Angst and the boy who's far too good at it
Disclaimer-I don't own Naruto.
. . .it seems that this is the place where I'm supposed to come up with some witty (or overused, whatever you want to call it) piece about my lack of ownership over anything, even my sanity.
I'm pretty damn new at this, so you'll have to make do without one.
From what I can remember of my pre-genin days, Sasuke was never really a happy little bugger.
I mean, even then, I was way too cool to hang out with a loser like Sasuke, but I guess a super-awesome ninja like me would've picked something up after spending every schoolday and recess somewhere in his vicinity for a year-or-so. Ninjas must have awesome observation skills! And using mine, which, of course, were amazingly advanced for my age, I must've gathered info on him without even trying!
Heh.
Anyway, I noticed that he was a reserved little wierdo. Dressed in stupid colours like black, too. Orange is better, 'cause it draws people's attention.
A bit off of the main road, but Sasuke wasn't too emo until we were some eight years of age. Not really all that noticeable. I mean, yeah, even then he had some kind of creepy-ass `Uchiha chick-magnet` thing going on, and for that stupid reason, there were a few girls in our class that blushed and giggled over him, and tried to collect DNA samples and stuff. Freaks.
Sakura-chan stalked him for his DNA too, but she isn't a freak! My Sakura-chan, who is now a super-talented, lovely medic-nin, probably just wanted it to experiment on! To find a cure for a disease or something!
She still has his hair in her room, though. . .
Sakura-chan, you could've taken my hair any time you wanted~!
Right.
Getting off topic. So, Sasuke wasn't really all that angsty and stuff. Then, along came the Uchiha massacre, which I hear was really epic and depressing and stuff.
Sasuke evolved into some kind of monster angst-generator after that.
Yeah, I feel bad for him, duh. We were friends! When he felt less emo and angsty and stuff than usual, we had some pretty damn good times.
Those times have been over for quite a while now. . .those blissful, simple memories will remain such, and never again dance as the present.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGST!
Sasuke was so angsty and tragic and dark that he sometimes affected other people. He had a shitload of anger and wanted to avenge the Uchiha clan by killing off one of the few remaining members of it. He was so emo, I've heard that he once had whole conversations with Gaara about death and despair and darkness and the pathetic, fleeting nature of human life.
According to Gaara, he and Sasuke got along well.
Not a huge surprise there.
It's been several-how many?-years now, since that day.
I can't stop those memories from flitting to the surface. I hold them in my hand, the little shattered shards of a reality we'll never be able to return to. They cut me.
I hold them anyway. They are precious.
We were fighting. For real-with real jutsu, real metal, real intent to kill. I'd known that this is what it would eventually come down to for more than a year now. I'd known, but I'd refused to accept the possibility. It's much more difficult to deny reality than possibility. I don't even bother.
Sasuke. . .he'd changed so much. Could I find a shred of hope among the bitterness in his shadowed eyes? Find compassion, in his words of vengeance? Familiarity, in the appearance, the soul of this stranger of a friend?
Damn right I could.
He still had that stupid, fucking hilarious duck-ass hair.
I kept my eyes on it as he rambled.
''-for my fallen clanmembers, I trained endlessly for power! The price for it was payed in my blood, my sweat, my tormented thoughts! It was an endless cycle of failure, hatred, and training! I was crushed by inferiority, cut by my brother's words, suffocated by my filial duties, broken by my brother's hand-!'' Sasuke screamed into the tempestuous atmospere.
''Uh- hunh.''I nodded my head. Throughout his speech I'd kept my eyes fixated on the duck-butt on his head. A storm was coming. The wind tore at our bodies, whistled through the massive crevices in the face of the blackened stone. Most importantly, it ravaged our hair. My hair. His really-really-super-emo duck ass.
My own glorious, awesome, sunshine-y locks were whipping around my face at the gale, in the traditional shounen manga `super-special protagonist` way.
Sasu-Duck-Duck-Ass-Hair just kind of. . .waggled. . .at the force of the squall.
. . .waggled.
''AHAHAHAHAH~! Waggled-! Hah!'' Once I'd started, it'd been difficult to stop. It took a while before my breathing went back to normal.
''WHAT. The hell are you laughing about? NARUTO!'' Sasuke railed, arms thrown up and eyes all moody and emo and stuff.
Stupid hair or not, Sasuke was Sasuke, and Sasuke could kick ass when provoked. I had to give him that; he'd spent his entire life trying(and failing) to prove it. Now he'd finally succeeded(not really, but close enough)and so he wanted to unleash his glory upon the world in the form of PMS-esque bitching. So be it.
I, to his bitchy little rant, responded in a very manly, very gutsy way. ''N-Nothing. I was just expressing my dark, baleful amusement in the form of mirthless chuckling.''
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. He remained suspicious. ''And what, pray tell, was the cause of said amusement?'' I gulped. Shit.
''Uhh. . .irony. The twisted irony of this cruel world.'' A few years being the ex-best friend of a black hole of angst makes one adept at emo bullshitting after displaying unacceptably non-emo behaviour.
''Irony. Hn.'' That was Sasuke's emo, angsty way of voicing his approval. Lovely. Duck-ass wasn't going to bitchslap me. Instead, I was bestowed the honour of listening to emo boy rave about one of his favourite topics. ''Speaking of irony, after all those painful years of blahblahblah, after I finally killed aniki, my blahblahblah, I realized it wasn't my brother that blahblahblah and suffered so much blah on my behalf blahblahblah I WILL DESTROY KONOHA!''
Up until then, I'd been captivated by the. . .hehe. So the blahblah parts of Sasuke's little soliloquy(it wasn't really one, but might as well had been, for all the attention I'd paid to it)didn't really occur. As noted previously, my super-badass ninja master awesome observational skills are super-badass ninja master awesome. But I'd been on the receiving end of his angsty, angsty, angst-filled angst acts far too many times. So my skills must've slipped a bit.
Knowing when to stop for the sake of one's mind and body is an important ninja skill as well, alright?
I must've done so subconsciously. Instincts are necessary for those in our profession.
''You're going to destroy Konoha?''I bellowed in shock.''Why-I mean, isn't it better to look to the future? The past is the past, right?''
Sasuke laughed bitterly."You're absolutely right, past is the past. There's no need for such an obvious truth to be stated.''
''Than why-?''I began, only to be interrupted.
''Because of my memories! They made me who I am! I can't forget the past! It created my present and will dictate the coming of my future! And so many of the people who shared them with me, who made them with me-they're gone now! I'm the only person in the world who has these memories, and they've been corruptedby the lies and deceit around me. Chichiyo-san and haha-san and the rest of my clan; what am I supposed to feel about them? Anger? Betrayal? Love? And what about my aniki? I owe him so much. He died because of me, and I live because of him-but I'm wasting my life away.
''I feel no real attachment towards my own existance. I can't ground myself, even when I fall. Itachi should be alive instead of me-this life, my present is worthless. And yet I can't bring myself to throw it away-for aniki's sacrifice, if nothing else. He held me in esteem. I can never return anything he's given me, so I will live on.
''But it's not enough. So I will fill that emptiness through vengeance! I can't forgive the past! I am defiant towards this present! I will fight into a future where justice has been dealt, and where there is no need for me to be an avenger!''
''. . .that's messed up.''
''That's life, f***tard.''
''. . .
''Hey, you know, we're supposed to be fighting right now.''I said tentatively.
''. . .'' Sasuke, who didn't seem to have a sufficiently emo/badass response to that, shrugged a little 'I'm-too-cool-to-shrug' anti-shrug. ''Hn.''
''I don't want to fight you, Sasuke.'' I said quietly.
Sasuke raised his eyebrows, crinkling his nose slightly. ''Oh? You don't want to fight?'' His confusion cleared like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds, and his lips pulled up into a bitter sneer. ''Then you should've thought of that before you became a shinobi. Fighting. . .killing, is the tenet of our , present, and future-that's the way its always been, the way it'll always will be. Most importantly, that's the way it is now. And, if sometimes, being a shinobi requires you to kill someone you'd rather not, than. . .well, that's the price I'll have to pay.''
I'd never killed anyone; not in my life, or career. I definitely didn't want to kill Sasuke. But a fight seemed unavoidable, and, considering the way Sasuke fought-fighting killing, it was all synonymous to the boy who seemed so different and yet horribly familiar-the chances of even one of us surviving was undeniably low.
''I. . .'' Did we really have to fight?
Sasuke slanted his eyes, and crouched down slightly with his palms facing each other.
''. . .''
A whirling dervish encompassed his figure. The thick gray clouds above pushed together. Lighting split the sky, and the thunder followed.
I tensed; prepared to defend, and then deliver a counterattack.
The wind picked up and whistled through holes in the cliff-holes slowly eroded by wind and rain over millennia. In my peripheral vision, I could see this stone cage looming high above our heads. The sombre ceiling covering the sky seemed about to release its burden upon the world.
And then everything stopped. The air was still. The walls were watching and silent.
For a second, nothing moved.
''CHIDORI!''
''RASENGAN!''
For just a moment, time stopped.
The memory ended. I opened my eyes.
Time may've stopped, for one of us, at least. But for the rest of the world-for me-it continued.
Some time later, I'd woken up. Sasuke and I were lying facing each other, yet opposite.
My eyes were open-his weren't.
My hair, despite its natural spikiness, was fine-his wasn't. (It's indestructable, so it wasn't damaged or anything, but it'd never been fine.)
I was still breathing-he. . .
Past, present, future.
Time waited for no one.
Sasuke, who'd always lived in the past, who sought comfort, hatred, strength, and resolve from his memories.
Sasuke, who never was able to see the present. Sasuke, who never was able to exist in this future.
Sasuke, who will. . .
''Sasuke,'' I whispered. ''Past, present, future-we always have been, always will be, and even now are walking a fine line between parody and angst.''
This was/is my first piece of fanfiction. It was written sporadically over the course of a few days, in minuscule and slightly larger portions. Unedited.
Bizarre. It was sort of on the whim, and I didn't really have too definite a plan.
Sasuke, incidentally, is one of my favourite characters in the Naruto fandom and otherwise. Ask if you're interested.
Reviews are appreciated, but not necessary.
Even so, I'm curious to see who my first reviewer will be.