He only had one reason to live: Revenge.

That was his answer to everything; that was the only thought in his mind.

Well, that's what it looked like to bystanders.

But to those who knew him, they knew he craved the calming gaze of his mother that was now gone, leaving him short tempered and un-able to be reasoned with. To those that knew him, they knew he missed the hard-glazed words of his father that pushed him to work his hardest. That he missed he missed the simple rejections of his brother that implied his wasn't as good as him, and made him work to reach his level and even surpass us.

But those people were gone. And they weren't there to know that he missed them. They weren't there to know that he had the Mangekyo Sharingan, and just how. They weren't there to know that if he had been away from so long, he had become a completely different person. They weren't there to know that if they had been with him, they could have prevented the change to the insane, merciless man that stood before him now.

And now he was going to die. And no one would ever know his thoughts.

Cerulean blue eyes looked down at him, a hand at his thought, ready to swirl into a rasengan at a moments notice. "Sasuke-teme,"

"Dobe,"

"I know," He whispered, "And you still have to die. If you lived, you'd stay a missing nin, and you'd never be forgiven. Who knows what they'd do to you. I can't risk it. You're better off this way."

Blue swirled from his finger tips, pulsing outward like fire since it wasn't be contained by a clone. It engulfed Sasuke's vision, and he watched for a few moments as his flesh was torn open before the pain caught up with his mind. The pain never came, and black replaced the blue of the technique.

Sasuke's eyes flashed open, staring at the shadowed ceiling of his room in the Akatsuki hideout rather than the familiar blue eyes.

It was a genjutsu. But who had cast it?

Sasuke didn't tell Madara about the dream. When Naruto and him fought, he would let it play its course.

And oddly enough, he didn't actually mind that much if it ended that way.

Those that knew him, they even knew the way that it would end.