He is in pain.
Having every bone in your body broken tends to do that. Even the bones in his ears must be damaged - he is certain of it - by his friend's angry ranting.
His friend always keeps his word, always keeps his promises. That's his ninja way.
And his friend promised to bring him back to the village, even if he had to break every bone in his body.
That idiot.
At least he returned the injuries in kind. Some of them, at least. Neither of them are in any shape to move, but a retrieval team is surely on their way. He is going back to the village, possibly in a body bag if one of the hunters is coming.
Unlike him, though, his friend still has a working jaw. And boy does he work it.
Friend blah loneliness blah team blah blah village blah stronger blah Orochimaru blah blah Sakura blah friend blah blah brother blah blah...
He knows, damn it. He fucking knows. He fucked up.
He used the curse mark in that fight, used everything it had to offer, every last drop of chakra it stored. It doesn't have the power left to influence him, to speak to him, to seduce him with sultry promises of power and vengeance, to flood his veins with a hormonal cocktail of anger blood rage burning rage kill.
It is silent, and he knows that he fucked up. Miserably. He stuck a chidori - a ball of condensed lightning - in his friend's chest. He got better, but damn it, he's his comrade. His friend. His best friend, though he would never speak it.
The bonds that he always wanted since the night his clan - his family - was slaughtered. The bonds that he was always too scared to seek. The bonds that tied themselves to him regardless of his cowardice. The bonds that he carelessly severed in a drug-induced rage high.
The curse mark really is a drug, but he can't quit, and an intervention isn't going to do anything. It is forcibly sealed onto his neck, into his brain, into the energies of his body and soul - his chakra network.
It isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and that scares him. Though he wants nothing more than to apologize and rejoin his team and work together to get stronger and become a chunin and then a jonin and then get the hokage to give him a mission to kill his brother so he can rebuild his family without fear of them being brutally murdered in the night under the full moon right in front of him over and over and over again, he knows that once the curse mark refills itself he will want none of it.
He can't swear he regrets, he can't promise his loyalty, he can't plead for forgiveness, because he knows he will be buried under the burning rage and horrid inferiority complex that damned mark creates. He will regret nothing. He will be loyal to nothing. He will plead nothing.
He is losing consciousness. He wants to tell his friend all of it while he still can, but his friend broke every bone in his body. Including his jaw.
That idiot.