Running, running further and further from.. what, exactly? His breath was haggard in his chest, as if he fought the air simply to breathe. He felt like he was drowning, even though he could plainly see the fog that left his pale lips. His sandals crunched through the snow, and he threw his hands in front of him, trampling through foliage with feverish intensity and thrusting aside the vegetation that obtruded his path as if his very life depended on it.

He had started out walking. Oh, how he walked before the fear set in, before the results of his actions had sunk into his subconscious, burned itself into the insides of his eyelids. Itachi stumbled, staggering for a few paces before he leaned into a tree, slowly sliding down its rough bark until he sat on the snowed-over patch of grass. He heaved a choked cry and lowered his head.

The expression on his brother's face. The expression Sasuke had acquired, the pure terror on the boy's visage.. the terror of losing someone precious.. Why had he shown his brother that? Had there truly been no other way out-? Had such drastic measures needed to be taken-?! His little brother, his baby brother, his dear, sweet, innocent brother..

A strangled sob erupted from his chest, but it only just broke the surface of his façade. His stomach twisted, his lungs contorted, and that fierce, bubbling hatred rose within him. It drove him to his side, drove him to fiercely rise to his feet and yell at the heavens, letting out such a tortured, wretched noise that his crows fled from their branches with raucous, frightened cries.

And the raven was left alone.

His face, which had been turned skywards, now lowered, and his emotions flipped abruptly. Once again he could hardly find the strength to remain upright, immense, overflowing sorrow tugging at his heartstrings, dragging him to his knees a second time. He lay with his face pressed into the cold ground, arctic tears streaking down the sides of his face as the scene played itself over in his mind.

Kakashi Hatake's chidori, sparking and lively, just inches from striking him. His outstretched finger, irrevocably condemning his brother to do his bidding. The flash of shock on the white-haired male's face as he reached to clutch his side, where the still-intense electricity of Sasuke's chidori was beginning to fade, revealing thin fingers that shook in abhorrence.

"Fuck you!"

The shriek rang in his ears, and he clutched at his head, digging his nails in deep. With the phantasm scream only growing louder, his emotions were wrought out again, and he pounded the ground with both fists, rearing his head towards the sky.

"STOP!"

That one word he shouted over and over again until he thought he might cry with how hoarse his throat was.

"Stop…" He whispered, pleading with the clouds, the dismal sky of fog, the nothingness that surrounded him. "Please. Please just make it stop." His hands were curled into fists, and he shook with unrelenting misery that doused him in waves of sorrow. Itachi's head fell down, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. Uchiha did not cry.

Why did he always look up? He mutely asked himself, wrapping his arms around his sides and sinking into the ground. Body language governed that he was asking for divine intervention, and yet he knew he wouldn't do something so foolish as that. He didn't believe in Kami.

Why would the deity help him, even if it did exist? His was a disconsolate existence.

Unsavory.

Worthless.

Revolting.

He didn't deserve Kami's help.

His breath warmed the grass, but only by small fractions of a degree. The icy cold soon wormed its way through his cloak and his paper-thin skin, chilling his bones. That was all he could be these days, and he knew he was growing colder, not just physically, but mentally.

How long until he was the one driving chidori into his brother's side?

He imagined himself wrapped under so many layers of walls that he could hardly see what lay outside his mind. How, then, would he plead for help from the spiritless god, when his eyes could not pierce the fences of his own head? How would he see the future, when all he saw was.. himself?

In time he vaguely realized he had risen and been walking. His mind, he supposed, or part of it at the very least, had decided it was time to go. And so he walked, his thoughts slowly ebbing away from him. The air passed through his lungs vapidly, staying neither too long nor too short. And yet, somehow, each breath seemed shallow.

At length he found himself traversing across unfamiliar landscape. Wherever he had wandered, there was a large expanse of frozen lake, its reflection sullied by the thickness of the ice. The trees, on close inspection, were but a blur on its surface.

He stepped slowly onto its surface, hearing faint cracking. Was he.. planning on dying here? His hollow eyes fixed on the surface, questions slowly surfacing from the fog of his mind. Was he planning to walk into the middle of this lake, release the chakra that kept him atop its fragile surface and plunged into its chilling, dark depths? Was he going to close his eyes, let the dark, bubbling surface pass him by, and breathe in the murky water?

Wasn't that what he was doing now?

Did he not, day after day, walk into the thick of battle without discord? Did he not, every time a question was asked, loose only the words that would keep up his merciless image? Was his mind not fragile, just as the ice was-? And hadn't he plunged his head into the darkness that was death, night after night, allow its icy grip to control him, guide him to the depths of his subconscious so that he may escape the chaos that pervaded the surface-?

Was he not ice?

..he stepped away from the edge, turning towards the empty expanse of forest. Snow fell from tree branches, though not a sound was made. In each mound, he saw himself. In each ripple of wood, the patriarchal lines on his face lay, taunting him..

This.. is insanity.

Onyx eyes closed, and yet they remained open, as if coals had replaced the shrouds of his eyelids. He did not want to see. His hand rose, moving to his bare eyes. Chilled fingers pressed into the whites, unshaking, unflinching. He did not want to see. He did not want to see. He was running from himself.

He needed to see.

The hand fell to his side, hanging limp in stagnant air. He began to walk again. It no longer mattered if he ran. The only person he wanted to run from, he could not escape. The one person he abhorred more than anything..

..was himself.

Bleak, desolate landscape stretched on for miles, only one discernible contrast in the scene. But to that element, that contrast was not different at all.