Just Come Here
Part One
Chapter 1
The morning air was hot as the sun warmed the tips of the trees. The birds were not yet awake and the dew was still wet and glistening on the blades of grass as he made his way down to the edge of the water. The sweat began to form on the surface of his skin.
The water of the pond was calm and still as he sat down on the small wooden pier. He had come here more times in the past few months than could be counted. It was a place he could come to in attempt to silence the world that he lived in when the noises and the demands had gotten too loud for him to bare. It was a place he had found for himself when he needed to be alone and feel the stillness of the air.
He dipped his slender fingers into the cool liquid and pulled them through it, feeling it slide smoothly in between and around them. The water was still cold from the night air and not yet warmed by the surely smoldering sun.
He sighed a small sound in the silence around him. It was not unusual for this place to be much quieter than an average pond would be this early in the morning. It was one reason among many why he had chosen this of all the places that he could spend his time in.
He breathed the warm air into his lungs and allowed his chest to inflate. He lay back against the old splintered wood, untangling from his crossed legs position. His legs stretched out straight and his feet hung just above the water. The dark hair spread out across the wood, the light picking up its shine. His hands came together and rested against his flat stomach.
He closed his eyes to prevent them from being burned by the sun that had spread its rays across his pale face. His lips were dry. He licked them with a moist tongue.
He eased the invisible weight from his chest and took in the relief. He allowed himself to fall apart all at once and unwind. A strong forearm came to rest across his eyes, its clenched fist falling gently to the wood. The skin scraped across the wood and he could feel a splinter dig into the soft flesh just above the wrist on the outside.
His breaths increased in pace and his mouth opened in attempt to inhale more air. He felt like he was drowning in this seemingly calm morning. A knot in his stomach clenched and tightened his insides. Water came to the corners of his eyes. He did not allow them to fall. He did not allow the world to defeat him just yet.
The different emotions that played in his mind infected his entire body, causing a paralysis to debilitate him where he lay. He was unsure which one was the most prevalent and his head felt dizzy with the lack of an answer.
He was overwhelmed. He was confused. He was slightly angry. He felt guilt. He was deeply saddened and he was all alone in his thoughts. This was not the life that he had envisioned for himself and he was disappointed. His heart constricted, a painful and lonely beating.
He had come here to catch up to himself, but this pouting would not do, he knew. He uncovered his eyes and stared up at the sky, allowing the sun to cause them to sting and it earned him a small temporary blindness.
He sat up, holding himself with two hands reached slightly behind him. He shook his head to get a better hold on his mind. He attempted to contain the emotions into separate boxes and planned to look over them, one after the other.
He was overwhelmed. There were so many tasks that he had to accomplish and a few that had been assigned to him. He had people to extinguish, creatures to capture, points to prove. He attempted to sort them out. Of these things, only one or two of them were objectives that he had chosen for himself to achieve and most were not actions he personally agreed with or even found possible. Yes, there were things that he could admit to himself that he was not able to do. There were also things that he absolutely would not do under any other circumstance. There were things that had already been done that he regretted. It didn't matter. He had orders to fulfill. He asked himself when he had become a dog with a master.
He felt utter confusion invading his thoughts like an unwanted splatter of ink. His brain was fuzzy and almost unmanageable. There were many factors that hung over him and begged him to allow them to influence him. They begged him to allow them to trick him. He did not know whether or not to listen to them and some were not harmful in the least. It was sorting them out, bad from good, that caused such a mess. He wasn't sure which of these thoughts would change him for the better or the worse.
The anger burned him from the inside and caused him to overheat. So many things were unfair. So many things were asked of him without his consent and most of those things were not optional to complete. He hadn't even gotten to choose this path, not really. He had been influenced and taught to be the way that he was and it was not fair. Nothing was fair, he reminded himself. It would not do to act like a child that hadn't gotten his way. He had never really gotten his way in the first place. If it were so, he would not have had to come here to this pier to think on his own, so much of the blood that he had spilled already would have been erased, and so many choices would not have been presented to him like a deadly gift.
The guilt flooded through him. There was nothing left to do but to allow it. He had done many things in his short life time already that he regretted with every part of him. Doing foolish things was a part of life, he reminded himself, but what he had done was unforgivable. He had destroyed something that he had once loved more than anything. He had caused it to decay and wither because of a delusion he had had since he was a child. At the time, he truly believed that he was correct, but the truth of the matter had been too much to take in when he learned of it. He took a life that didn't deserve to fade away, not truly. Yes, he deserved to drown in these regretful memories.
The sadness overtook him and cooled down the heat in his body. It hurt, this loneliness he felt. He was not physically alone, per say, but he yearned for all of the bonds he had left behind. He ached for them. He dreamed of them. He saw them when he closed his eyes. He silently begged into the air for their return. They would not. They were no longer obtainable, it was too late. At least that is what he had been telling himself for the past four years. He no longer knew how to achieve them again or mend them and it created a crack within him that he could never repair. It had been his own fault, really. He had willingly scorned them on his own in the first place.
Perhaps he could ask them to reform and cling to him as they once had. Perhaps he would not even have to ask. Maybe they would still be chasing after him. Maybe he would walk alongside them the next time that he saw them. No, to do so would be admitting failure from his goals and from his orders and failures as such were not an option. Perhaps he would not follow them but would beg for their forgiveness. Also no, he had not ever begged anyone and he would not do it now.
He missed them. He saw their faces in his daydreams, the people that he had once had bonds with. He saw the smiles of each and he knew of the pain that he had etched into each one's entire beings. He wondered if they missed him as well. He wondered if they thought of him as often as he had thought of them, although he tried every possible trick not to. At one point when he had been younger, he had even convinced himself that they were dead. He had pictured a mess of pink hair stained with red splotches and a torn dark face mask. He thought of a pair of cold dead blue eyes staring into his face as if they had nothing better to do. That was it, he could not remind himself of all the harsh ways that he had pictured those eyes dying and fading into nothing but dirt. He could not see the tan skin develop a pallor in his mind as he had once done before.
He had seen them recently. Not recently to others, but recently to him. He had stood above them, looking down on them scrutinizing and memorizing every outline and facial expression that he could without giving himself away. He hadn't been ready to give into their demands then. He still wasn't ready now. Well, deep down his subconscious told him that he could deal with their requests, but that would be counterproductive in his ultimate goal.
He had seen a saddened pale feminine face. Had watched her small mouth say his name. Had watched tears form in her green eyes. Had attacked so strong that she had been thrown across the stony ground.
He had seen those blue eyes and watched the recognition pass over the scarred face as he realized just who it was that stood above him. He heard the determined voice. Heard the pleading and the begging. Had heard the desperation behind the words. He had placed his hand upon an orange clad shoulder and had whispered into an exposed ear. No, he did not like to think of this either. He did not want to be reminded that he had almost done what he had had nightmares about almost every night for a year after he had left them all behind. He did not want to be reminded that he had almost destroyed the life of the man that had been brave and loyal enough to chase after him for years.
The man had chased. He had chased him for so long now that he could not remember when the hunt had begun. For months after each encounter, he heard that loud voice and that proud mouth proclaiming that he would be dragged back with force if he did not willingly comply. Forever had he envisioned the sullen face after he had denied the man in his requests.
Yes, the man had chased, but was the game of tag over now after what he had done? He had already broken the flesh, allowed the blood to flow into stirred up dirt. He had already run so far away from the village gates that he was doubtful he could find his way back on his own. He had already said the cruelest things to the man that his mouth could think of. Perhaps the man would no longer run after him with such devotion in the task.
It didn't matter anyway. There were still things that he had to accomplish, whether they were his own ideas or not, and repaired bonds and friendships would only get in the way. He dipped his hand into the water once more and allowed his skin to take in the comfort he found in this pond.
He was interrupted by a voice from behind him. It broke through the silence and shattered the peacefulness of the moment. It halted his thoughts and made him sigh in annoyance. It was a shrill sound. It was a regrettable thing, an empty thing.
His name was called more times than he cared to hear and he pulled his body up to stand.
"Sasuke-Kun! I've been looking all over for you!" Her face held an attempt to charm. Her scarlet eyes fluttered their lashes at him from behind a pair of thick rimmed glasses.
He was annoyed. He was not ready to reenter this world quite yet. He turned and stood with his back to her and took one last look at the small ecosystem in front of him. Her hand was bold enough to land on his upper back. It burned through the fabric of his top and sent an ache through him.
"Don't touch me," he spoke.
He turned in her touch and gently grabbed her wrist only to drop it by her side. He was gentle with her this time. It wasn't as if she needed to be handled as such, it's just that she reminded him of another girl at the moment.
She did not like that her hand was removed and he could see an unhappy expression plant itself on her small face. He could tell that she was also surprised that he had not punched her or pushed her with force as he normally would have done.
He did not like her mouth. He did not like the Cheshire grin that grew on her face each time that she attempted to impress him. She had many talents and uses of course, that was why he had brought her along, but it was nothing that he hadn't already expected.
That sickening smile bloomed across her face, "It's time to move on Sasuke-Kun, and don't we have better things to do?"
She thought that their next task was something that he had chosen for himself. She assumed that it was he that wanted to capture something so powerful and she wanted to show him that she was ready for it. It disgusted him. Like himself, she portrayed a heartless face to the world and it disgusted him.
Love, she had called it. It was not something that he wanted or needed from her. It was not real, it was infatuation, and she could not see it. Other women had been this way before, always. A tall curvy blonde woman, a beautiful girl with pink hair, a stranger on the street. Could they not tell that it was not what he had wanted from them?
He concluded that she was right however, and walked his calm and collected walk past her as he had done many times before. He headed in the direction he had originally come from and began to put on the invisible mask that he wore each day.