The Decisions That He Made For Himself
Prologue
He thought about turning around and running the other way. He thought about changing his course and making a different fate for himself, but he refused to do so. Once he had made a decision, he never allowed himself to go back on it, even when he had regretted the choice he made before he had gotten too deep into it. This was both a weakness and a strength he supposed.
A few days before, he had finally allowed the thoughts to come and the memories to overtake him. All of his enemies were dead. He had slaughtered every single one, even those he had not intended to. So this was alright, it was ok to allow his mind to wander.
He thought about all of the things he had done over the years and decided that he only regretted a small fraction of them. It was true that he regretted the actual action of leaving in the first place but did not regret the reason why.
He regretted doing it all alone, but as he reminded himself, it was a decision that he had made and it could not be undone. He felt regret in leaving everything he had ever known behind, but it was necessary whether he chose it for himself or not. This was a path he had to take on his own.
He regretted causing terror to others, but this too was also necessary to reach his ultimate goal and they were in his way. He regretted spilling the blood from the two other remaining family members. It was a waste of noble blood to allow it to soak into the earth as he had done, but he did not regret extinguishing those particular lives and personalities however. The world would not mourn them. No, he did mourn them. He mourned one of the two.
He did not regret killing Uchiha Itatchi at the time. It was what he had lived and trained and breathed for most of his life. It was something he had wanted so badly that it urged him to give up all of those things he had thought about seconds before. He had given up having a normal life for the sake of destroying his brother. He did not regret killing the other man because he knew it was correct and it was another one of those necessary things in life. Later he did regret killing the man that was once his beloved brother, though. That man and the one that murdered his family were two different beings in one body to him.
When the truth was told, it hit him hard. He lost his mind and his problem solving skills. He lost his grasp on morality and everything else in the world was dead to him. The blood flowed from anything with a pulse in his way and he did the bidding of the one that had told him the truth, like a dog he followed behind.
When reality faded back into his mind he became a stray. He bit his master's hand and drew as much of the red liquid as he could. He drained him dry and buried the corpse in the earth from where he knew it could never be reanimated. And so ended the life of the second to last Uchiha.
Now he truly was alone. He was the last of an old and prestigious clan and he found that maybe it was for the best. He did not think children in the future would make this better. Nothing could make it better. It was a cracked and chipped porcelain cup that was beautiful for its imperfections. It was not to be mended.
He moved on inside his head and for the first time in a long time he thought about those particular things that he had left behind years ago and decided that he craved them. He needed them.
He needed her unfaltering praise and the way her mind could think of the solution she had read from scrolls or the class room. She could heal now, he remembered. She would be useful. He did not miss her personality in particular, but he missed what she had once offered him. He missed the utter devotion. He did not want her but he wanted her to adore him. He wanted anyone to adore him, but there was no one out here left that would want him.
He missed the fatherly tone, the know it all voice. He wanted the hand on his head to pet him like a treasure that was to be proud of. He wanted that visible brown eye to approve of him once more. He needed the riddled advice and the backwards compliments to bring him back down to earth. He needed to be pulled and roped in again.
He needed to be taught a lesson, a real one with chakra control exercises and memorized hand signs. He needed someone to look up to because right now he was as high as he could go and this scared him. He needed something or someone to be planted above him so that he could not float up into the sky with nothing below him to tether him to this life. He wanted to be scolded because he knew it was what he deserved.
He missed how everything was made into a challenge with him, how everything was a competition. He missed feeling like he was becoming stronger because of him always trying to outdo him. He wanted that rivalry back. He wanted to once again have all of his moves watched by those blue eyes and he wanted the other body to try to match him and fail mostly, but sometimes succeed. He missed that sense of devotion as well.
He missed the verbal fights from this one too. He missed the way his body felt like jumping under the skin of the other as the loud and wide mouth grew into an animalistic grin. He wanted that twisted smile to appear again and he wanted it just for him. He missed the way his fingers twitched and his body ached in a painful and agonizing way to reach out and offer some sort of affection to the only real friend that he had once had. He wanted the blue eyes on him and the fights to pick up where they had left off.
He wanted all of these things back but then thought better of it. He asked himself how he could want something that was impossible to achieve at this point. He had slipped out the back and kept running and running until there was nowhere else to go. They pursued him. He pursued him for years and had finally stopped. It was too late to want to be caught now. Did it not mean that he was no longer wanted now that the chase had ended? He decided that he wanted to be desired again and perhaps allow himself to feel that same sense of want in return.
He was ready to die. Of course he did not truly want to leave this world, the purpose of every living thing was to cling to life and avoid death, but he supposed that he was ready when he finally faced it. There was nothing left for him to do and there were so many things that he wished he could undo but could not, because he had chosen the actions for himself. He decided that he would be unafraid when the time came. Then he sighed.
He was reminded that there was nothing else left for him to do in this world. He could not go back to living a normal life after this and he was too old to start over again. He would be nineteen this year and it would not do. He had lost so much time. No, he had given up so much time. There would be no new bonds created, he could not bare it after having to sever the only one that truly meant something to him. And a life without bonds was not worth living.
He decided that maybe it was best that he ended his successful but lonely life soon before he was forced to spend more time wandering alone without a purpose or a comrade.
Comrades and friends were something he had once had. Well at least one anyway. He had had one that he considered his friend and a thousand that considered him theirs.
He shook his head. Thinking about him earlier had done this to him. It had made him continue to bring him up in other thoughts until his head was only filled with him. He allowed himself to stop pushing the thoughts and feelings away. If he was going to die soon, he wanted to die with nothing in his mind chained back, he wanted to be free.
From the beginning he had always pushed the emotions aside and refused to allow himself to feel them. He had ignored them in attempt to forget them, hoping they would later fade away and wither until they died as a pile of ashes and dirt in the back of his mind. This time he brought them to the front of his conscious and for the first time indulged himself in the way they ached and entwined themselves around his organs.
He allowed himself to feel. He admitted to himself earlier that he had missed him, but this time he allowed himself to truly miss him. He mourned the loss of the bond and the trust. He mourned the companionship and the deep looks that the other gave him at times when he thought he would go undiscovered. He thought on those looks and felt his heart speed up.
Deep within him from the moment he saw him in the playground, he knew that he was in love. He was in love with another boy. At first it was not love, as most crushes tend not to be, it was a deep infatuation. He would watch him from the corner of his eye. He would think about asking the other to play with him. He would fight with himself when he did not.
The stranger on the playground became a classmate and a teammate. The infatuation grew into something much more tender and harsher. He made a point to avoid him as much as possible. He wanted the feelings to disappear. He was meant only to live for finding revenge for his clan and nothing more.
It wasn't that his interest was a boy really, it wasn't something that mattered. It never mattered. What mattered was that this other person that he begged himself not to watch as closely as he did was his rival. He was better than the boy and he could not ever settle for any who were less than himself. He needed someone strong.
His thoughts shifted to modern times. This other man was now strong and he had proven his worth. He was a war hero and perhaps the strongest willed ninja alive at the moment. He was worthy of the last Uchiha.
It didn't matter. He would die soon and it would never happen. He did not want Sasuke anymore, he had stopped chasing.
He remembered the promise that came out of that loud and big mouth and hugged himself. He had promised to bring him back no matter what, so why did he give up in the moment that he found himself not minding being caught?
He thought of the pain he had inflicted and made another nonrefundable decision a second later. He would help the promise to be kept. He would allow the other man to see him within the village again. He hoped that it inflicted happiness and a sense of accomplishment. It was the least that he could do.
He would surely be attacked and punished. It didn't matter. He was ready to die.
Now he had stopped running through the trees and walked the rest of the way. He was nervous but something like that was not relevant. Yes, he would return and he would show that idiot that he was finally home just before he allowed them to kill him.
His hands filled with moisture from the sweat his nerves caused and he self-consciously felt to make sure that his katana was sheathed the whole way, he was not a threat and he wanted it to be known.
There was a time when he had convinced himself that he hated this place, but later came to realize that it was a defense mechanism. If he hated something, he would not miss it and if he did not miss it, he would not think of it. He would not think of what was inside it that made him even think about missing it in the first place.
His heart beat picked up its rhythmic pace as he saw the wooden gates. And with the white piece of fabric in his hand becoming wet from his perspiration, he was ready to hold it up to show his surrender.
As he stepped through the opening in the wood he heard the whispers. He felt the quick movements and heard the breath behind him as his body was paralyzed by a simple touch to his neck. He could not move and so he looked down at the cloth in his hand with his eyes. A porcelain masked man grabbed the cloth and nodded to the being that had touched his neck.
The blackness came and he dreamed of a life without being the avenger that he was.