My One in a Million
Chapter Seven:
Sasuke blinked repeatedly, listening to the monotone beep of the heart monitor and using its annoying rhythm to distract himself from the pulsing pain in his body. His arm was crushed, several ribs were broken, he could feel the stitches on his chest every time he inhaled from where a snake bit it's way through the flesh and bone. His head hurt, either he bumped it or he'd used his eyes for too long, he didn't know; what he knew was that the snake poison that had him reeling wasn't out of his system yet.
He'd gotten used to their poison, but Orochimaru's were always stronger, deadlier, and perfectly in synch because of the many years spent training with him.
Or whatever was left of him, anyway.
Sasuke blinked again, the image of the grinning Orochimaru-Kabuto hybrid still fresh in his mind. They'd attacked the village in broad daylight, suddenly and powerfully, nobody had expected him but Tsunade had planned well and within fifteen minutes, every available shinobi in the village had been on his case.
Apparently, he had been after Madara's body that had been kept safe with the Hokage, not even those close to her knew where she kept it and so she was the first target.
He worked in the tower and naturally was among the first to show up.
Sasuke sighed and shifted slightly to ease the pressure off his lower back where it caused his left leg to go numb.
He didn't even know why he showed up to defend a village he didn't care about or a Hokage he didn't care to follow, it was as if he was programmed to fight an opponent as long as there was one. He wasn't protecting Tsunade, he wasn't protecting the village and he didn't personally care if the creature lived or died.
And now here he was, hooked up to machines and wires and waiting for someone to come in and turn the lights on because he was too tired to get up and turn them on by himself.
Also, his leg was stiff and his toes numb, like blood had been cut off for too long or something…
At least now they have the comatose body of another enemy to add to Tsunade's collection. It took the combined effort of the old bag, her assistant, Sakura, himself and several others he didn't know the names of to take him down, it had generally been a good fight.
In a way, he was kind of proud to have been trained under such a strong sannin and lived to defeat him, but unfortunately, it wasn't all Orochimaru and so had new moves and jutsu unknown to him.
Sasuke sighed and squeezed his eyes shut in the darkness, uncomfortable with the burn of dry corneas and how, whenever he blinked, it felt like there was sand between his eyelids.
He'd probably lost a lot of blood, too. He remembered bleeding through the eyes, nose, mouth and several openings across his torso by the time the snake had it's mouth wide open over his breastbone. It was a little bit surprising to know that the old bag had bothered to heal him after everything was said and done, he always had the impression that she would leave him to die if she ever got the chance. His presence in the village was cause for much controversy and things would be easier if he disappeared, he was well aware of that, but then again he wasn't planning to do anything about it; he wasn't staying there for them, after all.
He was staying for Naruto, and until the boy officially became Hokage, he was going to support him in any way he could.
A door slid open quietly, bringing in the sound of humming electricity and a busy hallway, the sound ebbed away when it slid shut and a female stepped closer to his bed.
"Sakura." He said, knowing her scent. "Turn the lights on."
Her feet stopped by his side and she was quiet for a moment longer. "Would you like some water?"
Almost instantly, his brows creased and the wheels in his head turned. "Turn off that annoying sound." He couldn't think with the heart monitor distracting him.
The sound of her sandals shuffled away for a moment before the sound stopped, and he listened to her push a few more buttons and rummage under his bed. The mattress rose slowly and a cold glass touched his lips. He drank as fast as she would allow him and wondered why his arms failed to rise up and hold the glass like they were supposed to. "When can I get out of here?"
Sakura sighed quietly and put the empty cup away. "Tsunade Sama will be here in a minute, she'll explain everything to you."
That must mean he was in terrible condition. His eyes weren't working, seeing as she could walk around the room just fine while he was still in complete darkness, but that wasn't a new sensation, it'll come back in a few days, maybe.
So then he must have broken his skull, or injured his spine, or perhaps finally snapped and sent Susanoo on a killing spree and now he was going to be punished for it. "I can't see." He told her. He really didn't want to, but one shouldn't keep such vital information from his doctor.
"We figured as much…" she shouldn't be so affected by this, really, her voice shook as if he was dead.
Or dying…
Was he dying?
Strangely, he wasn't scared by the thought, even when he listened to the door slide open and a talkative woman step in, still mid-conversation with her assistant about some patient or another. She didn't even bother with formalities when she announced. "Uchiha, you received a ridiculously large amount of poison in your system, you're going to die in a few days."
The room was quiet, so he asked. "When will Naruto get back?"
That surprised her. "Naruto? I don't know, we can't reach him even if our lives depended on it. It did, actually, and he's still not here."
He fought the urge to nod his understanding. "What will happen to my body?"
If Tsunade had something nice to say, she didn't show it. "We're processing that as we speak, I'll tell you as soon as we come up with something."
He snorted. "You and the council, I assume?" When she didn't answer right away, he continued. "Since we've got witnesses, I'd like to make it clear that I want an immediate cremation. No part of my body is to be removed or altered in any way; I think you and your council can manage that, right?"
She heaved a sigh, "If you're worried about someone taking the sharingan it-"
"You decided my clan's fate when you did, but I was too weak to fight back, then. I won't sit here and let you decide mine now, either." The room's temperature dropped dramatically even when he wasn't doing anything openly hostile. "You will not have me, even when I'm dead."
She could have argued, she could have crushed him and every bone in his body, but she was sane enough to accept his terms. Maybe, he wondered, she wasn't too happy about the council's decision to wipe out a whole clan, either. He knew it was unfair to hold her responsible for something a previous hokage did, but right now he couldn't care less who he blamed as long as it got him what he wanted.
"I understand, we're looking into older books for a cure, but for now…" She let that thought drift into silence before starting again. "We'll contact Naruto as soon as we can. Get some rest; if you need something just ask."
"Turn the lights off on your way out." He told them.
"Alright." Sakura whispered, as if in tears.
They shuffled out, opting to leave out notifying him of how pointless it was to turn them off when he couldn't even see. Whether it was pity or respect he didn't know, and frankly didn't care. The door shut after a soft click of the lights, and he was plunged into complete and utter silence.
He was finally, finally going to die a fighter, like he always dreamed he would; bleeding and with honor.
A happy life with a family in a big house, a dog, and annoying neighbors were never his thing, anyway. People like him had their paths carved out for them, they didn't have time to smell flowers on the side of the road or look at the clear sky above; only the finish line ahead. And now, finally, he was there.
Maybe if the heart monitor was still on, it would give him some insight on what he was feeling right now, because it seems like nothing emotional had occurred inside of him, from the moment Sakura walked in till the moment she shut the door behind her, nothing.
He wasn't scared, he wasn't angry. He didn't regret doing any of things he'd done in order to get here. So when he tried to think of the things he wanted to do on the last few days of his life, he found an empty list, absolutely nothing to look forward to.
Empty.
It was how it had always been; just like that time when his parents stared at him with their half-lidded eyes. When he had his first birthday party with team seven and received things he didn't need. Even when he achieved a life-long dream of finally killing his brother; he didn't have time to revel in success under the crushing weight of all the things he'd learned during the fight and then afterwards from Madara. Even when he had his brother's eyes, even when he became the strongest shinobi in the world, even when he had the power to obtain anything and everything; he was still missing something.
Eventually, he just learned to live without it, whatever it was.
And he would die without ever knowing. He was going to disappear, and be remembered as that poor child that grew up in difficult times under difficult circumstances and was murdered on the hands of his own master.
It was alright, he never really cared for what people thought of him, anyway.
X x x x x x
Time was limitless in the darkness, he didn't know when he was asleep and when he was awake, what was dream and what was reality. The sounds he listened to, of thunder and conversation and running water, were they in his head or were they real?
No one spoke to him, he hadn't heard his own name in a while, and eventually he decided not to think too much about it.
Until one day the scent of flowers distracted him from a vision of himself standing over a high cliff, the petals drifted through the wind around him, touched his face and drew him away from the beckoning void and into a field of monotone grass and a blurry person standing right there in the centre of a bleak sky.
He had half the mind to fight, but decided to test the waters, first. "Who's there?"
The person turned around, he could see all of her but her face; as if it was too bright to look at directly. "It's me." She said, her voice both familiar and foreign. Her hair, long gray strings dancing in nonexistent wind, framed her face when she reached a hand to touch him. "Are you feeling okay?"
Wary, he stepped back. "Why are you here?" Is she going to collect his soul?
Strangely, it didn't hurt when her hand touched his jaw; it was pleasantly cold. Even when she was close enough to touch, her face remained hard to see. "You're burning up."
"I'm dying." He told her, prepared. "I want to go."
The hand on his face turned and soft, cold knuckles pressed to his neck. "Go where?"
To wherever his parents were, to see Itachi again, to see Madara and talk to him like two human beings without an agenda; she'd asked him "where" but he really didn't know. He wanted to see them again, it was the reason he felt so hollow on the inside, wasn't it? He'd lost so many, it would only make sense to want to be there with them again but…
Where was 'there'?
As if opening that door a tiny slit to peek in had been all that was between him and a raging ocean of images he didn't even remember, they poured over him with crushing weight without dragging him an inch; his mother's back as she made dinner, his father's grumpy face when kids broke the lanterns in front of their house with their ball, his neighbor's dog barking in the middle of the night, Itachi's amused smile when he asked him to attend father's day at the academy…
Madara sliding off his mask, Orochimaru biting into his neck, Kabuto carefully piercing a needle into the veins in his arm, boys with fierce eyes and poised bodies prepared for a death match, unnatural creatures roaming the cellars of the Village of the Sound's laboratories. Nameless people stared at him with mouths wide open and eyes dull with death; it didn't stop, he couldn't fight it or make sense of the order of it.
And then light burned into his pupils and he cried out at the sudden pain, his head pulsated with the headache and his arms shook heavily when he reached up to cover his eyes; someone was there, he could feel their hands on his shoulder and chest, and they had a bone to pick with him.
It seemed like forever that there was nothing but jaw-locking pain surging through every fiber of his being, and then there was darkness.
He must have died.
Yes, he was dead, he was sure of it, because it was… Peaceful.
He felt like he was having a nap with the window open to a summer breeze, and wondered if this was where people went when they pierced the veil.
He should have come here earlier!
The scent of flowers caught his attention, and again he attempted to look around and find the mysterious woman that brought him here. There was nothing but darkness around him, a second later the persistent press of pain and headache set in and with a groan, he realized he was still among the living. "Who is there?" His voice sounded strange even to him, dry and hoarse. Had he been drinking sand?
"It's me, Hinata, how do you feel?"
Confused, he tried to make sense of the situation. "Why are you here?"
There was a strange sound, as if she was holding back a hiccup or giggle. "This conversation sounds familiar."
The stitches on his chest stung when he exhaled a deep breath too quickly. "I'm not dead?"
"No." Her voice went down a notch, he wondered if she was disappointed. "Tsunade sama said you have a few more hours…"
It was after a moment that he realized he had been blinking, still in the darkness. "What are you doing here?" They weren't exactly friends.
She was quiet for a moment, almost compelling him to ask about what she was thinking. "I brought you f- flowers." He didn't even ask but she still stumbled on her own words to explain herself. "Y- You see, Hanabi is h- here too, and I thought m- maybe flowers will make her f-feel better but I bought too much and… I guess I want to thank you, too. But please don't worry too much! I- I just hope things… Hanabi might…"
"You have three seconds to start making sense." In actuality, it was just fun to listen to her be so awkward.
"Eh? Ah, what does it-"
"Three."
"Mean if… You want me to-"
"Two…"
She gasped. "H- Hanabi was injured d- during the attack, s- she is in critical condition so I thought if I brought her flowers she will feel better but Tsunade sama says it's a lost cause so I brought some to you and now…" She stopped suddenly.
He strained his ears to hear the rest, thinking that he might have slipped into another nightmare, but she was still there, trying hard to stay completely silent. "Your sister is dying, too?"
His only answer was a hushed gasp, or sob, or an attempt at forming words that failed.
"What happened to her?" Maybe if he knew, he would meet her on the other side and tell her that he received her flowers instead.
There was definitely a sob. "There were Sound-nin shinobi… K- Kabuto attacked the tower but there were others everywhere… Hanabi and some others were at the academy, they fought and…" She released a shaky breath. "They said she had snake bites. She's… Running a high fever, just like you… Tsunade sama thinks…" She couldn't say anything after that.
So her sister was dying, too. He was alright with moving on, he didn't have much to loose and nobody was going to be sad about it. But he knew Hinata was crushed because he'd watched Itachi overreact when things concerned his younger self, he knew what it was like to loose someone close like that so suddenly, and it wasn't fair that the girl crowned heiress just some weeks ago to die so soon.
It was a mess…
And he didn't know why it concerned him.
"Let me see her." He shifted, attempting to sit up. Deciding not to dwell on 'why' for long, he just wanted the girl to stop crying.
"Y- You shouldn't move." She said in a voice that made her sound like she had a head cold. "Thank you but… Not even Tsunade sama knows what to do…"
He reached a hand out. "I want to walk." It took her just a moment to give up trying to convince him otherwise, and she held his hand.
It was soft and cold.
Even when he couldn't see a thing, he knew he was reeling when his feet touched the floor; thankfully she didn't seem to notice as she was busy detaching some of the wires off of him. She helped him up slowly, allowing him to lean on her when his leg gave in, and slid his bandaged arm into its sling. She didn't say anything when he stopped after two steps to catch his breath, but she told him to be careful of dangerously close objects as they crossed the room. She slid the door open only to find a panting Sakura on the other side.
"The alarm went off when monitors flat lined!" The pink-haired medic shrieked. "Why are you up?"
His legs were sending constant messages of pain, so he snapped. "I'm dying; I'll do whatever the heck I want." He stepped forward and the girl on his arm assisted without words, he could feel the tension in the air but decided he really didn't care about anything anymore.
It felt good.
He'd always told himself he didn't care what others thought of him, but now that he was really going, he realized that he cared, just a little bit.
"We're trying to find a cure! The more you move the faster the poison spreads into your system!" Sakura argued, trailing behind.
He never stopped pacing forward. "You say it like you care."
"I do care!" she argued back.
"Maybe you did in the past." He released a heavy breath, it felt like something was squeezing air out of his lungs the longer he was up. "Since I'm going away for good this time, you might as well be honest."
The girl behind them ran faster and blocked their way. "Sasuke-kun, you're my friend, I don't want to hear you say those things! We'll find a way, I'm sure!"
"What if I don't want you to find a way? What if I'm perfectly happy that it'll all be over?"
"That can't be…" Her voice shook. "Nobody wants to die, Sasuke kun! You're tired and disoriented, you just need to rest! I'll help you!" a hand touched his, and he shoved it away.
"Don't touch me." He snapped. "For the record, I don't consider people that try to kill me as 'friends'." The girl was quiet. "I know you did, and I know you were serious. Of course you were too weak, but you don't have the right to pretend we're friends after something like that."
"You tried to kill me too!"
"You tried first." He sucked in a breath and gave her a second more to respond, when she didn't he smirked. "Exactly my point."
"S- Sasuke kun I just… Look, you don't know what it was like! I'm sorry but it was the right thing to do back then!"
He couldn't see her, but he knew her eyes were definitely glossy with tears. "And people call me a traitor." He stepped forward, pushing her to the side.
"It's not the same! You killed hundreds of people for no reason!" She cried behind him.
"So did you."
"No! During missions, I had to! They were criminals! But the ones you killed were innocent!"
"No, Sakura, the only difference is that you got paid to do it."
Sakura didn't follow them after that, and soon the hallway was quiet with no sounds but his heavy breathing and Hinata's sandals on polished marble.
"We're here." She said quietly to him, as if she wasn't sure she should be speaking in his presence.
He let her slide the door open and guide him inside, the layout of the room seemed exactly like his and he found the edge of the bed easily. His good hand uncurled from around her arm and rested on the small lump under the sheets.
The sick girl breathed quietly, and the slow, monotone beep of the monitor told him she wasn't going to outlive him. His fingertips found her hand, clammy skin hidden behind layers of gauze, so he held it.
An image of the little girl in a colorful kimono flashed before his unseeing eyes, her face vibrant with hope and the shock of seeing him in front of her room unannounced.
His connection with the snakes allowed the images in his mind to show him what happened; a snake wrapped itself around her and bit her in the throat; he watched her chakra streams gradually dim and dry up, the attack was deadly and impossible to evade or cure. Orochimaru had warned him of it for even being the genius that he was, he couldn't come up with a cure, it was just too direct and affected every system that it was a waste of time to bother saving the victim.
The girl that stood behind him cried softly, it was distracting, but he decided it would be for the best that she didn't see.
It was easy to make up his mind, after all, he didn't mean anything to her, or to anybody, and she meant very little to him.
Deciding that he didn't want her to become another Itachi, didn't want there to be another circle of massacres and angry shinobi chasing tales around the earth in the name of revenge. Eternal peace was as much of a reality as a satisfying revenge, but at least the notion of peace was an illusion worth chasing.
He finally lost the battle with himself about it… Itachi had died for peace, Madara had killed for peace; his whole family died in the name of peace. He was the last Uchiha standing, and he was going to honor them and his clan by protecting that one illusion they held on to, to the very last minute of his life.
He squeezed the small hand tightly, pouring his own fading life force into the girl and drawing in the snake's poison out of her petrified chakra vessels in return, soon his body will function on poison alone, and Uchiha Sasuke will be no more. The inky black liquid fought back, refusing to change hosts but he kept his eyes shut and compelled it into submission, using his own contract with the cold-blooded reptiles to absorb it. By the time the very last drop of it left the girl and saturated what little blood he had left, the floor came crashing into his knees and the cold of the marble floor kissed the bare skin of his back.
And then there was the quiet, blissful darkness of nothing else but death.