Title: I Feel

Author: Rosekk2000

Rated: PG

Pairings: None

Summary: One of Konoha's darkest sons ponders how achieving his life long goal makes him feel. Will this straighten the path before him or twist it even more? Read it and see!

I heard a rumor once along time ago. It said that I was broken, empty, and hollow inside. That I didn't feel or couldn't not anything but hatred anyway. It said that hate blinded me, made me deaf and dumb to everything else. Hmmm… in retrospect I suppose that could very well be true, at least in some small measure. Or so I'm willing to imagine as I stand towering over the prone form of my long time enemy.

Still in death the sight of him stirs things within me, things I had thought long buried. The very things I'm not suppose to have. Feelings! Youthful joy and happiness, the almost agonizing rush of hero worship and unyielding trust. All crushed far to easily by the bitter taste of fear and ultimate betrayal. Childish things from my past taken away in one lethal twist of fate. I think its fair to say that betrayal changed me. Made trust a thing that couldn't be easily given if it could be given again at all in this lifetime.

That part of my life was followed by a constant crush of mixed emotions. Fear of his returning to finish the job he'd left undone, anger, and confusion caused by a massive lack of understanding. But mostly there was shame, shame for having been afraid to die, shame for the actions of another even though such things were well beyond the control of a small boy like myself. Of course I didn't know that then not really. Maybe I could have if I could have seen past the seemingly never ending pain my heart bore so readily from the loss I felt within. The loss of all the things I had so easily taken for granted. Things like the love of my parents. Imperfect in my youthful humanity I had failed to see how brightly that love had burned until it was ripped so cruelly from me. That loss left me alone, and scared… filled with such unthinking rage it made it necessary to lock certain parts of myself away from the world. So in the end I guess perhaps I really was broken. All empty and hollow inside just like the rumor had said.

I remember that it had been so very easy to let the pain and rage take over. And in no time at all both had combined and twisted into something more. Hatred… so raw, and pure, and oh so very freeing. The hate made me stronger, more driven even than I had been before only now it wasn't just to please someone else. Now this was for me and me alone. Born of that which now lived within my heart. Even then all those years ago I knew I had to harness it, the hatred that is. I had to focus it somehow or it would destroy me where my greatest enemy had not.

The choice was simply really. I had only to focus on him. The one that had stolen so very much from me and changed my life forever. That done the hatred grew strong and thrived like a thing alive, a great and terrible flower in the wasteland of my humanity. It had made it easy to not care about those around me. To push away any that would try to love me or that I might have loved in return. Not that I would have admitted that any had ever come close to winning even a piece of my heart. To admit such a thing would have opened the door to self doubt and made me weaker than I was in my rage. Weaker than I needed to be. I didn't need anyone else I was enough that's what I said time again… of course there was one that didn't believe the rumors about me… he said I cared to much. He said that was why I let the blond buffoon alive when it would have been wiser to kill him. Who knows maybe my master had been right back then maybe not either way it was a mistake that really hadn't cost me all that much and left me feeling nothing at all.

But this… what is happening now as I look down at my fallen enemy. Well it makes me wonder if perhaps all those others had been right all along. Those that claimed to want the best for me and had said time and again revenge was a bitter fruit that yielded no usable harvest for the soul. Perhaps that was more true than I cared to think… because now, here in this place amidst the carnage of a battle I had waited my entire life for I find myself looking at the final reward of that, the dark goal that had been my existence and I feel… Yes I feel! To be honest I would like to say nothing at all but that would be a lie now wouldn't it because a whirlpool of mixed emotions are swirling through me making me dizzy with their insane miscommunication.

Love danced to the forefront of my mind… love for the man that had taken everything away from me. Robbed me of my family and my innocent youth. Sadness and sorrow born of the very same kind of loss I had felt for my parents all those years ago. I don't see an enemy at my feet not anymore. No there is just my brother, the last of my kin and now without a doubt I am well and truly alone in the world. The empty hollow feeling was suppose to go away, vanish on the wind with the final achievement of my life long goal but no. There is no joy, no sense of fulfillment. Nothing but pain and sorrow flickering to life at the very center of my being. Fate had played cruel game with me as its pawn and I can not stand by for it… not like this. Somewhere along the line I must have missed something, some vital piece of the truth that made all of this a great big waste… something that held the truth that would set me free. I think perhaps the rumor was not true… not in the end because I definitely feel. I feel cheated and wronged. I feel alone, angry , and maybe just a little hollow and empty inside. I am Uchiha Sasuke last of my clan (in any way that really counts anyway) and I feel. And for that…well someone is just going to have to pay!