This was it.
The End.
Sasuke found himself smiling as he gave the blade currently stuck through Itachi's heart a little twist. Just something a little extra, for all those years of-
Itachi interrupted his thoughts by speaking.
"Goodbye, little brother," said Itachi.
Sasuke's smile faded as he realized that Itachi had one.
"I love you."
Itachi coughed up a little bit more blood, and brushed his hair out of his face. It was stained red, and looked particularly... chunky in places. Sasuke brushed his own hair out of his eyes, and it felt the way Itachi's looked.
"I never wanted to, but I did."
"Go to hell," Sasuke hissed.
Itachi's grin grew just a little bit wider- it was a warm summer day in the Uchiha compound, and Itachi was gesturing for Sasuke to come over, with a little smile on his face, and Sasuke obeyed even though he knew what was going to happen, and sure enough, Itachi poked his forehead, a cute gesture of affection and teasing, his nii-san loved him but he could be mean, couldn't he?
Sasuke calmed himself.
"And you loved your nii-san, too," Itachi said quietly, with that maddening upward twist of the corners of his mouth. "Still do... I can tell. It's okay. But little brother, you don't know everything- listen to me. Be careful- you're not-"
You're not old enough. You're not strong enough. You'll never be strong enough. You're not there yet. Your hate isn't enough. It's never going to be enough. You're not enough.
You're never going to be enough.
"Shut up!" Sasuke yelled, and Itachi fell right then. Sasuke checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
It was over.
It was really over.
Itachi was dead and gone, and Sasuke had done it. He stood, the last one alive in the middle of a battlefield. Orochimaru was long dead, some hours ago also by Sasuke's hand.
A motion caught his eye, and he realized he wasn't the last one alive. He tightened his grip on his sword and approached the location of the sound. It was over by the body of a young woman, dead.
And yet, the girl beside her wasn't.
The sound he had heard had been a sob.
He stood above the girl. She didn't notice him, crying as she was over the body of a (sort of pretty) young woman. Or the woman would have been pretty, had her guts not been spilling out all around her.
Sasuke felt... strange, watching her.
He felt strange in general.
It was done- it was all done, and yet there was something still missing, something incomplete. Something he'd lost that needed to be found. He exhaled deeply, and that was when she noticed him.
She screamed and jumped back, holding a kunai out in front of her with a shaking hand.
Sasuke wanted to laugh.
It was like she thought she could do something. Ha. As if.
"Stay away!" she screeched, and she had an irritating, high pitched squawking voice. She couldn't have been more than seven, he realized.
The age he'd been when he lost his entire family.
The feeling of wanting to laugh drained out of him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said slowly, hardly believing the words himself. She didn't trust him, he could tell, but she wanted to believe so badly that she had somebody to hide behind that she wanted to believe him. She didn't look very bright, but she knew that much, anyway.
A part of him wanted to let her hide behind him. So young... and yet, she was going to be so old soon.
"Who is this?" he asked, keeping his voice low and relaxing. It was a tactic he had learned, to gain people's trust so that he could betray them later. And yet, he found himself unlikely to want to betray her. He was gaining her trust to keep it.
"My big sister," she said, hiccuping. "Hikari. She died because she jumped in front of a bomb that would have hit me."
Sasuke didn't know what to say.
"I have to leave now." He decided that would be good. She could either ask to go with him, or not. It was up to her now if she wanted to seek out his protection.
He wasn't exactly sure what he would do in the event that she did so.
"C-Can I come with you?"
She asked. She was a weak little girl, and the part of his soul where a small part of Orochimaru hid wanted him to stab her with Kusanagi right now, hissed that in the back of his mind.
He didn't want to be Orochimaru. He didn't want to be Itachi.
Itachi had loved him. He'd loved Itachi. But he'd killed Itachi. What was he going to do?
He was going to make it up to the world...
No, that was silly. That was insane. How can somebody atone for killing someone they love? Surely that must be the worst thing a human can do.
He glanced at the dead body of the woman, Hikari. The girl must have loved her, very much, and if what the girl had said was true, Hikari had loved her too. Like an older sibling loves a younger one.
Like Itachi had loved Sasuke.
Well, maybe it was Sasuke's turn to protect someone else. And then he'd go on with life.
Easy.
"Yes," he said. "If you can keep up."
She nodded vigorously. "But can we bury Hikari first?"
Sasuke had left the body of Itachi where it had fallen. There was no immediate danger... he supposed he could make allowances just once.
"Provided that I can bury my brother as well," he said.
"I'll help dig."
And thus began their journey together- they couldn't find a place far enough from the battlefield to escape the smell of blood and sweat and death, so they picked a small clearing just inside the forest. They dug until the sun cast a deep shadow across everything and the forest was lit with an orangey glow that reminded Sasuke of sticky warm summer evenings spent alone in the cold Uchiha compound because of the actions of the very person he was burying.
She didn't talk, and neither did Sasuke, until, "I think this is deep enough."
She nodded, and they put the bodies in the ground with very little ceremony, just a simple sealing used by the Uchiha when they existed to lock away the secrets of the bloodline that Sasuke was now the sole possessor of, and shoving the dirt back over them. Or rather, Sasuke did the dirt shoving, and the girl ran off to find two large stones to mark the graves. She couldn't carry them, so Sasuke, exhausted completely, carried the stones himself. It was the final bit of his strength, and he sank down onto the ground afterwards.
"Are you okay?" the girl asked.
"What's your name?"
He didn't really feel like getting to know her- he just didn't want her to die. But he wasn't going to call her "the girl", since that seemed sort of stupid and pointless and like something Orochimaru would do.
"Hotaru," she said, smiling. "Hikari was there when I was born. She named me."
Sasuke nodded. "Firefly... It's a nice name," he added, because he'd had a particularly nice cousin by that name.
Before Itachi had killed her.
"I think so, too."
Sasuke took out Kusanagi and scrawled Itachi on one stone, and then gestured at the other stone. "Write your sister's name on it."
"I don't have pretty kanji like yours," she said bashfully.
...It was annoying. She had better not start up any of that stuff. Sasuke was not going to have any of it.
"Just write it."
She was obviously put off by his rude demeanor, which was just fine by him. His only object was to bring her to safety, and then he'd get on with his life and she'd live hers. It didn't really matter how she felt about him- it was better if she hated him anyway.
He glanced at her up and down while she was scratching into the stone. She was short but slender, like himself, though sort of skinny and frail, and she had a tan but also dark hair and dark eyes and features that were straight and even and sort of similar to his. She might be able to pass as his sister.
When she was done, he announced, "We're leaving now."
Her eyes widened.
"I will not hear any arguments."
"Where are you going to take me?"
Now he had to think.
"...There's a nice village, close to my hometown in the Fire Country," he said. "It should be a good place for you to go. I'll leave you there and keep going."
Her eyes were already wide, and now her lower lip started to push out.
"You're going to leave me?"
"I know a very nice couple there. They'll be happy to take you in."
"B-But-"
"I have things to do."
"Why are you even taking me, then?" she asked suspiciously.
"Because I can."
It was a better answer than "I have no idea", and since "just a whim" never seemed to be a popular one with the people he was doing favors for, he decided to try a new answer.
Well, she ended up biting her lip but it was an improvement on some of the other people's reactions. So he let it slide.
"It'll take us approximately two days to get there. We'll have to cross the border of the Sound Country into the Fire Country-"
"Where did you grow up, anyway?"
Sasuke hated to be interrupted.
He restrained his mouth from curling into an unpleasant expression.
"I grew up in Konohagakure," he said. "I suppose I should introduce myself- Call me Sasuke."
She gasped.
"Y- you're the Uchiha- everyone-"
"Yes. I am. Everyone talked about me. Get over it. As of right now, I'm not planning to hurt you. In fact, I'm planning to give you to some very nice people who want children but can't have any. So shut up, and follow me. It's only two days. If you do what I say, we'll get along."
She nodded.
"Yessir, Mr. Sasuke."
He'd promised himself he'd take her, no matter how irritating she was. And so they set off to find an inn for the night, and upon finding one they slept.
Goshdarnit, I need to stop these beginnings of stories...
But it's just so much fun... Dx
NO SASUKEXOC. NOBODY WILL END UP WITH HOTARU. SASUKE WILL EITHER END UP WITH ONE OF THE KONOHA 12 OR NOT WITH ANYONE AT ALL. I PROMISE.