As Good As Dead

By Uchiha Jin

You're dead. My hands are bloodied, my knees weak. One could say that I'm still in shock, for perhaps I am. I never expected you to die so quickly. In truth, I never expected you to die. I've told everyone who was willing to listen that I wanted revenge on you. I wanted your life, but even so, I thought you would always be there, alive, so I could continue aiming my hatred towards you. But you're not there anymore. I've killed you, and that has changed everything.

I've never really thought past the point of your death, all I knew is that I was somehow going to kill you. Somehow meaning slowly and painfully. I was going to torture you to the point where you would beg for death, but surprisingly, I killed you in one strike; A strike that you could have easily dodged. Why didn't you? I often ask myself that question. Why did you let me kill you? Were you already asking for death before I attacked? Or did you let me kill you, knowing that the thought of you dying so easily would slowly drive me insane?

Or is it just the thought of you dying that would drive me insane? I've been chasing after you for so long that the desire to kill you has become an major part of me. To kill you was what kept me going, it was why I trained so hard over the years and why I refused to die in battle. Waiting to kill you was like my soul, without it, I wouldn't be Uchiha Sasuke. But now that you're dead, who am I? I can't continue to train with the goal of killing a dead man, and I have no more reason to want to live. In a strange and twisted way, you were my life, and now that you're gone, my soul is as good as dead.

Or so I thought. It was only a week after your death that a certain blue-eyed blonde noticed a change in me, and like everyone else who noticed, he asked me what was wrong. But unlike everyone else, he asked already knowing the answer. I had no more reason to live. He laughed in my face, saying that I could be such a dumbass sometimes. To hear those words from him, that really says something. "If you have no more reason to live, then just make one," Those were the next words he spoke. He said it like it was the easiest thing in the world, like everyone just lives for the sake of living. He said it with such innocence.

Find a reason to live, huh?

That innocence.

I'll live to protect it.