Vision

By xannychan

Short A/N: Toying with ideas of Itachi's Tsukuyomi.

Warnings: Spoilers if you live under a rock, character death.

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"Do you still think you can win?" The voice is soft and knowing. He recognized that tone, the tone of condescending and flippant arrogance. "Do you still believe you can defeat me?" The blood of his family is everywhere.

"Yes," he shouts back. "I will destroy every trace of you; I will make you disappear."

With equal force, that familiar face twists into a sneer. "Silly little boy," his voice now slick and unpleasantly smooth, "you can never win with memories to drag you down." With the knowledge of things forbidden, the face laughs, tongue sharpened like a snake.

"I will," he screams. "I have already taken your life!"

"My life?" The face contorts into a look of incredulous anger until it is yet another person. "Do you call that a triumph? Life is not living; it is the legacy left behind. Look at the life you live! The only one you have defeated is yourself!" The face is streaked with furious tears; what must have once been pretty hair whips into her face, a face he knows he left with a heartless farewell.

"What do you know? You wouldn't understand at all!" He lashes out at the face that fades and comes back into view. "I will do everything I can to win, even if I must break myself!"

"And what," says the face, the voice broken, as if speaking to a lost student, "what battle have you won? Haven't you broken everything you are, everything you hold most dear? Can you stand here and tell me you can win?" A mask now covers the bottom half of the face; a familiar scar bleeds into its left eye, the sign of a friendship mended too late.

"Yes! I can win and I will. All of my power will destroy every particle of your existence." He is sure of this, yet his hands shake; he fails to lodge the kunai into his target, cutting only the flesh of its cheek like a whisker.

"You have already lost."

The final face is turned away from him, except for a glimpse, a boy he can never forget. The voice is soft again, but not proud; it is a tone of sorrow, and he hates it more than all the others.

"Shut up!" He can't argue to that face; he can't even look at it, but he cannot tear his face away from his dearest friend. "Shut up!"

"You know it already, don't you? You want to destroy me but you can't erase your past; you want to win but you can't forget my face. You want to defeat me, but even you can't let go of the legacy from whence you came. You have crushed all of the things and people you cherish and left behind everything you own, even your mind and soul, and yet you can't even stand to look at my face, though we were rivals for years. With all of your power, you have nothing to show. Can't you see? You may have broken my heart, but have you won against me yet? Or is it that you love me still, and all of which I stand for you still embrace?"

No. No. No. No. But he can't reply anymore; the genjutsu ends, and the red and black faces disappear.

Another face lingers just above his own, and in a bizarre moment between his destruction and death, he remembers how the rain had fallen that day, the day he left all he was on the shoulders of an unconscious friend who reached out one final time. Brother, he breathes, brother, take my life and do not forgive me.

His brother's lips graze his ear.

You have already done it yourself.

Sasuke falls alone.