A/N: Wow, got it done in under 2 hours! That's got to be a record. It's hard for me to write now that work has picked back up but I'm doing the best I can.
Thanks for the reviews! Some of them are really detailed and helpful (ItaHinaSasu). Others are just funny as heck (roboguy45)
I'm happy about this chapter. I've been dying to write it since I see it as the only good chapter in the entire fic. I hate this story, it's some of my worst work I think. The only reason I'm updating it is because many of you readers want to see what happens. I guess every author has work they're dissatisfied with. I read somewhere how stephen king reads back over some of his earlier stories and cringes. That was from his own forward in one of his books. His junk is in print though, already in ppl's homes (mine included) so he can't undo what's done and published. Lucky for me, though, all I have to do to get rid of this mess is click 'delete story'. I can get rid of this blight on a list of works I'm otherwise pleased with. I'll wait till the last chapter has been up for awhile, though, to give you all a chance to read it.
So. Onward!
Chapter 7
Sasuke surfaced from one of his many blackouts to hear Itachi discussing Blondie. He'd done something to lure Blondie back and Itachi would be waiting to kill him when he came.
And Sasuke was the bait.
Sasuke, accustomed to the deadened state he lived in, felt shock and anger stir feebly in him. He was confused. He frowned where he sat, feeling his brother stroke his hair. Where…? Oh, the hideout. Right. He moved his eyes, taking in his surroundings without calling attention to himself.
Except why didn't he want to call attention to himself? He didn't know. All he knew was that if Itachi knew he was 'awake' he would have another one of those blackouts. He could remember only choppy flashes of the past week or so. The memories were times he'd surfaced. The rest was black.
Blondie. He had to remember Blondie. Blondie was in trouble if he came here.
Blondie can take care of himself, a voice said in his mind. You're the one in trouble, dipshit. What's that around your neck?
Sasuke became aware of the weight around his neck when Itachi stood and pulled him by a chain. He stood automatically and followed his brother, anger stirring a little stronger now. What in holy fuck has happened to me???
Good question, the voice said. Looks like you've been made someone's bitch. Just like Blondie said. What else was he right about?
Sasuke's mind floundered. He tried to call up Sharingan and couldn't. He tried, tried, tried…finally managed it but it gave him a raging headache. With his bloodline limit, though, he was able to remember a little more. Itachi. Itachi had put the collar on him to control him.
No!
Sasuke was starting to breathe shallowly as they neared Itachi's room, the chain from the collar dangling heavily to Itachi's hand. Why did he feel panic at entering that room?
Because bad things happen in that room, the voice said slyly.
Itachi pulled lightly on the chain and Sasuke entered behind him. Jesus, Jesus, what was going on?! What had been done to him??? Sasuke would never, no matter what, let the kinds of things he half remembered and suspected be done to him. He didn't care if it was Itachi or God himself, nobody played Uchiha Sasuke!
He began sweating. Something. Something was being done to him and he was letting it happen. Why? What was so bad that he blanked it from his mind afterward? Sasuke lifted a hand to pull at the collar just as Itachi turned around.
The elder Uchiha frowned. Sasuke shouldn't be able to access Sharingan. "Ah, ah, ah Little Brother. What are you doing?" Itachi wound the chain around his wrist, reeling Sasuke in as his little brother's eyes searched his in confusion.
Not good, Itachi thought. There were questions brimming in his brother's eyes, an awareness, a dawning suspicion. He called up his chakra as he pressed his lips to Sasuke's soft parted ones.
Sasuke saw his brother's face through a shrinking window. He struggled to keep the blackness encroaching on his mind at bay. Itachi kissed him – what the bloody fuck! – and the blackness seemed to gain strength, overriding his efforts. The window he viewed the world through shrunk until it was the size of a pinhead. Then all was black.
Itachi pulled away from the kiss as his brother's frown cleared and his body relaxed. Much better. He studied Sasuke's neutral features. He'd never tried subduing him with Sasuke's Sharingan activated. He shrugged. Sharingan or not, Sasuke was malleable again. Itachi leaned in and licked Sasuke's deliciously soft lips. He had a few hours to kill. He would spend the time letting Sasuke suck him off.
Naruto woke to find himself alone in the cave. He sat up and blinked. The cave was lit with brilliant sunlight. He was naked.
Despite the soreness in his rear, Naruto felt he'd never had such a humbling night. Killerbee had controlled every aspect of their union. Naruto had been shocked at how helpless submitting to another left him feeling, but the dark man had been gentle, understanding, if unyielding. At one point Naruto remembered a confused perception of their Bijuus joining in their minds, their tails twining around each other. The blond had felt Killerbee's chakra moving through him and his moving through Killerbee. The experience had left him shaken. The four of them, the two Jinchuurikis and the two Bijuus, had all reached release together, each one's climax augmenting the other's. The valley had rung with Naruto and Killerbee's Bijuu-enhanced roars.
A new feeling crept over Naruto as he searched for his clothes and slowly dressed. He was halfway to the cottage when he decided the feeling must be embarrassment. It was uncomfortable. His emotional range was so limited, so cut and dry that all these new discoveries about his ability to feel fear, embarrassment and humility left him feeling as if…as if…as if he was exposed, the blond finally concluded awkwardly. His armor of self-containment was being eroded by constant contact with Gaara and Killerbee, such open and giving people.
Naruto opened the cottage door to find Gaara standing precariously on a chair, reaching for something on a top shelf in the kitchen alcove. Naruto went and retrieved the item, a box of cereal, and handed it to him. Gaara took it without a word. He avoided looking at Naruto as he poured himself a healthy bowl of the yellow stuff and dumped milk on it. He took the bowl, went to his room and slammed the door. Naruto was used to Sasuke's mood changes, so he was unperturbed by this display. When Gaara wished to speak he would, just as Sasuke did.
He went to Killerbee's room and looked in. It was immaculate, but the man himself wasn't present. Naruto knew Killerbee wouldn't be in Gaara's room. He did not sense his chakra anywhere nearby. Naruto went and knocked on Gaara's door.
After a time the door opened a miserly crack, showing one green eye, currently squinted in anger, and a lock of dark red hair. "What," Gaara said shortly.
"Where is Killerbee?"
"Up my ass. How the fuck should I know? He ain't here and wasn't here when I woke up."
"Who removed the bodies, cleaned his room?"
"Probably him. Don't know, care less. Leave me alone." Gaara slammed the door in Naruto's face.
Naruto turned and was considering finding something to eat when he heard Gaara's door open again. He looked over his shoulder at the same green eye and lock of hair. The eye was curious this time. "What are you doing?" Gaara asked.
"Looking for food."
"Here?"
Naruto looked around. "As I am standing here I suppose it may be assumed that I would look for food here."
"So…you're not leaving to go back to that dog Sasuke?"
Naruto turned around to meet Gaara's eye squarely. "No."
"Why?"
"Killerbee impressed on me what I already knew: it's a trap. If Itachi kills Sasuke…" Naruto swallowed, frowned as he turned his head aside for a moment. Then he continued. "If he kills Sasuke…I don't think he will kill Sasuke. And…despite what's happening to him, I don't think Sasuke will let himself be killed. Itachi may think he has his brother cowed, but I'm the one who knows Sasuke best. Sasuke will fight. I hope Killerbee helps me rescue him before then, though. Just in case Itachi…"
Gaara watched in fascination as Naruto's eyes watered. He opened his door a little wider. He'd never known the blond giant to say so much and he certainly hadn't thought the freak could cry.
He'd been pissed, sure that Naruto had left the valley. There went his one and only friend, a Jinchuuriki like him. Killerbee was alright, but he wasn't a friend. He was more like Gaara's second dad. Naruto was different. He was weird, but so much fun that Gaara didn't care about the weirdness. Anyway, people said Gaara was weird all the time.
Seeing Naruto struggling not to cry and frowning fiercely as if he could subdue the tears that way, Gaara decided that Naruto was someone he could share his room with. Besides, he was just so happy that the big kid was staying. He opened his door all the way. "Hey. Naruto. Do you want to see my room?"
Naruto was at last gaining control over his wayward emotions. He had himself back in order, his walls and defenses firmly in place as he lifted his head. He felt his interest perk up at the thought of seeing Gaara's mysterious room. "Yes," he said as he walked forward.
Gaara bit his lip as he stepped aside and let Naruto's broad shoulders fill the doorway. He watched Naruto's face anxiously, wringing his small hands nervously.
Naruto took one long look inside Gaara's room and did something he'd never done in all his seventeen years of breathing. He burst out in hysterical screams of laughter.
Sasuke floated in the darkness. His perceptions of the world outside the darkness were gone, shut off, asleep. But Sasuke was there, in the darkness. His Sharingan kept him aware in the dark this time and had shown him what was going on at last.
Before that window had shrunk completely closed Sasuke had seen everything. He knew what Itachi had done to him.
Genjutsu.
The landscape of Sasuke's being shifted, rumbled ominously, but the event was still far off.
For now, Sasuke floated in the darkness and considered. He was under a Genjutsu that did not project what Itachi wanted him to see. Rather it simply overrode everything that made Sasuke who he was. I'm not blanking my memories; he's doing it for me. He frowned as he floated in the dark, thinking back.
It had to have happened the first time I laid eyes on him, Sasuke realized. Itachi had touched him and Sasuke had reacted instinctively. Then he'd looked at Sasuke and suddenly Sasuke had let himself be hugged. He was a naturally wary person since his years in Konoha, yet he'd told Blondie that they should go with his brother, a mass-murderer he hadn't seen in ten damn years as if Itachi was the fucking Messiah.
And then. Then they'd attacked Blondie and he'd known he was breaking his promise, but…but the first Genjutsu was still working on him a little. In the room. When he'd tried to go with Itachi to see Blondie's room, Itachi had stopped him and hit him with another little dose.
Blondie had come to him later, told him he was acting strangely. He wouldn't listen to him, had wanted him too much. Some deep level of Sasuke's psyche had known he was being used, played, manipulated. That night with Blondie, all the pain and blood…it had been a desperate cry for help. The pain helped clear his mind enough so that he could defy Itachi's effect on him. Itachi had looked at him sitting in bed with Blondie after hearing Sasuke's words and hit him with a hard Genjutsu then. It had been quick, but it left Sasuke reeling for the entire week Itachi had been gone.
The rumbling was closer. The darkness trembled, quivered…but the event was still a ways off. Sasuke knew it was coming.
Itachi had come back. Sasuke had been just getting himself back together but Itachi had done it again. Sasuke was by then trying to fight the Genjutsus though he hadn't really known what was going on. His mind fought instinctively. When he'd said he'd wanted to partner Blondie, Itachi had dosed him. When they tried to kill Blondie, he'd wanted to go to him, help him, but Itachi's latest dose kept him in place.
He'd almost gotten completely free when they threw Blondie into that cell. He'd been in his room, contemplating escape and Itachi had hit him with the strongest Genjutsu yet. Sasuke remembered the peace he'd felt at 'giving in'. He remembered letting Itachi touch him, hating it, but the Genjutsu had made him think it was right.
Closer. The darkness quailed and fluttered, showing patches of gray as the rumbling grew all around Sasuke. The event was nearly here…so close…Sasuke floated and thought.
After that, Itachi had begun putting him in these blackouts to keep him from constantly resisting. Now, though, Sasuke could remember the things he'd been made to do.
Incest. Bestiality. Raping little girls, being made to submit to Kisame's claspers, Sasori's puppets…Itachi had made him do much, things Sasuke couldn't bring himself to admit even here in the dark. Things involving bodily wastes and babies.
But the greatest manifestation of how low Sasuke had been brought by his own blood was the chain. Blondie had called him the bane of Konoha. And he had a mother. Fucking. Chain. Around his god. Damned. Throat.
The event came at last with an explosion of fire and lightning, what would have been a full 10.0 on the Richter scale.
Itachi had finished with Sasuke some time ago and left him in his catatonic state in the bedroom they shared. He was in the main room, poring over a map of two villages he knew were mainly civilians. He suspected they had a few choice little girls for his delectation. Kisame, Konan and Sasori were away from the hideout on minor missions. He was smiling, considering taking ole Sasuke-chan on another jaunt of rape and killing. Sasuke had performed quite well the last ti-
The hideout shook as if some angry giant had just kicked it. A rumbling, crackling sound reached Itachi's ears and a sudden wave of intense heat hit him. Electricity was in the air, the hair on his arms and head standing on end. Itachi picked himself up from the floor and looked to the doorway that led to the hall and private quarters. Cracks zigzagged out of the hall, along the walls of the main room; something was coming down that hall and whatever it was had to be extremely powerful to generate such heat and lightning and shake the entire hideout. Itachi did not recognize the chakra source, so intense was it, but he felt the killing intent clearly. He moved behind the toppled throne and watched the doorway with his Sharingan, wondering what enemy knew of this hideout.
He almost didn't recognize him when Sasuke walked calmly to the doorway and stopped. Fire and lightning snapped off of him, swirled around him, shimmered the air around his body as his heat cracked the ceiling. Sasuke's eyes were red, too, veins standing out sharply in his face. The floor was broken, depressed beneath his feet from the weight of his chakra, chakra that was just short of a tailed-beast's level in its intensity, Itachi realized in awe.
Itachi crouched, ready to spring. He tried to capture his brother's mind with Genjutsu and was thrown halfway through the wall by the force of Sasuke mentally repelling him. Itachi's eyes rolled in his head, bled.
Sasuke was there, pulling him out of the wall to hold him up by a fistful of his shirt. The proximity had Itachi's skin cracking and peeling as Sasuke's heat baked him alive. When Sasuke spoke his voice was as unrecognizable as his chakra.
"You've been busy, Big Brother."
Gaara looked at his watch. Naruto had been laying on the floor, pounding his fist and kicking his legs for at least fifteen minutes. He sat on his bed, calmly eating a second bowl of cereal. He'd had to step over Naruto's rolling body to get it.
The fit passed almost as suddenly as it had come. Naruto's throat was raw, his stomach sore. A small giggle escaped him and then he was done. He sat up in the doorway and looked around again.
A riot of color exploded everywhere in the room; Gaara had plushies of every size, shape and model strewn all over the floor, attached to the walls and hanging from the ceiling. That was interesting and all, but it wasn't what had Naruto struggling not to laugh even now.
It was the eyes.
They were everywhere. Big ones, small ones, jiggly ones, button ones…Naruto snorted into his fist and clamped his teeth shut, his face turning red as his eyes streamed.
"Don't hurt yourself," Gaara quipped sarcastically. "Just let yourself go, man, who cares if you laugh?"
Naruto lost it again, wheezing and hollering, making sounds he'd never thought he was capable of. Laughing felt good! No wonder Sasuke did it so often. At last he was too weak to laugh anymore. He collapsed amongst the plushies and let his breathing return to normal.
The room was so full of the things that the floor was invisible. They were everywhere except for the bed. There was no other furniture in the room, no other adornment. Gaara finally finished eating to come and sit by Naruto's limp body. The blond was almost swallowed by the soft toys.
"So," the redhead said cautiously. "You okay?"
"Yes. What are these things?"
"Plushies." At Naruto's blank stare Gaara clarified. "I'm a plushophile. I get off on them." He waved his hand at the multitude of plushies around his room. There had to be hundreds.
Naruto picked up one of a yellow sponge wearing brown square pants. "Plushie," he said experimentally. Even the word was funny. "That was the first time I laughed. How do you stand this room? I would soon expire from laughing so much if I had to sleep here."
Gaara tipped his head. "Did you hear what I said? I said I get off on these things."
Naruto sat up, the toys shifting beneath his weight. "What does that mean?"
"Means they turn me on. I like rolling in them naked." Gaara shivered and Naruto noticed that the green eyes darkened from jade to emerald. The redhead straddled a large black and white plushie of a whale and made grinding motions. Understanding made Naruto's eyes widen slightly.
"Sex?" the blond said doubtfully. "You have sex with these plushies?"
"You could say that."
"But they aren't alive."
"And that's the way I like it."
Naruto looked at the toy in his hand. He tried to envision himself having gay sex with the yellow sponge. No. Just no. Impossible. How would that even happen, the blond wondered. He turned to see Gaara panting and bouncing. Gaara seemed to reach release and stretched lazily in the sea of plushies, disappearing for a few seconds to surface by Naruto's leg. He looked at the blond with eyes that were jade green again.
They stared at each other until Gaara finally ventured a question. "You think I'm sick?"
"No. Why?"
Gaara looked around his room. "This and the singing are the main reasons Killerbee says I'm insane. He says this room gives him and Hachibi nightmares."
Naruto thought of how people called Sasuke insane. He remembered how Gaara's singing made him feel, how the sight of these plushies had made him laugh for the first time ever. He learned something about himself then. "I like insane people."
Gaara smiled.
Susanoo protected Itachi as the hideout collapsed at last, weakened by Sasuke's chakra and the epic battle they were having. The pieces of heavy stone and mortar seemed to strike an invisible barrier when they toppled toward Sasuke. The debris bounced away without touching him.
His chakra is impenetrable, Itachi thought as he panted. Weilding Susanoo wasn't easy by any means. The effort was costing him horribly, but facing Sasuke with anything less had proven almost fatal. Amaterasu had been evaded with distressing ease.
Itachi was weakening. Sasuke didn't have great techniques, he shouldn't be losing this fight at all. But whatever had brought on this 'snit' Sasuke was in had the younger Uchiha using every ounce of chakra he possessed and Itachi just couldn't get past it.
He guessed if he thought about it, Sasuke might be mad at being used with Genjutsu. But really, the little shit was blowing it all out of proportion, overreacting way too much.
Sasuke rushed him. Itachi swung his arm and Susanoo swung its in turn-
Itachi screamed. Sasuke crashed right through Susanoo, his absolute defense, and landed on Itachi's chest. The elder Uchiha's chakra, the last of it that he'd been holding on to in order to control Susanoo, disappeared. Sasuke let his chakra fade, sitting on his brother's chest and pinning his arms down with his knees.
Itachi didn't resist. He coughed up blood, his body spent and limp. He looked at Sasuke with eyes returned to black. "You won't kill me," Itachi whispered with bloody lips. "I'm your brother. I saved you. You…owe me." Speaking was agony.
Sasuke's eyes returned to black, too. He looked down at his brother, at the object that had fallen from Itachi's cloak and lay by Sasuke's knee. "You're right, Itachi," he said as he picked up the object. It was cool in his hand. "You did save me. And I do owe you."
Itachi smiled weakly. "Little Brother," he sighed. "I knew you wouldn't kill me. Then he saw what Sasuke had in his hand and his smile faded.
Sasuke placed the object on Itachi's chest. "You don't know me at all," he said in a low voice. "Or you wouldn't have done what you did to me."
"Sasuke," Itachi said trying to move. "Sasuke, no, you owe me. I'm your brother, you owe me!"
"Yes," Sasuke hissed. "I owe you salvation."
Sasuke smiled then. Had Naruto seen that smile he would have rejoiced. It was a mirthless smile, a smile that acknowledged no redeeming qualities in one's self, a smile that promised violence and destruction. It was the smile of the Bane of Konoha. Seeing it, Itachi knew fear.
"Sasuke…Little Brother," he pleaded.
Sasuke rammed the point of the kunai hilt deep into Itachi's thudding heart. He felt it vibrating in his fist as the muscle continued beating despite being skewered. Then the heart slowed…slowed…stopped.
The last thing Itachi saw was how Sasuke's eyes, unbeknownst to the younger Uchiha, developed Mangekyo Sharingan. Then he was gone.
Sasuke stood, walked a few steps aimlessly then collapsed. His body was crashing from the stress he'd put it through. He lay looking at his bug's eye view of the destroyed landscape. The battle had been biblical.
The last surviving member of the Uchiha clan lost consciousness ten feet from his dead brother.
