Kishimoto owns Naruto
Haunting of Grey and Blue
Two nights before Team Hawk attacks Konoha, he ponders. In the midst of his final battle with Naruto, thoughts are secondary. This is how Uchiha Sasuke unravels into madness (and how Naruto brings him back). SasuNaru.
Inspiration: Lies by Orin (deviantart)
He's been dreaming of blue eyes since dawn, and something is wrong with that statement, but he isn't sure which part is worse. He shouldn't be sleeping at dawn. He shouldn't be seeing blue eyes. He shouldn't be dreaming. Dreams are the signs of an inorganized mind, a reaction to the loose ends of reality that the conscious could not control. They are a weakness, and Sasuke wonders when he has started dreaming.
Vaguely, he hears Juugo collecting some minimal gear, clearing their camp area in preparation to move. A soft patter of water tells him that Suigestu has provided the morning meal, and distantly, he wonders if Karin is making herself useful.
His mind should not be wandering like this, he thinks. His mind has never wandered before so readily, before...before when he had a focused purpose, and this is difficult to acknowledge because he does have a purpose, damnit. He has something. Something...His mind slips slightly in its act of grasping, and had he the mental faculty, he would have expressed displeasure at the falter. But the elements are too loose by now, and the only thing he can grip fiercely is that dark, blazing rock of hate.
Revenge. Anger. Pain.
"Konoha in two nights," he hears Karin say.
"If we take the eastern route, we can make it in one."
"Let's ask Sasuke when he wakes up."
"No, let's do it in two," she asserts. The two teammates cast her a questioning look, but she turns away instead to finish cleaning up camp.
He hears this all from behind his tent flap but thinks nothing of it. Time is irrelevant now. There is only the inevitable.
--
Another day traveled, and the team finds themselves another night in the woods. The trees are thicker now, looming even higher than imaginable, so much so that the light rain barely touches them, canopy like nature's umbrella. Sasuke, completely dry, only knows it is raining from the smell. His life, he realizes, has been a series of rainy days. The thought flits behind his eyes before it is lost, and he ends with a vague sense that the smell of metallic rain, darkened by nightfall and blood, was something meant to be feared but that he could only chase.
Juugo has put together a meal, which Suigetsu declines and Karin, sitting down, tries to call Sasuke over to join them. But the pickled fish is too much for Sasuke. He finds it overwhelming, the salty scent mingling with the wet air. It smells like the sea, he thinks, and almost too quickly, his mind pulls away to memories of the soft sting of wave droplets...and then the hard sting of iced senbon.
He thinks he hears a waterfall.
Sasuke frowns and refocuses on the fire between his teammates. He indicates that he will take the first watch and then walks away.
"Konoha tomorrow night. Are we attacking at night or dawn?" Suigetsu asks.
"Dawn." Karin leaves no room for questions.
"..."
The two men turn to her for an explanation, and she counters, "What? There's no rush!" Her exclamation is met with even more confusion, so she ignores it and shifts to stare at the fire instead. A few beats pass where the only conversation is the crackling of the fire and the soft chewing of dinner, until Karin breaks the silence with a stutter. "He's..." she trails off. "After tomorrow..." She stops again, purses her lips and frowns. A distant warmth floods her eyes as she glares at the fire, the dancing, wildly untamable fire that more readily burns than warms. 'Better red than black,' she thinks wryly.
"After tomorrow, he won't be with us anymore," Juugo finishes.
They both look up, but Karin looks away without acknowledgement and Suigetsu thinks he understands. "Probably not. He'll either be dead or captured...or hell, we'll all be dead or captured," he muses.
"No," Karin's soft whisper interjects. It is so unlike her to be soft spoken like this, with Suigestu, and she can't help but think that after tomorrow, everyone will have changed. "He'll accomplish what he plans to accomplish. He just won't..." She pauses again.
"What? What! Quit being such a mopey ass and get your point across."
"She means to say that Sasuke will no longer be himself," Juugo offers.
"What do you mean?"
"Can't you tell!" she cries out. She's heaving now, from frustration or anger, she doesn't know, but she continues yelling for no reason, "He doesn't see us anymore! He doesn't...he doesn't..." A deep breath. "His Sharingan is always on now. He doesn't cast genjutsu on us, I know, but...but his chakra. It's as if he's always in a genjutsu himself."
Suigestu ponders this for a beat. "What--"
"The Sharingan uses you until there is nothing left," Juugo interrupts. "Orochimaru was keen on knowing everything about his future vessel. They said Itachi was close to succumbing to the same madness."
The trio turned their thoughts over in silence.
"There is only so much his mind can hold onto."
--
Sasuke has seen many red sunrises in his life. He doesn't need to see this one, he thinks, as he gazes at the outskirts of Konohagakure through the monochrome of his Sharingan. His team is waiting for the signal, so he closes one eye and narrows the other, calling upon the dark chakra of the Shinto sun goddess. His mind is still slightly awry, but he doesn't need to be sane to do this. He lets his mind sift through shadows of rain and trees, cats and bells, and he is close to piercing the Konoha walls with black flames until a bright blue flash pierces his focus. Sasuke reels back, opening both eyes now, frowning. If he could, he would feel some kind of anger at his minute failure, but by now, such emotions warrant a focus beyond his sanity. Instead, he blinks slowly and calms his breathing. Sharingan, still active. Konoha, still black and white. The bright blue becomes a fading distraction as Sasuke refocuses on his purpose. His chakra swells with hate, and this time, the Amaterasu strikes wide and true. He smirks with a twitch and jumps to follow his team through the sirens and screams.
--
Kunai clashes with kunai. He whips around, sending another wave of shuriken and nimbly flips backwards, bringing his katana up to block the incoming strike. A shove and a retreat, and they are back together running metal against metal. He raises a kick and is blocked with his arm, but swings around to drive his fist into his back. Block, rush, jump. Taijutsu is all they have left. Konoha, leveled before from Pein, is now weeping with wraiths of smoke and the absence of chakra; even the trees are shivering from the drain. Susanoo had faded long ago with the user's fatigue. The chirping of Kirin had lasted only long enough to take out some of Konoha's sons and daughters, but the best--the worst--was still standing before him, his Kyuubi silenced well with a Mangekyo. Naruto could now feel every cut and every wound like every other human. A chidori through his heart would not heal back; the blood he bleeds is his. The destruction around him, that is Naruto's as well. But the wind of his Rasengan has faded and even the smoke from his bunshin has cleared. There is nothing left between them but words.
How many times must he cry his name. Hoarse, Naruto yells again and again, making less sense each time. He doesn't know why he is fighting anymore. Worse, he isn't even sure who is he fighting.
Or who he is fighting for.
The world is tipped in grey for Sasuke. He moves the only way he knows how, in streaks of dirt and lightning, knives reaching out in lieu of hands. Peripherally, he doesn't know it is Naruto he is fighting. He smells the lingering smoke of bunshin and senses the charged air from an old Rasengan, so he knows somehow, but he doesn't know really. He doesn't register the opponent because all he knows is the fight, the hatred, the insane drive to hurt and hurt more--harder--fighting and fighting the way he has trained himself to do until there is nothing left, until the grey is gone and the light has faded and there is nothing left to see but red.
Naruto does not see Sasuke's mind running in jagged circles, but he notices the slowing of his movements. This, he would have written off to fatigue as he himself was near death as well, but the slowness was only part of the picture. The lack of refinery, the lack of direction--Sasuke's attacks were deadly and true but uncharacteristically unplanned, and this is what Naruto seizes first.
A sweep of his leg, jump, turn, strike. He flips, arms over legs, and lands briefly enough to run up a wall and dart across. He meets the strike and turns with it, but he grasps his leg and runs them both into the ground, tumbling. Senbon erupt from his mouth, and he is running again with kunai swinging from his fingers and a fourth between his teeth. They meet with a clatter as both boys rush head-on into a flurry of hands and feet and the occasional metallic glint.
Sasuke is moving but not feeling and maybe this pain should have been red, and maybe those clouds were bleeding too, but his eyes are still wide with kaleidoscopes, mouth stretched to a maddening grin, and when he hears voices, all he sees still are fragments of grey.
"Sasuke!"
Except that was...that was something he recognizes, Sasuke thinks. That was something he should recognize. He falters in his next strike and before either boy realizes, they are tumbling amongst blood and ashes, and the grey Sasuke lives in is thinning. 'But it's too late,' comes the distant thought, even as he realizes how he can taste the sweat dripping across his lips. There is dirt against his back and a weight on top of his legs. A hoarse cry of pain rises from his throat, and just before he succumbs to his last sense, Sasuke feels the distinctive pulse of something bright and loud, and brilliantly, brilliantly blue.