(A/N: I'm posting this one is that I'm thinking about entering this in a fanfic contest, so any feedback will be GREATLY appreciated (and by feedback, I mean constructive critisicm, not flames). Also, opinions on the rating and genres of the story will be welcomed.
As it is, this is supposedly "futuristic", which I suppose it is, as it isn't set in another reality. Characters may or may not be in character, as I'm not too familiar with anything beyond chapter 26 of the manage/anime (yes I AM pathetic). I write based on what little I've read about other characters on the Internet (how reliable is that?), so OOC-ness is to be expected. Any feedback on how close/ far off the characters were will be taken into consideration. Also take into consideration that time does change people, so a little seeming OOC-ness is somewhat acceptable because the fic is futuristic.
Events before the story are considered, though not mentioned directly, and as a result, the history may be off. This is also a direct result of my limited viewing of the manga/anime.
The fic contains: character death, destruction, Naruto angsting, self-harm and all those other lovely things that go along with drama/angst/tragedy type fics.
Also, there is no intended romance in the fic. However, some of the events in the story line can be read into and interpreted as a romantic relationship, if the reader so desires to.
On another note, the plot has probably been done. I'm not quite sure, but if it has, I don't mean to "copy".
This fic is un-beta'd, though it has been read over by myself, and two other people. Any technical errors (grammar, spelling, etc.) that are perceived and brought to the attention of the author, via review, would be considered and used to help improve the fic.
If you have a question that you would like answered, please leave an e-mail address, or a way for me to contact you in order to answer your question. This fic is a one-shot, or stand alone, which means it will not be updated, so I will be unable to respond to your question, as ff.net now prohibits author's notes as a separate chapter.
Finally, this fanfic was originally based upon the lyrics to the song "Point to Prove", by Theory of a Deadman, hence the title.
On that note...
Disclaimer: "Naruto" and all related characters are the legal property of Masashi Kishimoto.
And now, without further adieu, the fanfiction. Enjoy and please take a moment to give me your opinions/comments/thoughts.)
"Point To Prove"
Naruto kicked a crumpled pop can and watched it roll about in the dust. The thing was rusting and full of holes - just like everything else around here. He sighed and looked up.
Dust whirled about the empty streets, like a twister. The dead whistle of the wind pushed the crumpled papers, the litter, the trash around the alleys. The sidewalks were cracked and broken, the worn cement falling off in chunks, into the desolate roads. The buildings were in much the same state of sad disrepair - the siding falling off, the roofs caving in, the wooden doors rotting, bricks falling out of their careful arrangement, smashing on the ground below.
Window panes were shattered, just like the dreams he'd held so long.
Only a few, select lights in the whole of the city buzzed and flickered, threatening to go out and leave him to the darkness.
The walls of all the buildings were covered in layer upon layer of graffiti.
The graffiti wasn't his fault. They had to believe him, they just had to.
None of this was his fault. He didn't do it.
After all, how could he? He hadn't been here in gods knew how long. He wasn't even supposed to be there now. He was a missing-nin, excommunicated from his home, his life. Konoha had been his home, but there was only one place he could call home now and that was Hell.
Konoha certainly could have passed for that, then and now.
In the past, the villagers had left him alone, and now, he'd gone and let himself be alone. It was probably better for him - he was a demon, after all, and demons didn't trust anyone. Demons didn't have friends. Demons didn't have families. They had enemies and the only one they could rely on was themselves.
Demons also didn't have dreams. Demons didn't become Hokages, no matter how powerful they were.
Demons were isolated and alone.
Alone, alone, and always all alone. His parents - had they died or had they just left him there to fend for himself? He wanted to believe that they wouldn't do that, wouldn't have left him to the rabid wolves they had called their neighbours.
The villagers - they really were rabid wolves, vicious and suspicious. But instead of using claws and teeth to pull him apart, they used something far deadlier.
Words.
Maybe his parents hadn't known, hadn't figured out that he'd be treated the way he was. Maybe they hadn't guessed that those vicious idiots would tear him apart, limb by limb, fragment by fragment with insults, and slander. No parent would have done that if they'd known - unless, they'd been dead. Some nagging part of his mind told him his parents had been just as cruel and hated him just as much as the villagers. That part told him they weren't dead, that they were still living peacefully somewhere. Never mind the emotional torment their own son was in.
The villagers, oh, how they hated him. And he hated himself too. After all, it must have been his fault they hated him. He must have done some inexorable thing, did some terrible wrong to them, something that they couldn't ever forgive, not even if they lived for eternity.
They left him all alone.
They didn't care how he cried, they didn't care how he howled inside, screaming for their attention, and screaming right down to his last breath, when he went silent inside. They were happy when he was gone, when he was silent on the outside. They couldn't hear him inside. They couldn't hear the wounded beat of his heart.
They didn't care that their words drove him to tears, drove him to insanity, even if he never showed it. Bright, plastic smile, face the world and he didn't have a care. Right behind that mask, right behind the eyes they said he displayed all his emotions in, he was breaking down and they still couldn't see.
They said he never cried. He had no more tears to cry, by the time they knew him, and he unleashed the coppery rivers of red as a substitute. His arms were lacerated, not from some outside battle, but from a battle on the inside. He was always fighting with himself.
They might have wanted the punishment, they might have wanted to see the bruises, but he inflicted them and he wanted to see them more than anybody else.
A physical pain to match the emotional one. Yet, the two could never be equal.
So, in dire need of attention, positive or otherwise, he got down on his knees and begged, and he begged and he begged. But he didn't beg in the traditional sense, oh no. He'd never stoop that low. He made them mad - he was good at infuriating them. He made them yell and scream at him and he made them hit him and he made them chase him, try to catch that trouble-making brat, Uzumaki. They never really caught him before he fell.
They paid attention to him then.
So, he played the fool for them, played the braggart, played the idiot. It was a game, it was all a game. He acted one way, he got ignored. He acted another, and he got attention. He got recognized. He earned a status. It was a game he had to play.
They took it one step further. They took the game too seriously.
They called him stupid, and they really, honestly believed he was the fool he always acted to be. They believed that was all he could ever amount to. Who was stupid then?
But no matter what he said, no matter what he did, they kept saying it. "Stupid, stupid, stupid", until even his mind began to echo their admonishment. But he couldn't turn back, not then, not ever, not now that he'd tasted the feel of being acknowledged, having attention lavished on you, being in the limelight, being the centre of attention.
He kept playing their game.
He played it differently, though, he played grudgingly, he played it with contempt, and while they believed he was an idiot, he was fooling them all.
He wasn't stupid at all, he wasn't blind. He was calculating, he was biding his time, waiting for them to fall into the trap of comfort, waiting for them to let down their guard, waiting for his power to increase, waiting for the right moment, waiting...
Always waiting.
And he waited, and maybe he waited just a little too long, but it didn't matter now. He knew why he'd held back though, he knew that he was waiting for something else as well.
He was waiting for a kind word. He was waiting for someone to be his friend.
And then...
He thought he'd found them. He thought he'd found a way to break through his cycle of despair and hatred. He thought he'd found friends. He thought he'd found solace in the world that had rejected him, and continued to reject him.
But then again, maybe he was just blind. Maybe he was really was stupid.
He trained with Team Seven. Somehow, he found himself warming to the idea of Sakura as just a friend and the idea of Sasuke as a rival, and maybe a little more than a comrade. And then there was Kakashi, who was his supposed 'mentor', and a guide and maybe something like a friend. Of course, there was Iruka, who was his friend too, and someone who he knew would look out for him - a kindred spirit of sorts.
And through them, he was connected to so many other people. He had met, he had influenced and he had touched so many other people and in a way, it was what he was looking for. It was something akin to acceptance. They stopped calling him stupid. They started to realize he wasn't dumb and he wasn't that bad.
Things were looking up, and though emotional scars would never heal for him, he felt that maybe it was worth getting out of bed, maybe it was worth seeing the sunrise, watching the sunset. Maybe it was worth living to see tomorrow.
Oh, and just when life was boring and mundane, and repetitive, he found he couldn't be happy with it and so he proceeded to mess it up.
They called him pathetic when he failed.
And even though they called him stupid, so many times that it seemed to be an insult that he was immune to, there was always somebody who could make it three thousand times worse than anything else that could ever be said.
Dark eyes peered out from that pallid face, framed by midnight hair. Those thin lips twisted up into a smirk of triumph, just ever so slightly, and the tone of that voice was so mocking, so biting that he couldn't ignore it. "Stupid" it taunted and he believed it.
Sasuke always knew how to do that to him.
Oh! If they wanted to prove he was a fool, they had done a good job!
They called him stupid and they insulted him until he thought he'd gone mad, until he thought his ears would bleed and fall off from all the abuse they received - yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly - by the minute, by the second.
Idiot, fool, dead-last, moron, stupid.
He hated them. He called them idiots behind their backs for believing he was stupid, when really, he was as clever, as smart - more clever, smarter than any one of them.
And then, they turned around and befriended him and he was too blind to see! Too goddamn blind! He never opened his eyes to see that their motives were false and that their truths were lies. Their sincerity was falsehood.
They turned their backs again and stabbed him in the back.
He'd never seen it coming.
They'd proved he really was a fool.
Oh, he wished they could have lived to see the sun rise again. He wished that they had lived to regret what they had done to him. Really, he did, deep down in the pit of his heart, in the very essence of his soul, he wished they were alive. But that was the game. Some survived, some did not. It was survival of the fittest, survival of the strongest.
"So...it's come down to this."
He smiled then, bitterly, with tears in his eyes. He was the strongest. And he'd proved it. He'd proved them wrong.
And he wished that they were there to comfort him, now that he was completely alone. Even if they weren't his friends, it would be some help to have someone by his side, someone human to soothe the demon raging inside him.
He wished...he wished he hadn't done it. The blood dripped off his hands, off his teeth, out of every pore in his skin. His tears were wrought of blood. He had no tears left to cry, and he had no blood left to shed. It wasn't his blood. It was theirs. All theirs. And while it should have still been in their veins, it was on him, it was on the dusty street, it was everywhere but where it belonged.
He wished that they hadn't drove him to such extremes. Maybe...maybe if not all of them had been the same, he could have borne it, could have held the demon at bay. Maybe he would have wanted to. He might have wanted to protect them a little more, keep them safe from himself.
But no, they judged him and they hated him before they knew him and then, when they did know him, they pretended to like him, until the point they felt it right to turn away and doom him. Leave him alone. They had always acted like he was alone, and he'd always felt he was alone in the crowd. Now he was just simply alone.
Alone. Alone from birth, alone through life, alone till death. That was the way it had to be.
Maybe...couldn't they have just tried to see past the demon? Couldn't they have seen the little boy, dying for some guidance, dying, dying...Dying for everything? And if they could, maybe he could have tried to keep them safe, to protect them. Maybe he could have tried to like them too.
Hatred only breeds more hatred.
He was dying too...
The place was death itself. The Grim Reaper whispered into the ears of the corpses strewn through the streets and walked amongst the dead like a shadow.
The wind whistled a grisly tune upon the village turned graveyard.
The corpses, with their faces ghastly pale, contrasted in blood and their blank eyes staring forever more into the black of the night sky, with their limbs and their heads severed from their bodies were a testament to the will of the oppressed.
And now, he was dying too.
He'd been dying since the day he was born. Dying mentally, decaying from their insults, rotting away under his own self-depreciation. Dying emotionally, starved for love and affection. Oh, the things a human would put himself through to obtain what they thought was acceptance, what they thought was love. Neither of those things existed. They were just false pretenses that everyone was under the influence of. If they believed there was love, then it was there.
Nothing existed.
He stumbled and swayed as he walked, but somehow, he managed to stay on his feet. He dragged his feet through the dust. His limbs felt dreadfully heavy. He felt dizzy and the world moved in slow motion about him, vague and hazy, like a dream. Or a nightmare.
And he paused suddenly, his eyes managing to focus on something clear in the world of haze and uncertainty. He was smiling still.
Sakura.
Ah, Sakura, his childhood crush. She had been brilliant, and beautiful. He couldn't help but think that death hadn't robbed her of her beauty. Her eyes, despite being glazed in pain, were still sharp with fear. Her blush hair spread all about her; blood bathed her pale cheeks.
Sakura had been his first love, and probably his last. She knew no sympathy, she knew nothing of anything. She'd crushed him daily, for so long, that he'd given up any hope he'd ever had about acquiring anything he wanted.
She was cruelty in its purest form.
He stumbled away.
He paused again, held fast by blank eyes - not blank from lack of emotion, but lack of colour. It seemed as though Hinata was staring at him, or even, right through him.
He felt a pang of pity, mostly because she hadn't deserved what she had got. She was painfully shy, and lacked the self-confidence she needed. Despite that, she was one of the few people who could not only stand him, but also liked him.
Feeling guilty, he got down on his knees and kissed her cheek. It was cold. "I'm sorry, Hinata," he whispered, then closed her eyes gently.
Wearily, he hauled himself back to his feet, resisting the urge to crawl. He would never crawl.
Next, he found Rock Lee.
It appeared Lee had gone down fighting, but to no avail. Lee had always been like that. He was determined, so determined it was almost scary, but his determination almost never won out.
Still, determination was a quality Naruto admired and related to. He had once been determined, almost to the point of being stubborn.
But those days were long gone and that Naruto was long dead.
He moved on.
The next person he came across was Shikamaru.
He'd once thought of Shikamaru as a friend, and maybe at one point, they had truly been friends. At some point, though, he had the lazy genius had fallen out. Shikamaru had accused him of changing, of becoming someone else.
In reality, it had been Shikamaru who had changed. It was all because of....
Ino. Naruto smirked down at her, blue eyes watching blue eyes. There had never been any love lost between the two.
Ino, boisterous, blonde Ino. He smirked some more and shook his head, before moving on once again.
He was starting to feel very tired. He felt as if he hadn't slept in eternity. His breath was short, and he found himself struggling for air enough to move, to think.
The haziness of the world around him increased tenfold.
He couldn't let go, not yet. There was still one more person he had to see before he gave up. He'd wasted too much time on the people he'd once known.
He passed by countless others - Kakashi, Iruka, Tsunade, Jiraiya, Neji, Tenten, Kiba - the list went on and on.
He smiled bitterly when he passed them. He'd won their stupid game. He'd proved his point.
He left footprints in the dust, leaving his mark for the lonely sky to see.
He was still smilingly, bitterly, as he slumped against the building wall, the blood that caked his entire body, matted in his hair, streaking the graffiti behind him crimson red.
He looked down at the corpse to his left, and his bitter smile became a bitter smirk. "Looks like I beat you," he whispered.
He started when the body coughed and glared up at him with darkening eyes. Blood dribbled from between pallid lips, and the voice was there, though faint, as taunting as ever.
"No, you didn't. Idiot."
He smiled, truly smiled and for once in his life, Sasuke did too. It was the last time too, for he expired then, drawing one last shuddery breath, then exhaling, as though he were sighing. And he was gone, and it was just Naruto. All alone. By himself.
He wasn't really every alone, however. In his mind, there were always the memories of a time when he'd felt happy, when he'd believed he'd had friends. He'd come to rely on those memories, drowning himself in them until he'd forgotten that things had changed and he'd grown up, grown apart from all the ones he'd once loved.
And there something else too. Something more sinister kept him company, in the back of his mind, hissing and snarling and winding itself about his thoughts, coiling and interwining with him, melding his consciousness with its own. The fox could turn any thought into something violent and gory. It also managed to make him want that violence to be reality, made him lust forthe blood. It imposed its own whims onto his own.
It was the source of his bane and though it never really comforted him (it didn't know how), it always picked him up, pulled him out from under his despair, when it felt the action befitted its own best interests.
It was his best friend, sometimes, and his worst enemy too. Sometimes, he wondered why they kept it under lock and key; wondered why he fought it. He wondered...
He wondered...
His mind was black now, and for once, he truly was alone, his thoughts and the fox's deserting him entirely. Everything seemed darker than it had before.
He forced his weakening limbs to reach down and gently, he closed Sasuke's eyes, unable to bear to see those haunting eyes open. He could stand the others - the shocked and horrified expression made him feel smug.
But Sasuke's eyes were just...blank.
Sasuke looked like he was asleep. He was still smiling and Naruto, faintly, hoped he was having a good dream. Naruto wondered if he'd wake up soon. He ran a hand through the blood-tangled mass of black hair and then he paused. And he paused for a long, long time to come.
His eyes fell closed.
None of those sleepers would be waking again.
~OWARII~
[A/N: Final plug for reviews: I'm considering the possiblity of entering this in a contest, so comments and critiscim will be greatly appreciated. Please help to improve the fanfic by commenting on technical errors, errors in writing either characters or errors in events alluded to (when commenting on the latter two, please bear in mind the fanfiction is considered futuristic and the genres selected).
Comments on themes, genres and rating of this fanfiction will also be given consideration.
If you have a question you would like answered, please give me some way of contacting you.
Thank you for taking the time to read and review this fanfic.]
As it is, this is supposedly "futuristic", which I suppose it is, as it isn't set in another reality. Characters may or may not be in character, as I'm not too familiar with anything beyond chapter 26 of the manage/anime (yes I AM pathetic). I write based on what little I've read about other characters on the Internet (how reliable is that?), so OOC-ness is to be expected. Any feedback on how close/ far off the characters were will be taken into consideration. Also take into consideration that time does change people, so a little seeming OOC-ness is somewhat acceptable because the fic is futuristic.
Events before the story are considered, though not mentioned directly, and as a result, the history may be off. This is also a direct result of my limited viewing of the manga/anime.
The fic contains: character death, destruction, Naruto angsting, self-harm and all those other lovely things that go along with drama/angst/tragedy type fics.
Also, there is no intended romance in the fic. However, some of the events in the story line can be read into and interpreted as a romantic relationship, if the reader so desires to.
On another note, the plot has probably been done. I'm not quite sure, but if it has, I don't mean to "copy".
This fic is un-beta'd, though it has been read over by myself, and two other people. Any technical errors (grammar, spelling, etc.) that are perceived and brought to the attention of the author, via review, would be considered and used to help improve the fic.
If you have a question that you would like answered, please leave an e-mail address, or a way for me to contact you in order to answer your question. This fic is a one-shot, or stand alone, which means it will not be updated, so I will be unable to respond to your question, as ff.net now prohibits author's notes as a separate chapter.
Finally, this fanfic was originally based upon the lyrics to the song "Point to Prove", by Theory of a Deadman, hence the title.
On that note...
Disclaimer: "Naruto" and all related characters are the legal property of Masashi Kishimoto.
And now, without further adieu, the fanfiction. Enjoy and please take a moment to give me your opinions/comments/thoughts.)
"Point To Prove"
Naruto kicked a crumpled pop can and watched it roll about in the dust. The thing was rusting and full of holes - just like everything else around here. He sighed and looked up.
Dust whirled about the empty streets, like a twister. The dead whistle of the wind pushed the crumpled papers, the litter, the trash around the alleys. The sidewalks were cracked and broken, the worn cement falling off in chunks, into the desolate roads. The buildings were in much the same state of sad disrepair - the siding falling off, the roofs caving in, the wooden doors rotting, bricks falling out of their careful arrangement, smashing on the ground below.
Window panes were shattered, just like the dreams he'd held so long.
Only a few, select lights in the whole of the city buzzed and flickered, threatening to go out and leave him to the darkness.
The walls of all the buildings were covered in layer upon layer of graffiti.
The graffiti wasn't his fault. They had to believe him, they just had to.
None of this was his fault. He didn't do it.
After all, how could he? He hadn't been here in gods knew how long. He wasn't even supposed to be there now. He was a missing-nin, excommunicated from his home, his life. Konoha had been his home, but there was only one place he could call home now and that was Hell.
Konoha certainly could have passed for that, then and now.
In the past, the villagers had left him alone, and now, he'd gone and let himself be alone. It was probably better for him - he was a demon, after all, and demons didn't trust anyone. Demons didn't have friends. Demons didn't have families. They had enemies and the only one they could rely on was themselves.
Demons also didn't have dreams. Demons didn't become Hokages, no matter how powerful they were.
Demons were isolated and alone.
Alone, alone, and always all alone. His parents - had they died or had they just left him there to fend for himself? He wanted to believe that they wouldn't do that, wouldn't have left him to the rabid wolves they had called their neighbours.
The villagers - they really were rabid wolves, vicious and suspicious. But instead of using claws and teeth to pull him apart, they used something far deadlier.
Words.
Maybe his parents hadn't known, hadn't figured out that he'd be treated the way he was. Maybe they hadn't guessed that those vicious idiots would tear him apart, limb by limb, fragment by fragment with insults, and slander. No parent would have done that if they'd known - unless, they'd been dead. Some nagging part of his mind told him his parents had been just as cruel and hated him just as much as the villagers. That part told him they weren't dead, that they were still living peacefully somewhere. Never mind the emotional torment their own son was in.
The villagers, oh, how they hated him. And he hated himself too. After all, it must have been his fault they hated him. He must have done some inexorable thing, did some terrible wrong to them, something that they couldn't ever forgive, not even if they lived for eternity.
They left him all alone.
They didn't care how he cried, they didn't care how he howled inside, screaming for their attention, and screaming right down to his last breath, when he went silent inside. They were happy when he was gone, when he was silent on the outside. They couldn't hear him inside. They couldn't hear the wounded beat of his heart.
They didn't care that their words drove him to tears, drove him to insanity, even if he never showed it. Bright, plastic smile, face the world and he didn't have a care. Right behind that mask, right behind the eyes they said he displayed all his emotions in, he was breaking down and they still couldn't see.
They said he never cried. He had no more tears to cry, by the time they knew him, and he unleashed the coppery rivers of red as a substitute. His arms were lacerated, not from some outside battle, but from a battle on the inside. He was always fighting with himself.
They might have wanted the punishment, they might have wanted to see the bruises, but he inflicted them and he wanted to see them more than anybody else.
A physical pain to match the emotional one. Yet, the two could never be equal.
So, in dire need of attention, positive or otherwise, he got down on his knees and begged, and he begged and he begged. But he didn't beg in the traditional sense, oh no. He'd never stoop that low. He made them mad - he was good at infuriating them. He made them yell and scream at him and he made them hit him and he made them chase him, try to catch that trouble-making brat, Uzumaki. They never really caught him before he fell.
They paid attention to him then.
So, he played the fool for them, played the braggart, played the idiot. It was a game, it was all a game. He acted one way, he got ignored. He acted another, and he got attention. He got recognized. He earned a status. It was a game he had to play.
They took it one step further. They took the game too seriously.
They called him stupid, and they really, honestly believed he was the fool he always acted to be. They believed that was all he could ever amount to. Who was stupid then?
But no matter what he said, no matter what he did, they kept saying it. "Stupid, stupid, stupid", until even his mind began to echo their admonishment. But he couldn't turn back, not then, not ever, not now that he'd tasted the feel of being acknowledged, having attention lavished on you, being in the limelight, being the centre of attention.
He kept playing their game.
He played it differently, though, he played grudgingly, he played it with contempt, and while they believed he was an idiot, he was fooling them all.
He wasn't stupid at all, he wasn't blind. He was calculating, he was biding his time, waiting for them to fall into the trap of comfort, waiting for them to let down their guard, waiting for his power to increase, waiting for the right moment, waiting...
Always waiting.
And he waited, and maybe he waited just a little too long, but it didn't matter now. He knew why he'd held back though, he knew that he was waiting for something else as well.
He was waiting for a kind word. He was waiting for someone to be his friend.
And then...
He thought he'd found them. He thought he'd found a way to break through his cycle of despair and hatred. He thought he'd found friends. He thought he'd found solace in the world that had rejected him, and continued to reject him.
But then again, maybe he was just blind. Maybe he was really was stupid.
He trained with Team Seven. Somehow, he found himself warming to the idea of Sakura as just a friend and the idea of Sasuke as a rival, and maybe a little more than a comrade. And then there was Kakashi, who was his supposed 'mentor', and a guide and maybe something like a friend. Of course, there was Iruka, who was his friend too, and someone who he knew would look out for him - a kindred spirit of sorts.
And through them, he was connected to so many other people. He had met, he had influenced and he had touched so many other people and in a way, it was what he was looking for. It was something akin to acceptance. They stopped calling him stupid. They started to realize he wasn't dumb and he wasn't that bad.
Things were looking up, and though emotional scars would never heal for him, he felt that maybe it was worth getting out of bed, maybe it was worth seeing the sunrise, watching the sunset. Maybe it was worth living to see tomorrow.
Oh, and just when life was boring and mundane, and repetitive, he found he couldn't be happy with it and so he proceeded to mess it up.
They called him pathetic when he failed.
And even though they called him stupid, so many times that it seemed to be an insult that he was immune to, there was always somebody who could make it three thousand times worse than anything else that could ever be said.
Dark eyes peered out from that pallid face, framed by midnight hair. Those thin lips twisted up into a smirk of triumph, just ever so slightly, and the tone of that voice was so mocking, so biting that he couldn't ignore it. "Stupid" it taunted and he believed it.
Sasuke always knew how to do that to him.
Oh! If they wanted to prove he was a fool, they had done a good job!
They called him stupid and they insulted him until he thought he'd gone mad, until he thought his ears would bleed and fall off from all the abuse they received - yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly - by the minute, by the second.
Idiot, fool, dead-last, moron, stupid.
He hated them. He called them idiots behind their backs for believing he was stupid, when really, he was as clever, as smart - more clever, smarter than any one of them.
And then, they turned around and befriended him and he was too blind to see! Too goddamn blind! He never opened his eyes to see that their motives were false and that their truths were lies. Their sincerity was falsehood.
They turned their backs again and stabbed him in the back.
He'd never seen it coming.
They'd proved he really was a fool.
Oh, he wished they could have lived to see the sun rise again. He wished that they had lived to regret what they had done to him. Really, he did, deep down in the pit of his heart, in the very essence of his soul, he wished they were alive. But that was the game. Some survived, some did not. It was survival of the fittest, survival of the strongest.
"So...it's come down to this."
He smiled then, bitterly, with tears in his eyes. He was the strongest. And he'd proved it. He'd proved them wrong.
And he wished that they were there to comfort him, now that he was completely alone. Even if they weren't his friends, it would be some help to have someone by his side, someone human to soothe the demon raging inside him.
He wished...he wished he hadn't done it. The blood dripped off his hands, off his teeth, out of every pore in his skin. His tears were wrought of blood. He had no tears left to cry, and he had no blood left to shed. It wasn't his blood. It was theirs. All theirs. And while it should have still been in their veins, it was on him, it was on the dusty street, it was everywhere but where it belonged.
He wished that they hadn't drove him to such extremes. Maybe...maybe if not all of them had been the same, he could have borne it, could have held the demon at bay. Maybe he would have wanted to. He might have wanted to protect them a little more, keep them safe from himself.
But no, they judged him and they hated him before they knew him and then, when they did know him, they pretended to like him, until the point they felt it right to turn away and doom him. Leave him alone. They had always acted like he was alone, and he'd always felt he was alone in the crowd. Now he was just simply alone.
Alone. Alone from birth, alone through life, alone till death. That was the way it had to be.
Maybe...couldn't they have just tried to see past the demon? Couldn't they have seen the little boy, dying for some guidance, dying, dying...Dying for everything? And if they could, maybe he could have tried to keep them safe, to protect them. Maybe he could have tried to like them too.
Hatred only breeds more hatred.
He was dying too...
The place was death itself. The Grim Reaper whispered into the ears of the corpses strewn through the streets and walked amongst the dead like a shadow.
The wind whistled a grisly tune upon the village turned graveyard.
The corpses, with their faces ghastly pale, contrasted in blood and their blank eyes staring forever more into the black of the night sky, with their limbs and their heads severed from their bodies were a testament to the will of the oppressed.
And now, he was dying too.
He'd been dying since the day he was born. Dying mentally, decaying from their insults, rotting away under his own self-depreciation. Dying emotionally, starved for love and affection. Oh, the things a human would put himself through to obtain what they thought was acceptance, what they thought was love. Neither of those things existed. They were just false pretenses that everyone was under the influence of. If they believed there was love, then it was there.
Nothing existed.
He stumbled and swayed as he walked, but somehow, he managed to stay on his feet. He dragged his feet through the dust. His limbs felt dreadfully heavy. He felt dizzy and the world moved in slow motion about him, vague and hazy, like a dream. Or a nightmare.
And he paused suddenly, his eyes managing to focus on something clear in the world of haze and uncertainty. He was smiling still.
Sakura.
Ah, Sakura, his childhood crush. She had been brilliant, and beautiful. He couldn't help but think that death hadn't robbed her of her beauty. Her eyes, despite being glazed in pain, were still sharp with fear. Her blush hair spread all about her; blood bathed her pale cheeks.
Sakura had been his first love, and probably his last. She knew no sympathy, she knew nothing of anything. She'd crushed him daily, for so long, that he'd given up any hope he'd ever had about acquiring anything he wanted.
She was cruelty in its purest form.
He stumbled away.
He paused again, held fast by blank eyes - not blank from lack of emotion, but lack of colour. It seemed as though Hinata was staring at him, or even, right through him.
He felt a pang of pity, mostly because she hadn't deserved what she had got. She was painfully shy, and lacked the self-confidence she needed. Despite that, she was one of the few people who could not only stand him, but also liked him.
Feeling guilty, he got down on his knees and kissed her cheek. It was cold. "I'm sorry, Hinata," he whispered, then closed her eyes gently.
Wearily, he hauled himself back to his feet, resisting the urge to crawl. He would never crawl.
Next, he found Rock Lee.
It appeared Lee had gone down fighting, but to no avail. Lee had always been like that. He was determined, so determined it was almost scary, but his determination almost never won out.
Still, determination was a quality Naruto admired and related to. He had once been determined, almost to the point of being stubborn.
But those days were long gone and that Naruto was long dead.
He moved on.
The next person he came across was Shikamaru.
He'd once thought of Shikamaru as a friend, and maybe at one point, they had truly been friends. At some point, though, he had the lazy genius had fallen out. Shikamaru had accused him of changing, of becoming someone else.
In reality, it had been Shikamaru who had changed. It was all because of....
Ino. Naruto smirked down at her, blue eyes watching blue eyes. There had never been any love lost between the two.
Ino, boisterous, blonde Ino. He smirked some more and shook his head, before moving on once again.
He was starting to feel very tired. He felt as if he hadn't slept in eternity. His breath was short, and he found himself struggling for air enough to move, to think.
The haziness of the world around him increased tenfold.
He couldn't let go, not yet. There was still one more person he had to see before he gave up. He'd wasted too much time on the people he'd once known.
He passed by countless others - Kakashi, Iruka, Tsunade, Jiraiya, Neji, Tenten, Kiba - the list went on and on.
He smiled bitterly when he passed them. He'd won their stupid game. He'd proved his point.
He left footprints in the dust, leaving his mark for the lonely sky to see.
He was still smilingly, bitterly, as he slumped against the building wall, the blood that caked his entire body, matted in his hair, streaking the graffiti behind him crimson red.
He looked down at the corpse to his left, and his bitter smile became a bitter smirk. "Looks like I beat you," he whispered.
He started when the body coughed and glared up at him with darkening eyes. Blood dribbled from between pallid lips, and the voice was there, though faint, as taunting as ever.
"No, you didn't. Idiot."
He smiled, truly smiled and for once in his life, Sasuke did too. It was the last time too, for he expired then, drawing one last shuddery breath, then exhaling, as though he were sighing. And he was gone, and it was just Naruto. All alone. By himself.
He wasn't really every alone, however. In his mind, there were always the memories of a time when he'd felt happy, when he'd believed he'd had friends. He'd come to rely on those memories, drowning himself in them until he'd forgotten that things had changed and he'd grown up, grown apart from all the ones he'd once loved.
And there something else too. Something more sinister kept him company, in the back of his mind, hissing and snarling and winding itself about his thoughts, coiling and interwining with him, melding his consciousness with its own. The fox could turn any thought into something violent and gory. It also managed to make him want that violence to be reality, made him lust forthe blood. It imposed its own whims onto his own.
It was the source of his bane and though it never really comforted him (it didn't know how), it always picked him up, pulled him out from under his despair, when it felt the action befitted its own best interests.
It was his best friend, sometimes, and his worst enemy too. Sometimes, he wondered why they kept it under lock and key; wondered why he fought it. He wondered...
He wondered...
His mind was black now, and for once, he truly was alone, his thoughts and the fox's deserting him entirely. Everything seemed darker than it had before.
He forced his weakening limbs to reach down and gently, he closed Sasuke's eyes, unable to bear to see those haunting eyes open. He could stand the others - the shocked and horrified expression made him feel smug.
But Sasuke's eyes were just...blank.
Sasuke looked like he was asleep. He was still smiling and Naruto, faintly, hoped he was having a good dream. Naruto wondered if he'd wake up soon. He ran a hand through the blood-tangled mass of black hair and then he paused. And he paused for a long, long time to come.
His eyes fell closed.
None of those sleepers would be waking again.
~OWARII~
[A/N: Final plug for reviews: I'm considering the possiblity of entering this in a contest, so comments and critiscim will be greatly appreciated. Please help to improve the fanfic by commenting on technical errors, errors in writing either characters or errors in events alluded to (when commenting on the latter two, please bear in mind the fanfiction is considered futuristic and the genres selected).
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