[the nothing you are grasping]
Do you still not know how little endures?
Fling the nothing you are grasping
out into the spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds
will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded.
There is a girl crying in front of him, and she's saying, "Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave." Sasuke isn't sure why he's even staying to listen to her break apart into a hysterical, emotional mess. He doesn't know why, but he's staying, listening. (Maybe there's a part of him that wants her to say something, say the right thing, the thing that will make him want to stay.)
"I love you," Sakura says, and Sasuke doesn't know why she's crying, why she's trying when there's no point. She's not a child. Crying is for children.
"I love you. Isn't that enough?" she asks, staring at him with eyes that are pleading.
("I love you," Itachi would say with a peaceful, gentle smile, and then would crouch down to his level and poke him in the forehead before pulling him close, resting his chin on Sasuke's head.
"I love you," his parents would say to him every day when he woke up, and every day before he went to sleep, always pairing the words with a hug and a kiss on the top of his head.
"I love you," his family members would say whenever he would see them, smiling indulgently at his bright innocence and his childish curiosity about everything.
But that was before Itachi had killed his entire clan and left him so very, very alone.
And that had been a long time ago, before. Before, before, before.)
"No," Sasuke says, coldly, and knows exactly why it makes her flinch away from him. He just doesn't know why she bothers, why she still cares when it's pointless. "It's not enough," he says, and doesn't react when she turns and runs away, sobbing too loudly; the sound grating on his carefully honed senses.
Sasuke waits until he can't see her anymore, then takes off into the night. He laughs under his breath as he reflects on Sakura's confession. (Not that it was much of a confession, she'd always been completely transparent.)
Love, Sasuke thinks scornfully, and wonders how it is that she hasn't yet grown out of her innocence. Love wasn't enough, it was never enough, and Sasuke knew that.
As he runs, he wonders idly if she'll ever know it too.
He scoffs, and decides that Sakura is too silly and blinded by the way that she thinks the world is. She won't learn, he thinks. She'll probably die thinking that love could fix anything.
At least Sasuke already knows better.
At least Sasuke doesn't believe that anything even can be fixed. (He doesn't let his breathing stutter and stop, he keeps it steady, and even as he runs.)
Sasuke spends a very long time running.
His demons are chasing him and after all the too-long years, he's scared that they're starting to catch up.
(He chokes, stumbles a bit as his chest constricts. Keeps running, runs faster. He can't let them catch him.)
But in the end, at the end of everything, when they finally, finally, find him, he barely fights back with any effort at all.
He tells himself that he's still tired from when a group of other missing-nin had attacked him the day before. Tells himself that his chakra is still low, that the deep gash over his ribs is making him sloppy.
It doesn't take long, and before he knows it he's caught, and then he's on his back on the ground, pinned with his arms above his head, Naruto sitting on his legs to keep him from kicking his way out of the hold the blond has on him.
Kakashi is hovering over him, frowning into his eyes as he says, too gently, "It's time for you to come home, Sasuke."
He hears movement, can see Sakura's face above him, as she presses gentle fingers around his eyes. She's pale, frowning in concentration, and she glances into his eyes briefly to say, "This is going to hurt."
Then he sees brightness as her fingertips light up with chakra, burning into his eyesockets. There's a flash of red, as the Sharingan tries to activate to dull the pain, but it falters and fades without numbing him at all.
Sakura's fingers move to press directly onto his (Itachi's) eyes, and Sasuke's world turns white.
When Sasuke wakes up, he's in a cell, cold and silent. He can hear someone outside breathing slowly.
His eyes don't work at all, and he can see only black. He can't say that he's all that surprised.
"I know you're awake," Naruto says, and Sasuke turns his head toward where the voice came from.
"Here to gloat?" he sneers, face twisting in a snarl.
Naruto doesn't say a word, and just hovers outside the door to the cell, quiet and unexpectedly still for him.
"When I leave here today," Naruto says slowly, "I'm not coming back."
Sasuke grins, against all expectations he smiles wide, edged razor sharp, and he laughs, harsh and so bitter. "I know you," he says, smirking, a small, sharp twist of his lips. "You like to torture yourself; you'll be back there again tomorrow, and every day until they exceute me."
There's a rustle of hair brushing fabric, and he can picture Naruto violently shaking his head.
"You're wrong," he says, and he is so calm. "I'm not coming back."
Sasuke doesn't bother to respond, and he listens to Naruto shift uncomfortably outside the cell.
"Goodbye, Sasuke," Naruto whispers.
He hears the other boy walk away, and settles on the floor of the cell to wait for him to come back.
The next day, Sakura comes to change the bandages on his eyes. Sasuke's guessed by now that the people outside the cell door are two ANBU, watching carefully to make sure that he doesn't try any tricks.
"Is Naruto going to visit later today?" he asks with just the right amount of fake sweetness to make Sakura angry. It works just as he knew it would, and his old teammate is angry, he can hear her breath come faster, more shallow, can feel how stiff her hands on his face are.
"You've been gone for a very long time," Sakura says icily, and then pauses to collect herself before continuing carefully, "You've missed more than you can imagine."
Sakura visits daily, changes his bandages and sits with him, quiet and calm.
Naruto hasn't visited again yet. Sasuke is still waiting.
After a while, Sasuke loses track of how many days he's been imprisoned, and after another while, Sakura's visits become less frequent.
After a while, Sakura stops visiting at all.
Naruto doesn't visit. Sasuke gets tired of waiting.
Very tired.
The next time that he sees Sakura (after days, or weeks, or maybe months have passed as he's sat in this cell), she's distant.
"Are you here to tell me that he couldn't get the Hokage to lift the death sentence?" he snipes, irritated, restless.
Sakura pauses, and he can hear her breath in the silence. "I'm just here to check your eyes," she says mildly, and shoves his head back roughly, fingers moving on them with quick, sharp movements. Sasuke doesn't so much as twitch as she works, and Sakura finishes her task quickly.
"Your execution date has been set for early next week, Sasuke," Sakura says calmly as she packs up her medical supplies, and Sasuke's breath catches in his chest.
It dawns on him suddenly.
"He didn't even ask her, did he?" Sasuke says, quiet, with his head tilted down to cast shadow over his ruined eyes. He doesn't say it like a question, and keeps his tone carefully calm even though he already knows the answer, knows what Sakura is going to say.
"No, Sasuke," Sakura says softly, tries to be gentle but just ends up sounding pleased. "He didn't ask her."
The breath he takes is shaky, and he asks, "Why not?" He doesn't sound desperate, he doesn't.
He doesn't care, really, he doesn't care anymore. It doesn't matter what she says, because nothing matters anymore. His breath comes too quick, shallow and shaky as he forces himself to inhale, exhale, counts the seconds it takes to breathe in, breathe out.
(There was a part of him, a small, small part of him that had believed that maybe Naruto would be able to convince the Hokage to spare his life, that he wouldn't die now, that maybe they could fix things, even just a little. Some part of him that had still hoped, and Naruto's actions are not anything that he expected. It's strange to know that Naruto isn't the person who Sasuke is familiar with anymore. He used to believe that he knew Naruto almost better than he knew himself.)
Sakura finishes packing up the bag with her medical supplies in silence, and Sasuke listens to the soft, rustling sounds that the fabric of her clothes make as she moves (strange how they seem so loud, now). He hears her zip the bag shut, and stand.
It's not until she's at the door that she finally gives him an answer.
He can hear the metal of the bars on the door groan under her fingers as she grips it too tightly. She swallows, and her movements don't seem as careful and controlled as they usually do. "You're not anyone we know," she whispers, letting regret and sadness bleed into her voice as she abandons the blank, infliction-less voice that she had used with him every time since he was captured. "We-" she stops when her voice breaks, and he hears her fumble for something before she sniffles, coughs to clear her throat. "We're not going to pretend that you care about us anymore."
Sakura sighs, and shuffles her feet a little, sniffles again. Her voice is steadier when she speaks again, "And we're not going to pretend that we care about what happens to you."
She steps away from the closed door, and runs a hand through her hair, sighs again, sounding tired and older than she really is. "You're not anyone worth saving anymore, Sasuke."
She takes a few more steps, and Sasuke can picture her backing away. It feels like the end of something.
"I'm still sorry," Sakura whispers, before she spins around and takes off down the hall.
She runs, but Sasuke can still hear the way that she starts to sob before she turns a corner.
He hears the footsteps fade, and the sounds of crying with them. He hears her run away, and listens to the last echo's of her crying disappear.
Sasuke lays in the cold, silent cell, and doesn't move.
His throat feels swollen and it makes his breath catch with every inhale he takes. When he breathes out, he can feel his shoulders tremble.
He had (has) too much time to think in the jail cell. All he could (can) do is think. He didn't (doesn't) like it much, not when he kept (keeps) realizing horrible, painful things that he hadn't really seen before. Sasuke knows so much more than he had when he first left the village. He had been a child then, and for all that he fancied himself superior and knowledgeable about the world, he really hadn't known much at all.
Hadn't known nearly as much as he should have, and ended up learning from Orochimaru. Orochimaru, who he couldn't even turn his back to for a second without worrying that the older man would do something he wouldn't be able to stop. (Could have maimed him, killed him, knocked him out and possessed his body, and with his back turned, he wouldn't have been able to see him move soon enough to stop him.)
If he had known what he does now, Sasuke never would have dreamed of trying to learn from the snake-master, not when there were so many dangers, dangers that he'd only barely escaped. (And some he hadn't escaped at all, Sasuke remembers. There are scars on his body which had only faded into invisibility after hours and hours of healing at the hands of Kabuto. After all, Orochimaru wouldn't have wanted his body if he'd been damaged.)
Sasuke dreams about what he knows, and forces his lungs to keep working while he sleeps. He dreams about uncovered lies, the faces that hide behind prefect masks, and many, many truths.
(Sasuke dreams so that he doesn't need to hear Sakura's voice echoing in his ears.)
He knows that the honest-to-goodness truth is that it wasn't fair. None of it, none of the trauma that the ninja villages put their children through because it was for the greater good.
It wasn't fair that Itachi had been made to kill his own family, wasn't fair that Sasuke had to grow up the only survivor and live a lie. Wasn't fair that Naruto grew up an outcast, living his very own lie. Wasn't fair that everyone lived lies, heard lies, believed lies, so often that he's not sure if by now there is anything left that isn't a lie.
Wasn't fair that Itachi had been raised to be perfect, and Sasuke had been raised to be loved. Wasn't fair that Itachi wasn't perfect, despite having been pushed, and pushed, and pushed into that role, he still wasn't, was just human, nothing more. Wasn't fair that even though Sasuke had been the child to be loved, he wasn't loved, not by his family, not by his village, not by anyone at all. Probably not even by Naruto or Sakura by now, not after everything, everything.
Not fair that he killed his brother in what should have been poetic justice, but turned out to be a misunderstanding, and hah, he thinks, what kind of misunderstanding ends with the death of a whole clan. This kind of misunderstanding, the kind that happens in ninja villages, where corruption is more abundant the higher the authority, and it's always the choice between two evils, choose the lesser, make the good choice, the tough choice. Be ruthless, be cruel.
Don't feel, don't think, just do, just kill for your village, be something to be proud of.
Not fair that killing is something to be proud of.
Make all the difficult decisions, don't hesitate to sacrifice lives, don't pause when you're in battle, just kill, just be, don't think, don't fight, just spill blood carelessly, endlessly.
And that, that bloodshed, that was why everyone lived lies to cover it all up, made themselves seem cleaner by letting someone else to the dirty jobs for them. Don't soil your hands with blood and death if there's ninja to manipulate into doing it for you.
(Sasuke dreams of people who said, "I love you", and he screams until the dreamscape shatters around him.)
It's very quiet, and very cold when he wakes up with a stifled gasp.
Sasuke thinks that Sakura won't be visiting again, not anytime soon, probably not at all.
Now, he knows that Naruto won't ever visit him again. He had been telling the truth when he said that he wouldn't be coming back.
Sasuke smiles, sharp, and cruel, and tired. He whispers into the silence, "And here I thought you'd never learn."
His eyes are damp, and he tells himself that it's just the scarred tissue irritating them.
"You're not anyone we know." Sakura's words echo in his ears.
"I don't think I know you anymore," he says, what he couldn't say when she'd been there to hear. Doesn't matter though, there's jutsu following his every move, recording every breath he takes. Someone will probably pass the words onto her, and she can pass them onto Naruto.
"We're not going to pretend that you care about us anymore."
There's something wet on his face, and he raises a hand to brush over cheeks, smudging away the trails of water. "There's no reason for me to pretend that I care about anything anymore," he says, blank like Sakura's voice was every time she spoke to him.
"I'm still not sorry."
He counts his breaths, listens to the slight stutter as it catches in his chest, hitching, keeps his eyes shut and breathes. (Not that there's much of a point anymore, he thinks, feeling so very old.)
"Goodbye, Sasuke."
Sasuke lies in the dark, and feels for the first time how truly, completely alone he is. It makes the cell even more silent, makes it feel even colder.
He counts the seconds it takes to breath in and out, and this time, he's not waiting for Naruto to finally visit him again. He's not waiting for Sakura to visit again either.
Sasuke laughs, and imagines that the cell is cold enough to make his stuttering breath fog in the air. "I'm not anyone worth saving," he says, empty of any emotion but somehow still icy. He's gasping for breath through the uncontrollable giggles, shoulders shaking with the force of his laughter as tears steadily run down his cheeks. He just laughs harder, and doesn't even try to control the hysteria that's lingering around him.
"I'm glad that you can finally recognize the truth."
Time passes, because time is the one thing that never stops.
The darkness is lonely, and he's so tired.
Sakura doesn't visit.
Naruto doesn't visit.
There is no one to say, "I love you."
Sasuke waits.
[owari]
a/n: poem at the beginning by Rilke.
thank you for reading. comments and feedback are lovely, i would greatly appreciate if you left a review.