I know you still hold on to me
But it's time that you let go
I gave you things I had
That I could not get back again
But I'm better off alone

Grey, Yellowcard


Sitting in the darkness of his apartment, watching the starlight around the edges of his curtains, Sasuke did not think about Naruto's visit. He did not think about what Naruto had said about Itachi, or Sakura, or Sasuke himself.

Sasuke did not think Naruto was an idiot who didn't know what was good for him, who didn't know when enough was enough. And he didn't think that maybe Naruto really did want to understand, that maybe Naruto and Sakura could ease the memories of the family he'd never see again.

Sasuke did not think, he cannot understand.

Sasuke did not think that he couldn't give anymore to them, or he'd have nothing left. That this feeling (that he did not have) of fatigue, of horror, of pain was not unlike what losing his first family had been like.

Sasuke did a lot of not thinking and not feeling on his couch, watching as the dim shadows from the crack under his door ebbed with the passage of the night.

He had been sitting on the couch, simply not being, when Karin burst through his door, the light from the street lamps below her flickering and casting her face into shadows.

Karin always burst into his apartment like that, and Sasuke hated it. Hated it like he hated the sound of her voice and the feeling of her hair and the touch of her hands. But he took all of those things and used them, because he could. Because he felt no obligation to Karin, much as she desperately tried to convince herself that he did. Because she offered them knowing that.

Not like Naruto, not like Sakura. They wanted things from him, wanted him to be what he didn't, what he couldn't.

"Sasuke," Karin purred, sidling up close—too close—to him.

He hardly grunted in response. Karin wasn't really interested in talking anyway. She moved to kiss him, and he let her. Because he could.

Because he would kick her out before she got anywhere. Because he would feel satisfied that he was better off alone, no strings attached.

Because eventually, he would discard Karin the way one does an old worn shoe that has served its purpose long enough. Because Sasuke did not care, really, one way or another about her.

Because any feelings he might have been able to spare her were already tied up—some with the dead, and some with the living, but most in the business of no longer feeling.