Note: I couldn't help but notice that Sasuke's hate thing is really getting out of hand, and thus he's getting a lot of hate from people lately. Personally, though, as stupid and insane as he's getting, I think he's really quite an interesting character. Earlier in the series, I was pretty ambivalent about him, and when he ran out of Konoha I wanted to pound his skull in for being so stupid, but now his stupidity has come full loop, and, well... So now I like him as a character, I guess. :P And yeah, this might not fit in perfectly with the canon plot line/timeline, I don't know. I put lots of effort into this, so please R&R. :)
I was mostly inspired by Sasuke's fight with Danzo for this one, but I had ncfan's fic "Deserving" at the back of my mind, too. Go read it, it's good.
Summary: Sasuke's addiction has passed the point of no return.
Warnings: Angst. Blood. A curse word or two. I warn you, although it's in third person, the narration is almost as though it's in Sasuke's voice. Basically, notice the slight unreliable narrator.
Pairings: None.
Characters: Sasuke, Danzo, Karin, Madara, Itachi. But mostly Sasuke.
I own nothing of Naruto, including but not limited to the characters of the Narutoverse.
The night Sasuke murdered Danzo, he huddled by a sputtering fire and hugged his knees to his chest, a wide, bloody grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.
The night was much darker than usual for some reason; perhaps the moon had not yet risen, perhaps it was lost somewhere in the shadow of the earth, or perhaps Madara had managed to burn it to ashes in the past few hours. Sasuke didn't know, nor did he much care. The icy wind swept through the thick, shadowy trees around him, making the campfire hiss and crackle as it threatened to go out under the rush of darkness. The pinpoints of stars in the inky sky were barely visible through the dense canopy of the trees.
The sole light that lit Sasuke's field vision, the only light that mattered, really, was the reddish, flickering flame that painted his face with a hellish glow and cast dancing shadows around him that all but laughed with delight.
He licked his lips, tasting iron, and leaned forward a little to add another branch to the fire. It took a moment for the fire to take hold of the wood, before the flame leaped upwards, glowing hotter and brighter than ever. Sasuke stretched his jaw in a yawn, feeling the crackling of dried blood on his face, but didn't move to wipe it away.
He wasn't just basking in the warmth of the fire, after all, but the afterglow of enacting revenge for his clan and his brother.
"Sasuke! Help me, please!" He doesn't look at her, but she keeps staring and screaming and crying at him.
Lightning crackles and whistles about his fingers as he stares into Danzo's desperate, defiant eyes. What a fool.
"Karin, don't move." His face is determined, his mouth set in a straight line smudged with dust and drying blood, his eyebrows creased over his red-and-black eyes. She smiles in relief, and relaxes her death grip on Danzo's sleeve. But he has eyes only for Danzo, the object of his hatred that tortures him with every moment he continues to breathe. In the instant before he strikes his Chidori through Karin and into Danzo's weakening heart (just as a true, heartless, ninja should), Sasuke's lips pull into a triumphant smile.
Karin's eyes go wide and her mouth trembles with the hundreds of silent pleas and questions breaking from her lips.
She soon flops to the ground, the shrill clatter of her glasses against the stone somehow cutting through the moan of the wind. Danzo, however, is left standing, and Danzo is the only one Sasuke keeps his eyes on. He takes no notice as Karin's high-pitched voice chokes on his name for one last time.
The hatred in his chest eases, and victory roars with elation as fresh blood seeps from Danzo's mouth. At last, at last, his brother's pain can be avenged.
"Do you know what that means, Sasuke?"
Sasuke's eyes, drawn to the black hole in the man's mask, vainly struggle to see any hint of the expression on his face, some sign that Madara is lying, that it's all a lie, that this is all a nightmare, please! But the blank, impersonal mask hides any deception that might be written on his face.
"It means that to your brother, your life was more important than the safety of the entire village."
No, please no, please no, please no. Sasuke's blood boils over with dark, clamorous emotions in turmoil; fear, confusion, hatred, and anger stirring back to life, after he thought he'd ended it all. He thought it would all end when he succeeded in killing the last of his clan - when he succeeded in killing his brother. All he ever wanted, from that night half a lifetime ago, from that night when he saw his brother stand over the bodies of his parents, when he saw the blood of his family dripping off his brother's blade... all he ever wanted was to feel the satisfaction of slitting his brother's throat or torching his brother to a crisp or just kill him in some way!
"No! You're lying! SHUT UP!"
He is afraid, his whole body shakes with tremors and aches where ropes cut into his wrists and his shoulders. And he's so damn cold. The darkness of this room is threatening to swallow him whole, like some cold-blooded, starving snake that hasn't seen sunlight in years. Madara's mask stares back at him, and there is nothing to tell Sasuke that this man is lying about his brother's deeds, nothing to tell Sasuke that this man is telling him the truth that his whole stinking world was a lie from the start. He is afraid that everything he suffered for was all for the wrong reasons.
He is afraid that the elation that coursed through him when called upon his lightning to strike Itachi dead meant nothing, afraid that he, Sasuke, was now the evil one.
So when Madara tells him exactly who and what Sasuke can blame for his wretched pain and misguided deeds, he latches onto the words like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.
The thunderclouds gather over Sasuke's head, boiling and sparking with electricity as the wind picks up around them, sweeping through the black flames and crumbled stone of the battleground. Rain pours down in a solid, never-ceasing flood of water.
Sasuke stands tall on a pillar, swallowing the pain that's throbbing through every cell in his body, and he feels the beginnings of a grin pull at his lips. The burning of his hatred rises to a crescendo of rushing blood in his ears, and as he remembers the blood of his parents spreading in a dark pool by his feet, as he remembers the nightmares and sleepless nights were he'd shiver in the loneliness of his bedroom, crying where no one could see, as he looks down at the beaten, bloody face of his brother, he just starts to feel a glimmer of hope. Now, with this, he will win for sure.
With this, he will incinerate his brother and all the pain will go away. He perhaps won't laugh and revel in his victory, but he will definitely collapse to the ground and cry tears of relief, for the first time in his life. Tears of relief instead of tears of fear and desperate hatred.
"Die in a flash of lightning!" He knows Itachi cannot hear him, but it doesn't matter. Sasuke, at least, won't have to dream of his brother's blood soaking into his hands. It will be instantaneous and impersonal.
The lightning roars toward Itachi's bent figure, blowing the stone around him into a crater as a tower of blinding light flares back up into the sky, thrusting the clouds apart and screaming with vengeance.
But then...
Sasuke drags himself to his feet, and looks up. He sees red-tinted, flaming chakra burn against his retina, so intense that it's visible without the aid of the Sharingan.
"Please, no..."
The spinning, bloody hue of his brother's Sharingan are all he can see. They burn in Sasuke's eyes as he cries his sorrow and betrayal out in great streams of tears.
"It was to test myself."
"Why, nii-san? WHY?" Sasuke's screaming, clutching his fists to his heart as he squints his eyes shut. "WHY?" And the tears keep coming, rushing out of his eyes and leaving trails on his cheeks.
The streets echo with his pleas, until his voice is swallowed by the darkness and the blood and the bodies that are thrown everywhere until they cover everything. Sasuke drops to his knees, gripping his face and hair with his hands and praying with all his heart that this is all a lie, some awful, sick nightmare that came from God-knows-where. But his sobs start up with a fresh agony when he peels his palms from his cheeks and stares up into the cold, indifferent eyes of his brother, his caring, loving, irritating brother, and he is plunged into a true nightmare painted with red and black, where for hours he screams and screams as his relatives fall dead at his feet and his brother lifts a shining white sword...
"Foolish little brother, if you desire to kill me, you must hate me. Live in obscurity, cling to your pitiful life, and cultivate your hatred, so that one day, when you have the same eyes as mine, you can come find me."
And as Itachi turns away, glancing over his shoulder, Sasuke thinks he sees a tear slide down his brother's cheek.
No. His vision must be blurring with tears of his own.
A tiny, reluctant blossom of hate unfurls it's deadly petals in the depths of Sasuke's heart.
He wants to burn it away with memories of love, but in the cold, moon-washed night, with the image of his parents' bodies permanently stamped into his mind, and his brother's back turned and walking away from him, he finds it easier to nurse his tears in confusion and pain.
Besides, he loses consciousness soon enough.
Itachi has beat off all of Sasuke's trump cards and final, desperate back-up plans with the all-consuming fire of the Susano'o.
Sasuke's back is pressed against a piece of stone wall, he is utterly spent of chakra, and he's numb to the pain that he should be feeling, he's numb to the roughness of the stone, and he's numb to the heat of the flaring Susano'o as Itachi staggers toward him, blood dripping down his cheeks from his half-blinded eyes.
Sasuke is paralyzed, frozen, and helpless in front of his brother. A scream threatens to tear itself from his throat, but he's silent, trembling. He sees Itachi's bloodied lips part gently, he sees his brother murmur, gently, weakly, something he cannot hear. Itachi smiles. Sasuke trembles.
And then, Itachi's hand comes into his line of vision, the red chakra is flickering out of existence, and Itachi's hand floats upwards, as though on a breeze, or strung along by the pull of a puppeteer's thread, and the bloody fingers grope towards Sasuke's eye.
Sasuke flinches, squinting his eye shut tight, as though that will protect him from the evil intentions of his brother. He feels something cold and wet bump against his forehead. He opens his eyes. He hears a hushed, raspy whisper.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke. This is the last."
Itachi's fingers slip as he falls forward, trailing down Sasuke's face in a path of red. Itachi's body slumps against the wall and thuds to the ground.
Sasuke leans against the wall, unmoving. He glances down at his brother from the corner of his eye. Did I kill him? The idea doesn't bring the euphoric feelings that it did earlier. The burning pain in his chest feels no relief. All he feels now is empty, and he just wishes that Itachi had died more clearly by his hand, in the strike of lightning, in a ball of fire, anything but this. This doesn't feel like a victory. He slides to the ground, feet sticking out in front of him, and he stares at his brother's unmoving body blankly. The wind howls shrilly through the rocks as the rain starts to pour down again.
This isn't how he expected revenge to feel.
He's burned out, the victorious relief is gone, and all he feels is cold emptiness and unquenched hatred.
"It was the elders of the Leaf that ordered Itachi to slay his own clan. Itachi just wanted to protect you."
Sasuke feels the familiar chill of clammy hatred reawaken and grip at his heart, and he's relieved. He swallows, throat practically shrieking for the blood of those who have made him suffer. Made Itachi suffer.And now he knows for sure, that once he kills them all, kills every last one of them, he will finally, finally, be at peace. He won't even have to struggle with the idea of killing someone he used to love, he won't even have to delude himself that he doesn't love them. The sweet, gentle purring of hatred spreads through his blood and comforts his tattered soul, it shows him a clear path of revenge that he's quite familiar with walking.
His face closes up and he stares at his knees, eyes half-lidded as Madara cuts the ropes away from him.
He feels the yearning, the deep, painful throbbing that can only be sated and cleared once every last one of them is dead. Once he kills them all, Sasuke knows he will finally be at peace. The short-lived high of striking down his brother will be nothing compared to the satisfaction of destroying the rest of them, of standing over their bodies and glaring into their deluded eyes as they desperately suck down their last breaths. His cold-blooded fire, his lightning, will strike through their hearts and destroy them.
Then, he will be at peace.
Danzo staggers away from his killer, fleeing with the delusion of a man half-crazed and half-dead.
Sasuke is walking on clouds of euphoria, his eyes wide and his mouth pulled into a ghastly smile as he follows his prey, stepping confidently along the path of bloody footsteps left by the dead man walking.
"Brother," whispers Sasuke to himself, in a prayer to send off Danzo's life, "One down... for now."
When Danzo blows himself up in a last-ditch attempt to take Sasuke down with him, Sasuke flits away, settling down at a safe distance and watching the man vanish in a haze of darkness.
Sasuke's heart is glowing with bliss, the cold, burning, desperate rage that he felt in the fight to kill has all but receded. He smiles the smile of a child presented with a heaping scoop of ice cream, and rests his chin on the heel of his hand as he watches the last of Danzo's self-destructive jutsu flicker away. He is ecstatic, burning with the victory and the justice he's inflicted, and the light of his vengeance soothes the chilling hate until it's hardly noticeable.
The midday sun is warming everything around him, drying the caked blood and heating up his dark hair.
Sasuke fed more branches into the fire, smiling faintly as the flame jumped and crackled with heat.
But the dark forest around him suddenly roared with a torrent of wind, and an enormous gust flew through the clearing and snuffed out the fire until only a few weak embers were left. Sasuke frowned and hugged himself, rubbing his arms vigorously at the sudden chill, and pressed himself against he rough bark of the tree behind at his back. The wind tore around and through him. The fire was but a few fading embers, the moon was gone, and the stars were invisible through the thick leaves.
Suddenly, Sasuke felt very much alone.
The thought of Danzo's death warmed him a little, but soon faded when he thought of just how many were left to kill. Hatred chilled his heart as he thought of the elders that signed off Itachi's mission sheet, as he thought of the Leaf ninja who laughed and cheered in the sunlight, never knowing the pain and suffering that his brother had gone through for them, for the sake of peace.
The last of the embers burned away.
He irritably scratched away the dried blood on his face until it was gone, and stood up so quickly that his sword got caught in a tree root and was tugged out of his belt. Snarling, he bent over and picked it up, thinking of the blood of his parents, the tears of his brother, the continuous mental trauma of the years passed. He gripped the sheath in his hand so tightly his knuckles would've appeared white if there had been any light to shine on them, and the hatred clawed and screamed its thirst from deep within his ribcage until it threatened to suffocate him. His eyes spun red and he turned and walked on into the night, to find the blood that would sate his suffering.
His addiction has passed the point of no return.