A/N: This is a story that I wrote a while ago before I started on 'Ashes Ashes, We All Fall Down'. I was so excited to write this, which creeped me out because it's a really sadistic idea haha. I was scaring myself. But I wanted to try a new twist on the whole idea of self-mutilation. I accidentally messed it up when writing it though, because Sasuke has two completely different views and reasons in the first half of the story compared to the second half, because I wrote the first half then tried to finish the second half in study hall at school when I didn't have it with me. But then I tried to blend it to make it work. I actually think the second part turned out a lot better than the first part though. I hope you guys enjoy it and please leave feedback letting me know what I did well on and what I should work on!
Pairing: slight SasuSaku (if you blink you'll miss it)
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
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What defines a person as being emo? In today's society, cuts on your wrist. One cut, one shallow scar on his wrist, and Sasuke was stereotyped as an emo. He didn't even do it religiously. He just wanted to try it….
It started when he walked in on Gaara once during the Chuunin Exams. He asked why Gaara did it. The red head said it was like a self-inflicted bitter sweetness, pain intermingled with a twisted pleasure. The best part he said was the high he got from the simple sickening sound, the slit slit slit of the knife skidding across his skin, leaving thin crimson threads in it wake which eventually were woven together to create art.
So Sasuke tried it. However, the noises that Gaara found so intoxicating only reminded Sasuke of the slices he heard when he arrived back home to see Itachi cutting his parents down.
It definitely couldn't compare to the time when Sasuke broke his finger for the first time on a mission, and he almost cried out in pain and ecstasy from the delicious sound it made. After that, he abused his fingers almost every day – he couldn't resist the strange burning need. However, Kakashi became suspicious so Sasuke grudgingly resorted to only doing it on the weekends. After awhile, he came to consider it as a kind of gift to himself, something to look forward to.
Only a month after he started his twisted hobby it came to an abrupt stop…and the reason was Sakura. She walked in on him midway in a frenzy session, which in his case meant snapping all the fingers on one of his hands at once. He was pretty sure what scared her the most was the moan mingled in with the screams.
After that his eyes opened to the horror he had become. Sasuke had always been against using thing such as self-mutilation or drugs or alcohol to dull his suffering. He thought, no, he knew he was stronger than that.
Apparently not.
He swore to Sakura and himself that he would never do it again…it was the only promise he ever broke.
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Sasuke knew it was illogical, stupid, and immoral. He knew it was only causing him harm, both physically and mentally. He knew he promised to stop – but he had to.
This wasn't Konoha. He needed some type of refuge.
God, the screams! The banshee cries that snaked along the hallways and slipped under his door to fill his room with blood-curdling wails. Every night, he counted the hours – he was slowly becoming an insomniac. But he couldn't help it – the agony contained in the screams chilled his very bones, right down to the marrow.
So he decided to cleanse his marrow.
Crack, crack, crack.
Each new finger he snapped, he felt as though he made an escape hole for the suffering of those lost souls to slip right out of his body. It made him feel so rejuvenated.
His fingers, mangled and twisted this way and that, must've been a grotesque sight. But it was his tourniquet, his only was to block out the screams.
Crack, crack, crack.
He played a lament for the devil on his abused bones, granting him sweet music, asking in return for deliverance from the horrid theme song of his new life. God could not help him now; He couldn't save a sinner who made his own chains, who added a new link each day.
Sasuke thought that Kabuto would've asked by now. The first time he came in, every finger broken in multiple places, Kabuto gave him a quizzical look but said nothing. He still didn't ask, merely 'tsked' at the Uchiha when he arrived in the morning to have his hands healed before training.
Sasuke no longer took a sadistic pleasure in the ungodly pain, when he shattered his fingers one by one. No, now the only pleasure he gained was from the absence of the screams, because the crack crack crack was so much more preferable to the strangled cries of things that just had their humanity ripped away and shredded.
Grinding his bones into dust was the only thing that kept him sane.
Yet again, cutting presented itself as a much easier method. However, the slit slit slit was still not a pleasant sound on his ears. Also, it did nothing to distract him from the torture going on outside the haven of his room. No, it wasn't half as rewarding as the crack crack crack of bone.
A double-edged sword is never the best weapon, or the best medicine, Kabuto told Sasuke once when the boy came in with gnarled fingers again. His words struck a chord somewhere within the old Sasuke, the one who made that promise so long ago. But the new Sasuke, the one who found the light at the end of the tunnel only in feverishly mutilating his limbs every night, convinced the old Sasuke that Kabuto was just messing with him, trying to get under his skin.
It wasn't long until Sasuke's double-edged sword stabbed him in the back.
Crack crack crack, snap snap snap, twist twist twist, break break break. Soon, the sounds would be imbedded so deep in his marrow that sanity would no longer be an option.