Suicide
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
A/N: I no longer remember why I was so opposed to putting this up, when I wrote it more than a year ago.
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"Matricide."
"The murder of your mother."
"Patricide."
"The murder of your father."
"Infanticide."
"The murder of children."
"Feticide."
"The murder of unborn children."
"Genocide."
"The murder of a race."
"Suicide."
"…"
Orochimaru raised his gaze from his lab table to look at the prodigious teen. Sasuke's eyes were snagged on the freshwater tube, the tank that housed the Mist boy. The sannin lifted a hand and reached out to his student, tapping the air above his shoulder.
"Suicide," he said again.
Sasuke tore his eyes away from the container.
"The murder of oneself."
"Very good, Sasuke-kun. Now, can you tell me why I ask the meanings of these words every day?"
The basalt eyes were bland. "So that I will remember that they are just words, and what others say about them is irrelevant."
"You've been with us for a year, Sasuke-kun," the long haired man said as Kabuto came in with tea, "How far would you say you have progressed from the moment you showed up at the iron gates of paradise?"
Paradise was Orochimaru's word for his hide-outs. When Sasuke, early on, had mocked him for it, he'd been given the first taste of the sannin's power since their encounter in the Forest of Death. Orochimaru was prepared to put up with a good amount of brattish tendencies in the boy, but blatant disrespect was something else. Since then paradise was a wry a little student-teacher joke, stale with humorless laughter.
"Not far enough," Sasuke replied. Orochimaru's toes nearly curled. To think, one day, that voice would be his. The young thing was well worth the wait, and so thirsty for power it gave Orochimaru the creeps.
(Creeping out the creeper. Not something to take lightly.)
"And how far is far enough?"
Sasuke looked him dead in the eyes. "When I have learnt enough to kill you."
Kabuto tensed and scowled, but his liege laughed merrily. The medic boy shot Sasuke a hot glare as he poured his tea.
"Yes! Yes! That is when you'll have come far enough, Sasuke-kun! That is when you can start dreaming of Itachi's defeat!"
Sasuke's eyes flickered with emotions briefly—disgust? Excitement?—and then turned passive once more.
"But to get there, you have to be able to face down fear."
This time the emotion lingered. A sneering arrogance that made Kabuto shudder with resentment. "I'm not afraid of anything," the Uchiha stated boldly, "For I am sure of my place in the world."
Orochimaru smiled. It was indulgent, patronizing, petrifying. "No?" he said, "Of nothing?" His amber eyes found Kabuto, and the boy trotted over to the cage that held the Mist lad. He pressed a button and a small puddle leaked out. The puddle solidified: a cube of ice with a naked Suigetsu on it.
"Sasuke-kun, have you met Suigetsu?" said Orochimaru conversationally. He noted, only mildly impressed, that Sasuke's expression didn't waver. There was plenty coming to test that well wrought mask.
"No," Sasuke spoke. The normally dispassionate tone was frigid. Orochimaru smirked.
"A lie, Sasuke-kun, but a passably told one. Look at him. Naked, bound. You don't know him?"
Suigetsu's wrists were tied behind his back with chakra rope, preventing his transformation to liquid. His mouth too was gagged and his ankles were trussed up. Wild eyes tore at Sasuke, trying to get a desperate message across.
Sasuke said nothing.
Orochimaru continued talking. "You think I don't know. You think I don't keep an eye on what goes on under my own nose. You think you're clever to sneak in at night here and converse with my subjects. You underestimate me, Sasuke-kun."
The Uchiha's heart was troubled. And fearful. Orochimaru was a madman and if this caused Suigetsu pain, Sasuke didn't know how he would live with himself. The thought of Itachi hurting idiot Naruto back in the days when Naruto had mattered had made him dizzy with apprehension. The thought of Suigetsu whom he still gave a damn about catching hell because of him cut Sasuke's heart like butter.
Suigetsu whimpered. Kabuto looked on.
"Do you know what I want you to do?"
"No."
"No? Hmm. Tell me, Sasuke-kun. Do you two have nicknames for each other?"
He already knew. Sasuke's skin crawled at how much information the bastard must have on him. He had started talking to Suigetsu first to simply annoy him, and be annoyed in turn. The friendship phase had been skipped over entirely in favor of frothing kisses that brought so much comfort to Sasuke, and confused affections the likes of which only young boys could share. And nicknames. Nicknames that Orochimaru had no right to...
"Yes."
"Hmm? Tell me. What do you call him?"
"Sui." The name was whispered as it always was. Life had taught Sasuke to not flaunt precious things, and the name that meant water as much as it meant love was offered up in throttling self-loathing. "I call him Sui."
"Very good. Now, can you think of any new definition for the world suicide?"
The bulb over Sasuke's head clicked on. His eyes widened, his face crumpled. Suigetsu thrashed on the ice, yelling muffled words to the brunet.
"So you do fear something," Orochimaru purred, "Finally. Is your desire to kill your brother stronger than what you feel for him? Tell me, child. Can you destroy your scrap of happiness?"
Suigetsu froze, his eyes drilling into Sasuke. The brunet's breath caught in his chest. Kabuto looked away.
"I can."
Orochimaru nodded and walked around table to the tea cart Kabuto had wheeled in. He reached under it and pulled out a katana.
"I had this forged specially for you," Orochimaru invited, presenting it to Sasuke hilt first. The teen took it with steady hands he couldn't feel, they were that numb. "It responds to your chakra. Use it. Drench it in his blood—or water, as the case may be," he added with a cruel grin, "He's been very well integrated with the water from the hot springs. I modestly take the credit."
Sasuke turned to Suigetsu, refusing to listen to the hermit's words. The water-nin's eyes had dulled by this point in the proceedings. They gazed listlessly at Sasuke, and Sasuke stared back.
He couldn't do it.
How? Those eyes were so beautiful. He loved those eyes. He loved every last inch of Suigetsu. The katana shook in his hand, confused by the way his chakra was rebelling against his mind's commands, how his heart blocked all actions that might harm Suigetsu.
Sasuke closed his eyes.
It was a crime. To end his life, the life so full of laughter and naïveté. It was unthinkable to stop those lips from smiling ever again. Sasuke would rather kill himself.
Except.
He had suffered the indignity of life thus far just to kill his brother. And if he couldn't look at Suigetsu as he killed him, when he'd only loved him for a matter of months, in the temperate, clumsy way of teenage—how could he kill Itachi? He'd loved his brother since he'd left his mother's womb. Itachi had always been there for Sasuke. And then suddenly one day he no longer was. That sort of betrayal had to be avenged.
The younger brother opened his eyes.
He had to do this.
He had to.
He had to.
The katana grew still, and then grew strong. It sharpened itself until Kabuto could've sworn he felt it on his skin, standing ten feet away. Sasuke's aching, raging chakras poured into it helplessly.
He raised it, and pushed it towards Suigetsu.
The eyes were closed now—Suigetsu didn't want to believe that Sasuke would do this, that Sasuke could do this.
Orochimaru watched with pride as his student, his body-to-be, ran the Mist boy through with the chakra blade.
Suigetsu vanished in a puff of smoke.
Orochimaru broke into laughter again, and Kabuto released the…the real…the real alive unharmed Suigetsu from the water prison.
"You asshole!" Suigetsu shouted, but it wasn't clear at whom or for what. Sasuke, for having the heartlessness to kill him? Orochimaru for putting them through this? Kabuto, for being a lousy cook? No one knew. No one cared. He threw himself at a paralyzed Sasuke. The brunet's chest felt like a dam holding back a river. They hugged fiercely until Orochimaru snapped his fingers.
"This is your reward," Orochimaru approved, "For passing my test. If you are at all glad to have him, you may thank Kabuto." They all looked at the bespectacled boy who looked quite abashed by the attention bestowed. "He was the one who convinced me to use a clone. He pointed out that it was enough that you thought you were killing your little play mate. He reminded me how much I might regret having to kill him. I thought he made a fair point." The hermit padded over to the medic and looped an arm around his waist.
"Very well done, Sasuke-kun," Orochimaru praised, "You are ready to truly start learning. You and I will begin training tomorrow in advanced forms of the ninja arts—and the sharingan. For the remainder of today you may retire, as shall I. With our respective pets, hmm?"
He laughed one last time and led Kabuto away. Suigetsu whirled on Sasuke.
"How could you—" the angry tirade was broken apart by the ragged kiss Sasuke loaned him. Their hands clung together in inescapable mutual misery and Sasuke bled from a punishing bite of the boy's teeth.
"I'm sorry."
Like that was worth anything.
"You'd really kill me."
"I'm sorry…" Sasuke hung to him. Suigetsu sighed.
Like this would change anything.
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Maybe it was because I didn't like start, which does go on.