Brothers

A Sasuke-centered fic. Please, Sasuke-haters, give it a chance before you turn away in disgust. I know he's an emo bastard, but he has a right to be. I'll try not to have him whine in here, and also try to keep him true to his character. Good luck to me.

The title has a double-meaning: blood brothers and brothers in arms. So, in essence, this is an Itachi-angst, Naruto-friendship fic. Me, SasuNaru friendship? Whoa.

Warning: Possible character death. I don't know; I don't plan these things. And for those of you who read into things, there could be SasuNaru shonenai, though it's not intended. And there will be angst in here. ANGST. Maybe a smidge of emoness, but not if it can't be helped.

Disclaimer: The series Naruto and all of its characters do not belong to me. If it did, I'd stop making such ridiculous filler and catch up to the manga already.

Notes: I should never stay up till six a.m. when I have a ten o'clock class the next morning. NEVER. It does things like this.

-

It was a wasteland. An empty husk of what used to be a forest, given away by the skeletons of trees hanging near the edges of his vision. Uchiha Sasuke walked calmly, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his khaki shorts as he took in his surroundings and searched for some sign or faint hint of chakra to tell him he wasn't alone. Though he could sense nothing, Sasuke noted the uneasy feeling tight in his chest--he had survived all of his life by paying attention to that feeling, and he wasn't about to dismiss it just because he thought there was nothing around. Before him, the dark outline of a large dead tree loomed into his vision and the tightness burrowed deeper, to the pit of his stomach. Sasuke briefly felt nauseous.

It's a tree, Uchiha. A fucking tree. What's it going to do? Eat you?

It would have made him feel better if the damn thing didn't look like it could do just that. Its branches reached out to him like hunger-driven fingers and there was a hole in the center of the withered trunk that gaped like a wide mouth, sitting in wait for anyone fool enough to wander too close and get snatched up by those clawed branches and pulled into the dark maw. He shook his head sharply, scolding himself: You total moron! A tree, god dammit, a TREE! What are you, two years old? Well, the thing made him feel like he was just two years old, that was for sure. In fact, a small and childish part of him wouldn't be at all surprised if a nasty, slime-covered monster suddenly crawled out from the heart of the tree's depths… He scowled and stomped his feet deliberately to scare away those stupid thoughts as he marched over the root-infested dirt and stood at the dead tree's base, trying his hardest to glare at it in distaste and merely pulling off mild apprehension. Tch. He had been scared of this useless piece of bark? Not Uchiha Sasuke, thank you very much.

A sharp noise startled him from his self-berating and Sasuke peered up into the tangle of bare branches to see what had made that appalling cry. Some kind of bird? A raven to be exact: huge and silk black, its feathers gleaming slickly against the heavy mud-gray sky that served as background for this surreal place. The bird's beady red eyes pinned him to the spot; he couldn't shake the sudden feeling of being watched. But you ARE being watched. Somewhere else, someone else was watching him--he was sure of it--he just couldn't get his own eyes off the damned raven. And suddenly, in a flurry of wings and another grating cry, the huge black bird took off to the sky, the sound of its beating wings reverberating in the air around him and knocking him out of his paranoia. Sasuke tried to compose himself; the unsettling feeling in his chest had faded.

"What was that about?" he spoke aloud, his voice coming out small and broken in the vast empty space around him. It made him feel suddenly helpless and Sasuke whirled on his heel, intending to get the hell out of here before that bad feeling came back. If he was this damn jumpy over a bird, he could scarcely imagine if a person had walked out of that tree or something…

"I've been waiting for you, little brother."

All the years of loneliness and pain and silent, unanswered prayers suddenly came and swept away Sasuke's sanity in a rush of heated anger that rose from the pit of his stomach. It extended outward like a fire, licking hungrily at his insides and heating his skin as his wide eyes shifted from their deep black amber hue to the violent blood-red of the Sharingan. Orochimaru's power seal activated to his body's internal alarms and the heat within him intensified as the black markings snaked their way across his pale, slightly-sweating flesh. He had reacted to the spoken words faster than his brain itself had, and Sasuke's mind struggled--especially the slow, rational part that was screaming that this could just NOT be happening--to catch up with the rest of him. How! It can't be--! No. No it isn't. If I turn around, he'll be gone; if I turn around, I'll…wake up or something. Yes! I'll wake up! This bizarreness can only be a nightmare…

Slowly, Sasuke turned himself around to come face to face with his long-missing older brother, Uchiha Itachi. The only other survivor of the massacre that happened too long ago to count the years was standing in front of that gaping tree-mouth, his black and red Akatsuki robes hammering Sasuke's vision almost like a spoken insult. His left arm was still cocked at the elbow and settled out of the robe's sleeve, supported by the cloth belt tied about his waist, his hand dangling out lazily. And suddenly, it wasn't as stupid as it was insulting: he was insulting him. 'You're not even worth the effort of using both arms.' This thought fueled the rage that was welling up in him, making him choke on the bitter thoughts of sacrifice and pain and the years my god, the YEARSHe couldn't count them even if he wanted to; he was going blind with the sheer thought of it: He killed them. He killed them all, and left only me, for all those years. Years of training and perfecting and dreaming of the moment when I could bring justice to my fallen kin. HE KILLED THEM!

"ITACHI!" Sasuke screamed, shrieked, and lunged at his brother. The figure of the older Uchiha melted abruptly and Sasuke couldn't stop in time; he crashed face-first into the dark hole in the dead tree's trunk. Growling and sputtering, blinking almost stupidly in confusion, Sasuke turned to look for Itachi. The empty, bleak landscape met his searching eyes and he quickly understood--Itachi had tricked him again. Throwing back his head, Sasuke let out a cry that was just barely human. It was a combination of his rage, his sorrow, and his unwillingness to let the latest insult just idly go by: 'You're not even worth killing… I don't have time for you…Get out of my way…annoying.'

The last thought jarred him from his one-track hatred and the abruptness of the thought pattern extinguished the black curse markings as well as the power-draining Sharingan. Sasuke shook his head to clear it as he rose to his feet properly: "Did I…really sound like…that?" His thoughts had somehow stumbled onto Uzumaki Naruto, of all people. How he had insulted the other boy when they were younger: 'Get out of my way…annoying.' Had he really sounded that cold to him? So cold and uncaring? And for the first time in a very, very long time, Sasuke suddenly longed to be home again.

-

That's when he awoke, lying tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets, pieces of the white linen torn to shreds and clenched in his hands. Slowly, Uchiha Sasuke sat up, unraveling his fingers from the cloth and running them shakily through his unruly black spikes. It was a dream after all… And he was grimly content with the realization until his blurry eyes caught a small dark shape lying atop his windowsill. A feather. A black raven feather.

'I've been waiting for you, little brother.'

Shit.