A/N: um, my first ever naruto fanfic. feedback is always appreciated.
like breathing
Uchiha Sasuke has many secrets. He is a veritable well of information on so many things, many of them illegal and dangerous. But there is one secret in particular that the avenger keeps especially quiet, so quiet that no one but him knows it exists.
You see, Uchiha Sasuke has a secret buried deep down in his heart of hearts of hearts, something that he clings onto when he is suddenly overcome with thoughts of how black his soul is. When things are really, really bad, and he realizes just how far he has strayed from what he used to be, he thinks this:
I love them.
It pulls him back to other times.
.
It goes likes this:
Naruto says teme and Sakura says Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei is late. Team Seven.
No, earlier:
Aniki!
Loving Fugaku and Minato.
Respect. Family.
And then after the M_______:
Hatred and revenge and loneliness with
Teme! Sasuke-kun! I got lost on the path of life. Friends.
And then:
Sakura… thank you.
Goodbyes.
.
He opens his eyes and clenches his fist. He is holding a kunai and it draws some blood, but he doesn't care.
He is strong like that. Thanks to Orochimaru and years of practice and hate and indifference.
I love them.
Except for that irrelevant pathetic little detail.
It would be easy to assume that there was no more room for anything but hatred in him. It certainly makes sense.
But he does feel it, he knows he does, because why can't he forget? Why is it that when everything else is wrong, thoughts of Naruto and Sakura save him from forgetting?
.
Sometimes when he is supposed to be sleeping, he thinks about the future.
There is barely any of it for him, because all he sees is Itachi dying and Orochimaru dying and a lot of other people dying because he killed them. And he also sees his death mingled in there somewhere, right after killing his brother. A double suicide would be the only way.
But he sees other things, too: all of their dreams coming true.
He will get revenge, Naruto gets Sakura and becomes Hokage and Sakura gets happiness.
He wishes that there could be more to this picture. Rarely, and only when he is alone and quiet and suffocating under the burden of voices and shadows whispering that he needs justice, he needs blood. He wishes for:
Home.
That is it.
Home is green, pink and orange.
Yet he thinks that because I love them, perhaps how it is turning out is all for the best.
.
It is dark in Sound. Stifling darkness, corruption, danger, evil. And most of the time, he revels in this, because it makes him stronger, makes him become what he has to be in order to kill Itachi.
But sometimes.
Oh, sometimes.
When it is too stifling, too dark, too corrupt, too dangerous, too evil and wrong, he thinks his best-kept secret yet.
.
Sasuke has a secret.
He denies it most of the time and hates the mere idea during the rest of whenever.
But denial never makes it any less true or any less there, and the secret still exists.
And it will keep on existing until he dies, which he knows will be soon, but until then, in silent whispers, in quiet corners, in desperate moments:
I love them.