him and they looked at him with pity in their eyes. They felt sorry for him and his lonesome self. While they looked upon me, alone myself, and treated me like a worthless, dangerous monster.
Sasuke was everything I wasn't. We were complete opposites, but at the same time we shared this bond that no one in the whole world could understand. We shared our loneliness.
But even with this unspoken common ground we shared, and this pedestal I put him on, I hated him. I hated every fiber of his self absorbed being. He was everything I wished I was, and everything every girl wished was their's but none of that mattered to him. He was an asshole and all he cared about was himself. All he cared about was some stupid vendetta he had on his chest, like it ran in his veins and kept his heart pumping. He didn't care when I decided he was my friend, he didn't care when Sakura cried for him when we all thought he was dead, he didn't care that I trained for three years just so I could bring him home. And he especially didn't care when I decided I was going to bring him back to Konoha if it was the last god damned thing I did.
No. He never cared.
But I didn't care, I never cared. I hated him, sure, but I didn't care that he didn't care. I didn't let it stop me. My whole life I wondered about Sasuke. I wondered why he didn't care, why he never would, why he ran away, why he wouldn't come back. Every time I came up without an answer I hated him even more. But even if I hated him, I never stopped loving him. . .
- - -
He was stupid. I hated him. I hated him from the first time I ever saw him. I layed my eyes on him and knew that he was going to be the bane of my existence. He obsessed over me, more than the wretched pink haired girl. He felt he had some moral duty to protect me from my own end. He was always in the way. Even when we were children and he was nothing but a speck in the background.
As much as I hated him, I respected him more than I did any other person in the entire village. He was the only person I knew that had it in him to hate me as much as I hated him and everyone else. He wasn't like every other villager, he didn't pity me, he didn't feel sorry for me because I was alone. How could he? He was as alone as I was. This fact was the only thing we shared, and it was the only thing that kept me from killing him from the start.
I tried to kill him once. I lie, I've tried to kill him twice. Every time I'd come so close, I'd be just moments away from ending his life when something in me would snap and I would lose my nerve. He was the only thing I couldn't kill. My brother was no task, once I had my mind on it, it was done and he was dead. But Naruto was something impossible. He was disgusting, he was filthy, he was wretched, he was my only weakness. I pitied him. Didn't I?
I hated him, after all. If I hated him, then how was it that I felt some other feeling inside me for him? I ran away from him my whole life. Was I running toward some validation of my existence, or was I running away from one of the only things I ever loved?