Title: Broken

Author: SBX

Fandom: Naruto

Pairing: implied YonIta and SasuNaru

Rating: PG-13

Archive: To Fanfiction(dot)Net and eventually my website. If you'd like to archive it, just tell me where it's going to end up.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto

Warnings: Alternate universe, implied yaoi, suicide, angst, character-death

Notes: The idea popped into my head a few weeks ago in my Economics class. I wrote the first paragraph, and then forgot about it until after I had finished reading the book As I lay Dying by William Faulkner. It was a weird book, but the writing style inspired me to finish this. This story is a stream-of-consciousness monologue from Sasuke's point of view. It's basically what he's thinking. It might be a bit difficult to follow (I had trouble following it), so you might have to read it more than once. I've never written anything so psychologically based before and I'm really proud of how it turned out, even if I did kind of freak myself out while writing it. Should I be worried that something this twisted can come out of my mind so easily?

When Itachi killed himself everybody was surprised. Everybody but me. Everybody was surprised by the written confession that he left on the kitchen table. Everybody but me. I think some people had suspected he had done it. Kakashi, Arashi-san, and Kisame. The three people who were closest to him. They probably saw his crime coming ages before he committed it.

The suicide threw them for a loop, though. He always seemed too strong to do something like that. He himself always said that suicide was the coward's way out. I never believed him. I saw it coming, all of it, before Itachi even thought of doing it.

Itachi was broken. He was broken before I was even born. Father broke him. Not with fists, but with words. Itachi was the best, but he still wasn't good enough for Father.

Itachi said that he did everything for himself and not for others. Not for Father or Mother or me. He lied. He did everything for someone else. Everything he did helped someone else in some way. I think he was incapable of thinking only of himself. He was a "big picture" person and saw himself as just a little part of the picture.

Itachi was broken. He was broken and he didn't know how to fix himself. He turned on the cause thinking that would cure the symptoms. He turned on Father because Father was the one who broke him. I remember hearing them fighting at night. I never slept on those nights, thinking that this was it, this was when it ended, when it all finally ended. Every. Single. Time. And I felt ashamed by the disappointment I felt when nothing happened. They are my father and brother and I shouldn't want either of them to be harmed.

Finally, I think he got desperate to fix himself. Get rid of the cause, get rid of the symptoms. That's why he set the fire. Father and Mother never got out. I think that broke him more. Itachi wanted Father to die, not Mother. Mother had never hurt him. She had tried to help fix him. Itachi felt guilty about her. He didn't feel anything about Father but he felt guilty about her.

The guilt broke him more. Nobody ever discovered it was him that set the fire. They didn't think that Itachi, who was smart, strong, and perfect, could do something like that. I think this frustrated him and made him more desperate. I think he wanted to be caught, to be punished and maybe then he'd finally be fixed. But nobody ever accused him.

Even those that knew he did it never questioned him. I think they thought they were protecting him. Kakashi and Kisame kept silent out of some weird form of friendship. Itachi didn't like them and they didn't like him but they were still his friends and were still loyal to him.

Arashi-san's relationship with him was even weirder. Sometimes I thought they were in love with each other. Itachi calmed Arashi-san's volatile temper and Arashi-san made Itachi smile. Itachi smiling was a rarer occurrence than most people realized. But there were times when they wouldn't speak to each other; couldn't even look at each other. During those times Kakashi would call them an old married couple. I wouldn't know. My parents never got close enough to be like that.

Arashi-san is one of those people that are always there, even if he's only in the background. He was a friend of Mother's since high school, but I always associated him with Itachi, even before they exchanged those three words. Arashi-san meant them and Itachi didn't, but he wanted to mean them and in a way he did. Just not to the extent that Arashi-san did.

It's like when Mother and Father said them. They tried to mean those words but they couldn't. They couldn't because they didn't feel them, but they pretended they did and that made everything okay. Everything was okay as long as they pretended it was and that the words meant something. It was okay.

It wasn't. It was not okay because they didn't feel the words and Itachi did but didn't and I'm afraid that when I say them to Naruto I don't mean them either. Naruto doesn't deserve empty words.

Not meaning the words and not being punished and simply not being fixed when he needed only broke Itachi more. The chips and cracks were there for the world to see, but nobody saw it because they didn't look. I saw it and I think Arashi-san saw it but he ignored it and if you ignore a problem then it's not there or it goes away and everything is okay.

Everything was not okay. Everything was wrong, all wrong, and I had to do something. I said something to Itachi, I can't even remember what, and watched him shatter. Outwardly he was exactly the same but inside he shattered into a million tiny pieces and there was no way to fix him now. He walked away from me, his insides in a million tiny pieces, and I didn't see him alive again after that.

I found him in the kitchen in a puddle of his own blood and the note on the kitchen table. He wasn't entirely dead yet but if I tried to save him now he'd hate me forever and that's the worst thing that could happen. So I didn't. I ignored his body and read the note. The handwriting was perfect, just like him, just like always.

In the note he confesses and calls himself a coward for killing himself. He himself always said that suicide was the coward's way out. I never believed him. I always believed that it took a certain amount of courage to face the unknown with such a black mark on one's soul. I wish I had it.

Arashi-san and Naruto and Sakura have done the best they can to hide the sharp objects in the house. All medication and weapons are safely locked away and I'm never left alone in a room for more than ten minutes. I see a shrink once a week to "talk about it" and "get it all out." All he gets out of me is a headache, though, and maybe nightmares. I have no trouble at all "talking about it." He doesn't like what I have to say.

None of them have to worry. I don't have my brother's courage. Because I'm broken now and there is no way I can fix myself. But maybe someone else can.

Further notes: Like in a previous Naruto AU fic I replaced Yondaime's name with one that is likely to be his given name. So, for anyone who didn't catch on at first, Arashi is Yondaime. The name came from the AU SasuNaru fanfic "Spartan Ninjas."

Like? Don't like? Feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think.