Sasuke

"Revenge"

The sky was dark, twilight, as a figure walked out of a cave. His blade was dripping a deep, red blood. You could hear it. Drip. Drip. Drip. Next to the cave was a small pond that gave the place a significant amount of mist, making it eerie and sort of unnerving. It was there that Sasuke Uchiha finally killed his brother, Itachi.

Sasuke stepped farther away from the mouth of the cave and his brother's now dead corpse. As he walked he wiped his blade clean on the grass. One he reached the pond he stopped and sat down.

'He is dead', thought Sasuke.

His goal for so, so long was now fulfilled, yet he didn't feel any better. The revenge to his brother left him hollow and without purpose, it didn't bring him true happiness. As he sat there he thought of his past, when he was the happiest, in Konoha.

'The people there cared for me, he thought with a mind lost in memories, 'it was even fun a lot of the time.'

Then his vision was clouded with the phantoms of the past. Kakashi's warning of the outcome of leaving on the path of revenge, Sakura trying to convince him to say right before he left, and his own fight against Naruto were few of the countless things racing through his head. Then he felt something he had never felt about his decision to leave the village, regret.

'I should've never left the village', he thought solemnly.

And there, sitting alone in the darkness, Sasuke's sharingan changed. It was a new version, only brought out when you feel completely overcome with regret of your past, a true hatred of your decisions. Sasuke closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he was in front of his thirteen year-old self, just after he had knocked out Sakura and just before he had left the village.

The face on the Sasuke of the past was one of pure shock.

Then Sasuke told himself of the past, "Do not leave this village. Killing and revenge is not the right path to take. Being here with your friends and the people who really care about you is what can make you happy."

The past Sasuke sighed, obviously this wasn't the first time he'd heard this speech tonight. Then Sasuke took out his sword faster than the eye could see and held it to the throat of his thirteen year old self.

"I know what you think of this, nobody knows what it's like. He murdered all my family, but I do know. I also know what it feels like to cut off all the ties to my home and how killing him feels like." Sasuke continued, "Forget about him, Sasuke. Stay here, he's not worth a little of your time and definitely not worth using your whole life to gain the power to kill him."

The young Sasuke, obviously over his shock by now thought on the words and said placidly, "would you kindly remove your sword from my throat?"

As the older Sasuke took his sword down and sheathed it the young Sasuke spoke again, "I see your point. You're telling me that it won't help me to focus my life on getting revenge for what Itachi's done to me and my family and that you are me from the future and know that the revenge brings no feelings of ease or happiness. So I will try to abandon my want to kill him", his tone saying that he accepted the future Sasuke's story and the conversation was now over.

As the thirteen year old Sasuke walked away, back toward the village, he picked up Sakura's limp body (from where he'd put when he had knocked her unconscious before) and lifted her gently into his arms. As he carried her back towards the village, he turned and got one last glance at himself (of the future) at the distance.

What he saw was his older self standing there with a slight smile on his face fading away into the wind.