blood moon

preface: ore

it begins with isolation
demons always inhabit desolate places

He had cut all his bonds in pursuit of vengeance, and now choosing peace would sever the only one that ever really mattered.

This is the cruel irony that Uchiha Sasuke had come to expect out of his life. To rush into conflict, unafraid to kill and unafraid to die, and never realizing which end his blade pointed to. Wasting years shrouded in dreams of vengeance and justice and to awaken to a lifetime of unforgivable guilt. A guilt that can only be pardoned by one, and that one was his own self.

Sasuke knew this life and he knew it well. His fate was clear now and it was one he had chosen free of lies and manipulation. If atonement was a punishment, then so was his decision to go alone.

"Let me go with you."

Sasuke looked into the haunted blue eyes of his friend. His friend who didn't deserve this. "No." He answered firmly. "We both can't leave."

"Then you stay, and I'll go."

"One of us needs to stay with the village. You know who they prefer."

"I don't care what they want."

Sasuke didn't know how to respond to this, this surprising act of selfishness from someone who was so inherently selfless. Both stared at each other for a moment, feeling the brewing challenge between them. "You don't need to go."

"Yes I do."

"You don't. What you're looking for isn't out there." Sasuke paused, looking at his friend, whose face was so broken he almost regretted his words. "What you need, Naruto, is right here. Home. Konoha."

"There's nothing here for me."

"You're wrong about that." Sasuke persisted. "You have friends and people that look up to you. You know they depend on you. Your goals are still there."

"What, being Hokage? You think I care about that right now? You think I care about a stupid title?!"

"You should. She believed in you, didn't she?"

It was a low- blow and Sasuke knew it but there was no other way. Those haunted blue eyes watered and that strong voice he had come to respect cracked with weakness. "Don't, Sasuke." He took a moment to breathe, clearing his throat and closing his eyes. "I… I failed her."

"Leave and you'll only fail her again." Finally, there was silence between them and the acceptance he had been waiting for. It was time to go. Sasuke stepped forward and placed a hand on his friends' shoulder, holding it there sadly.

This was good-bye yet again.

Sasuke turned and walked away, not looking back even once.

He had walked several miles. Aimlessly. The day grew darker and darker as he wondered if he should turn back. In his mind, he could still see Naruto standing there, outside the village gates where he had left him. His eyes emptier than Sasuke had ever seen. After the war, this was something Sasuke had come to expect from his friend. Naruto had never known guilt the way Sasuke did. The kind you couldn't forgive yourself from.

Sasuke had set out to learn his new place in the world. He yearned for an existence that could mean something more than what he had done with his life. Something that could rewrite everything and he could start anew, however long it took. This was what he had promised himself. A journey of atonement. A lifetime of repentance.

Sasuke paused by a creek, kneeling to catch his reflection with the last light of the sunset. The face that stared back at him was familiar as it ever was, the grim placidness of Uchiha men. His dark hair was grown long, skirting around the nape of his neck and his cheekbones. A lone black eye watched him.

With a steady hand, he pushed back the hair masking the side of his face. Every time he saw that haunting eye — the eye that had belonged to Nagato, to Madara — the eye of a Sage…

His skin crawled.

To Sasuke, it was a mark of true evil. Being an inheritor of this eye proved what he had known all along, that his existence was a stain on this world. How could he ever find his place in the world carrying this eye? It was a beacon of misery, an omen of destruction, a sign of death as sure as a murder of crows. So much suffering caused by this eye. The deaths of countless. The annihilation of a village.

The torture of an innocent girl.

Sasuke watched as the sky grew darker and darker with each passing moment, the light glow of his cursed eye piercing through, and he thought of Naruto's broken voice at the end of the war, begging him with swollen eyes and a missing arm, half-dead and in agony.

"We have to look! Sasuke, please, I need to find her!"

After, they had told him. Sasuke, and Kakashi, and Sakura. They had restrained him and promised him they would help him look after he was healed and their comrades freed, because that had been more urgent. Saving the world was more important than one girl, after all.

But that had been their first mistake.

Because no matter how many times they had searched, no matter how many clones they dispersed, no matter how much Sage mode Naruto exhausted day in and day out, and no matter how many worlds they trekked in search of her without rest—

Naruto would think only of the moment he had chosen to save the world instead of her, and regret it more and more with each passing day. Now almost a full year had passed since then. Enough time to heal, to rebuild the village, and to move on with their lives and reach their goals. And Naruto, whose entire life was driven by his goals, couldn't.

For Sasuke, it was a time of reflection and a second chance at life. From this, he could only get stronger.

Because he was a shinobi.

The Rinnegan glowed ominously in the still water of the creek. Sasuke smiled grimly. In his lifetime, Sasuke had severed so many bonds, he had lost count. But if he could mend only one — the only one that truly mattered — then he would go to the end of the world and back. For his friend. His one and only friend.

One day into his journey and already he had forsaken his vows. But what was yet another sin?