Disclaimer: Credit to Kishimoto Masashi and all. :D

I might continue this if I get the whim. I left the ending fairly open. We'll see.

Vengeance

Sasuke had never been unaware of the consequences of his choices. He had made the decision, long ago, to avenge his clan and kill his brother. It wasn't a one-dimensional decision. He did it because he wanted to preserve the pride of the clan, because he wanted to preserve his own pride, because he loved his family, and let's not forget the most important thing: Sasuke hated Itachi with every piece of flesh and bone inside him. The very fact that Itachi was alive made Sasuke physically ill.

So many times, Sasuke had recieved the same lecture. "What are you going to do once you get what you want? What will be left after you achieve your revenge?" Words repeated themselves, forming on Kakashi's lips, on Tsunade's, on Naruto's. Sasuke didn't care. All of them missed the point. There would never be anything after revenge. There would never be an emptiness sinking into his gut with a lack of passion for anything alive or dead. Sasuke's life was his revenge. Without it, he had nothing.

Revenge gave him strength and revenge gave him determination. Sasuke had built years upon years of suffering for a single moment of triumph, and that moment was in his hands now.

Sasuke had escaped Orochimaru after learning what he had needed. Of course he had known that Orochimaru only wanted his body – he was no fool, after all. There were others more powerful than Orochimaru and better ways to attain power.

Sasuke's chest heaved, his blood-streaked fist clenching the neck of Itachi's robes. Sasuke had not come out of the fight unscathed, but his wounds meant nothing. This was it, the insurmountable wall. Sasuke now realized that Itachi had his weaknesses, weaknesses that a quick mind could exploit.

"You always had you damned pride." Sasuke hissed. His right hand shot forward to grasp Itachi's neck. His thumb pressed against Itachi's throat, his nail scraping a crescent of blood across the pale skin of his neck. "You thought you were God."

Itachi's eyes maintained that same false mystery, but his shallow breathing told another tale. "The mangekyou...?" He coughed. "You never..."

"I never killed my 'closest friend', you mean?" A hoarse noise that was supposed to be a laugh crawled out of Sasuke's throat. "You're a fool." Itachi was flung to the ground. Sasuke raised one foot and pressed his brother's left hand into the mossy forest soil.

"Killing the one closest to you is the shortcut to that power. I gained it the hard way: By killing my soul one piece at a time." Sasuke smiled. "And in the end, the mangekyou meant nothing. Your overuse of a jutsu that uses so much chakra was your own downfall."

Sasuke wanted to draw this out. Kicking, prodding, pressing, he squeezed the life out of Itachi's body. If this moment was going to be the climax of his life, then he would make it last.

Itachi's eyes were glassing over, but Sasuke would not let him go unconcious. Sasuke kneeled down until he looked his brother in the eye and gripped Itachi's now-ragged mane in one fist and pulled Itachi forcibly up by his hair. "Was I to be the stick that you measured yourself against? Was I to be another one of your tools?"

Itachi's gaze slid to meet Sasuke's. "How ironic." The older man whispered. "The sword I was forging has impaled me."

Rage pooled in Sasuke's stomach. He didn't want it to be ironic. He wanted Itachi to submit to him, to beg, to cry, to plead for mercy. He wanted to make Itachi hurt like he had.

"And now I'm going to kill you, you fucking traitor." Sasuke's grip on Itachi's neck tightened just a notch. "And I'm going to make you scream before you die."

Itachi's fingers twitched, but he said nothing.

Something had not only flipped Sasuke's 'rage' switch on, it was madly yanking it back and forth, sending him into waves of hot and cold. He wanted a response, not this silence. He wanted something to come out of Itachi and invade him and give him a reason to be so full of anger. He could hear a voice reapeating the same words over and over again.

"I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." It was his own voice.

His grip tightened further and he heard Itachi choke. He loosened his hold quickly. He didn't want this to end, not yet.

"Tell me you hate me." Sasuke said.

Itachi's eyes were blank.

"Tell me you want me dead." Sasuke said.

Itachi looked away, not paying attention.

"Tell me I meant something to you!" Sasuke screamed, shaking Itachi back and forth like a limp doll.

Itachi's lips parted. "You mean nothing to me. You never have."

Paper ripped and glass shattered. Stone crumbled under its own weight. Sasuke's fingers dug into Itachi's flesh, into his eye socket, into his throat. He was screaming and screaming until he could feel blood in his throat, bubbling and boiling between his teeth and to drip from his mouth and mingle with the tears that were seeping into the cloth at his neck. He was screaming words that had now become synonymous with 'I hate you.'

"I love you, aniki. Why can't you understand that!"

Itachi's remaining eye widened for a single, almost imperceptable moment before rolling back into his head. The pulse beneath Sasuke's fingers slowed to a halt. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. His blood and Itachi's reeked in his nostrils.

Sasuke loved Itachi enough to kill him and he'd killed him enough to love him. His emotions twisted in on themselves and ate their own tails, spinning until the ends were the beginnings and the beginnings were the ends. His fingers wormed into flesh that was dead but still hot, as if struggling to find a soul that wasn't there and had, in fact, never been there in the first place.

This was the moment of his life were everything was supposed to have meaning, and yet suddenly it meant nothing at all, and it had never meant anything. Bloody fingers jerked through hair that he'd grown long like his brother's. Age had creased lines under his eyes that mirrored the empty socket under his left hand. He'd discarded the blue of the Uchiha in favor of the red of blood and the black of revenge. He'd thrown away everything that he had ever wanted and everything that he'd ever not wanted for good measure.

Before now, he'd planned to die at this point. Die like his clan and his family and his brother. Now death seemed as meaningless as everything else.

It took him a long time to get up again. He couldn't remember how long he'd lain there, embracing what was more a slab of flesh than a body.

Sasuke untied the cloak from around Itachi's shoulders and pulled it out from under the body. There was blood all over it and it was torn. Sasuke kind of like it that way. He then pried Akatsuki's ring from Itachi's stiffened finger.

You aren't dead, aniki, Sasuke said. But I am.