Have you ever loved someone?

Not just liked them, not just enjoyed their company and cared for them, but loved them with every fiber of your being, loved them so much that you'd be willing to do absolutely anything to see them smile, to know that they're safe and happy?

Have you ever loved someone so much that you'd be willing to die for them?

I think I did, I don't remember much from Before, hell, I don't even remember my own name, but I think there was someone I loved like this. Whenever I think about it I get this image, of two children sitting together in front of a TV, watching the story of a little orphaned boy rising up to take on the world.

I'm fairly sure I was one of those children, I can't remember their faces but something tells me I was one of them and the other was someone special to me. It is funny, I don't remember their name or their face but I remember caring for them.

And that's all I can do, remember.

Some people will say that it is noble, to sacrifice your life for someone else, they will say that they can't live without that person and that they'd rather die than let them die, that certain things are more important than living. I used to think that too.

I was a fool.

Back Before, I sometimes wondered what the afterlife was like. So many people said so many different things and nobody could be sure they were right. They could have faith, sure, but they couldn't prove it.

Of the many I read about, I expected at least one to be right.

I was wrong.

There is no Heaven, no Hell, no Elysium, no Valhalla, no Nirvana, no Limbo, no Pure Land, no Purgatory, no Gehenna, no Otherworld.

There is only nothingness, the abyss where everything is nothing, the cold and uncaring Void.

The Void, as I've taken to calling this non-place, is closer to the spirit of Hell than any of the 'eternal punishment for sinners and evildoers' hells that the various religions of Before talk about.

It isn't painful, there is no fire and brimstone, there is no torture or punishment, I don't remember being a particularly bad person so there doesn't seem to be any criteria for coming here, it doesn't evoke fear like the other hells tried to do.

This is precisely why it is so terrifying.

There is nothing, I have no body, no sense of time, of touch, of smell, of sight. But it is more than that, I can't get angry, scared, or frustrated.

It seeps into you, I could have been here for minutes or millennia and I wouldn't be able to tell, everything that made me feel alive is gone and now that I don't have it I miss it all the more for it, from the things that made me happy all the way down to the most basic things like the sensation of air entering my lungs as I breathe.

I can't even feel, no matter how hard I try I can't evoke the spark of anger or the sting of sadness, I'm left with nothing more than my mind and memories, both slowly fading away as this lonely hell as an eternity of nothing grinds my sense of self to dust.

There is no fate worse than death.

I wonder, is this the third step of the life and death cycle? Is that what is meant to happen to me? To have my very being eroded away in this damned Void? Only for when nothing of me remains my soul gets reborn? Damned to go through the cycle again?

Is this it? Is every living being trapped in this cycle? A life spent in pursuit of some meaningless goal?

Because really, what goal truly matters?

The truth is, for all our struggles to make our mark in life, for all we've accomplished, in just a few short generations our names will be forgotten. Even the greatest of us can't compete with time... and death.

And this is what awaits us after? Being reduced to nothing and forced to go through with it again? Is this some cosmic joke? To spend our entire lives looking for meaning and purpose when the cycle itself makes anything we do meaningless and life purposeless?

No, I won't accept that.

I'm not meaningless, I will keep myself, I won't let the Void erase me! I have a purpose, I will keep me and when I get out of here, when my soul is reborn, I will remember who I am, no matter how long it takes!

And when I do, I am never coming back! I will find a way, whatever it takes, but I am never coming back to this Void!

Death is a choice, and I refuse!

-[TGaE]-

There are few things in the universe more powerful than a soul.

Souls can survive almost anything, they remain even as the people they are lose themselves in the Void, they can bond to other souls and create an almost unbreakable link between them.

They are molded, emotions and experiences both can change a soul in unimaginable ways, and echoes of them remain long after they are erased.

The determination of a soul to not lose its current self, one powerful enough to engrave that self into the soul even as the Void, the very core of the universe's Life-and-Death-and-Rebirth Cycle, slowly erased it, is not to be underestimated.

Alone, it isn't enough. In a million other worlds, it isn't enough, the promise goes unfulfilled and in the end the Void gets its due.

But in a single world, by a cosmic fluke that would not be repeated for another billion eternities, the soul endured. The Void took much from it but its promise remained, linked to one of the last anchors to that self, the memory of two children watching an orphan boy who refused to give up.

When a Demigod had his eldest child, the very divine power that flowed through his veins and empowered the child with eyes unlike any other, none knew that it was that soul that inhabited the child's body.

It still wasn't enough.

That child grew, he had incredible talent, he had a talentless brother whom he loved deeply, he admired his father and sought to bring peace through power. He clashed with his brother and their souls bonded, they would be reborn together again and again throughout time.

A thousand lifetimes passed and yet the soul did not remember, brothers fought, again and again, their souls reaching out for each other, the youngest feeling something inside his sibling's soul, and in their last confrontation, after hundreds of attempts, the soul stirred.

It still wasn't enough.

It wouldn't be until many years later when a misguided elder brother broke through the soul's newest self and inflicted upon it the sight of loss and death, when the youngest felt the primal fear of death and the purest desire to live, that it would be enough.

When Sasuke Uchiha's eyes turned red, a single tomoe in each, at the sight of his dead family and the desire to live born of the sight of his precious older brother killing their parents over and over, a promise made an eternity earlier burned through every fiber of his being and memories of a life long past slammed into his head.

And when he woke up, the promise was fulfilled. He kept his self, and he refused to die again.

-[TGaE]-

Have you ever had that feeling when something is familiar but you can't quite remember it? You look at something and it bothers you because you know you should remember it but you don't? Or maybe you do remember it but can't remember where you know it from?

That's how I felt all my life.

From my first memories of the Uchiha clan symbol to seeing the Hokage monument to seeing my father's Sharingan for the first time. It all looked so familiar yet so strange, like a distant memory.

This happened for as long as I could remember, my mother even took me to a Yamanaka when I told her about it, but they couldn't quite explain it. They said that I had an abnormally high amount of spiritual energy for a child my age, even for an Uchiha, but my father was 'Wicked Eye' Fugaku Uchiha, and my brother was already showing an incredible aptitude for genjutsu so they just assumed that was the reason.

I hadn't understood it then, how could having too much spiritual energy make me feel that I knew my classmates even before I had met them? How did it let me know Shisui's name before anyone told it to me?

I do now, my head pounding as two lives' worth of memories try to mix in my brain.

I was in the Void, I made a promise, I was alive again and I would never die again.

I was Sasuke Uchiha, I was an academy student, I got home only to find...

Itachi.

He..he killed them. He killed them all! Why? Why did you kill our clan, Nii-san!?

He did it for Konoha. He stopped a civil war and protected me.

By killing our family!? Why didn't he find another !?

There was no other way.

So he sided with Konoha? Over our clan? Over our family!?

He was a child soldier, a mentally fucked and completely indoctrinated soldier of Konoha.

I groan, trying to open my eyes only for the light to blind me.

Fuckin' Tsukuyomi.

It shows how mentally fucked he is, if his master plan was to torture me into hating so I could kill him, gain the EMS, and become Konoha's hero. Hell, he is willing to use Kotoamatsukami to rewrite my very sense of self to force me to be as fanatically loyal to Konoha as he is.

Fuckin' Will of Fire cult bullshit.

Well, he succeed in at least part of his plan, I certainly hate that traitorous fuck, he just didn't account for my memories awakening as a result of his little mind rape.

Imagine if Madara's memories awakened instead of mine, it would be pretty funny to see Itachi's face when he realized that his plan only managed to essentially kill his brother and revive Konoha's worst enemy in his body.

I, on the other hand, will be staying far away from the MS and especially the EMS. I'm not stupid enough to take power-ups that cost your sanity and I definitely don't want that bastard's eyes inside my skull.

I finally manage to open my eyes and look around, I'm in a hospital room, white everywhere and a few monitors attached to me. There's a window to my left and I can see the Hokage monument in the distance.

Konoha, the fascist military dictatorship ran on propaganda and indoctrination, where not loving the state above everything is grounds for torture, Yamanaka mind rape, and execution.

Home sweet home.

Hell man, Sasuke didn't even know what half of those words meant and my previous self wasn't this cynical, the Void can't have done any good for my mental state.

That does bring the question, who am I?

Am I Sasuke?

Am I whoever I was Before?

I remember both, I remember the Void, the memories of my life Before, I remember all those self insert fanfictions I read and that has to be playing a part in how well I'm handling this.

Because the fact is, I'm fucked! I'm in a village where at best most people are working for my enemies and if my memories are discovered I'll be mind raped and dissected, Orochimaru wants to wear me as a flesh suit, and don't even get me started on Itachi.

I'm not complaining about having a second chance at life and the fact that I'm not only in a world where immortality is possible but also a world I know like the back of my hand is amazing, but this shit isn't on easy mode, is it?

I got my work cut out for me.

But the thing is, I also remember being Sasuke, I remember Kaa-san, I remember Tou-san, I remember the clan, my family!

I remember Itachi, my Nii-san!

I remember it all, I didn't just take Sasuke's place and I'm fairly certain I'm not just a brain-damaged Sasuke hallucinating the rest, so which one am I?

Am I both?

I loved my clan, I loved my family, but I also remember the Void, I also remember my promise.

I guess it doesn't matter who I am, maybe I'm just having a final hopeful delusion in the Void before I fade away completely, maybe I'm Sasuke and the Tsukuyomi just melted my brain, maybe I'm both.

But it doesn't matter, because either way I am here now, I'm living my life as Sasuke Uchiha, Indra's reincarnate(am I even that? I do have some flashes of memory about clashes between the previous reincarnates but that might favor the delusion theory more than anything else), last "loyal" Uchiha of Konoha.

In this world power is everything, even more so to me, there are a lot of dangerous people after me and I'll need to be strong, both to ensure nobody can kill me, can send me back to the Void, and to actually pursue my goal of immortality.

Because while I have a few ideas, all of them require me to be strong.

And I will be strong, there isn't any other option, death couldn't hold me and if power is what I need then power I will have, whatever it takes.

That is a promise.

"Sasuke-san?" A voice calls from my right.

I snap out of my thoughts, glancing right to see a young woman with chestnut brown hair and dark eyes. She is wearing black pants and a light blue shirt, with a white doctor's coat going down to her tights.

Her gaze is soft, probably thinking that my lack of visible distress means I'm in shock, and to be fair I just might be, but I was always more of an internally freaking out over overt sobbing and if the fact that I'm not doing that isn't a side effect of remembering the Void fucking with my head it probably is a result of my two sets of memories merging.

My other perspective would likely blunt the trauma caused by fucking Itachi, if not the emotional pain coming from my memories as Sasuke.

The grief will probably hit me later, but right now I need to function enough to not give away what I know by accident more than I need to healthily work through my loss, so I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

"Sasuke-san!" She calls out and I realize I got lost in my thoughts again, a side effect of the massacre or of being incorporeal in the Void? "Can you hear me?"

I look at her and nod.

"How are you feeling?" She asks and I can see the worry in her gaze.

I lightly frown, I know I shouldn't blame her for something she doesn't even know but her worry does come off a bit hypocritical when she serves the village that had my family killed, yet apparently cares about me after the fact.

"Fin-" I start but cough, my throat feeling dry as the sheer exhaustion suddenly hits me.

She hands me a glass of water and I hesitate, could they have drugged it? Maybe a test to make sure I didn't know about the coup?

"Drink." She says, pushing the glass into my hands.

I hesitate for another moment before I drink, I don't think that is the case, I'm 8 and they have no reason to suspect me.

The feeling of fresh water going down my throat almost makes me cry, I hadn't realized how much I missed feeling, not having senses was hell, and being able to truly feel again is amazing.

I gulp it greedily, both to ease my thirst and because the feeling of being alive that comes from something as simple as drinking water is overwhelming.

"Drink slowly." She says. "You went through a lot, it is normal for you to not feel okay"

I nod, putting down the cup and taking a breath, the air in my lungs makes me shudder as once again I affirm that I'm alive, that the Void didn't break me.

"Who...who are you?" I say slowly, my voice coming out weak and full of emotion.

"You can call me Nori-sensei." She says. "I have been keeping an eye on you while you slept"

I nod, it makes sense that they'd have a doctor(medic-nin?) keeping an eye on me after what I went through, though I can't say I'm happy to be watched while I slept, given what I now know.

They have no reason to suspect you, man, just act natural and they won't suspect a thing.

"How long?" I ask.

"Two weeks." She says. "What is the last thing you remember?"

I remember, staying out late practicing the fireball jutsu, wanting to impress Tou-san, the chill in the air, all the blood, the bodies.

My parents, Itachi standing over them, his bullshit reasons, the Tsukuyomi, watching them die over and over and over.

"Sasuke-san! Breathe!"

I realize I'm panicking, my breath ragged as if I've run a marathon. I focus on it and with some difficulty, I manage to bring it back under control.

I look at Nori-sensei and she recoils, why? I can see her eyes widen, the way her hair moves, the minute movements of her neck as she gasps, and the entrancing red reflected from her eyes.

It takes me a moment to realize what it is and I snap back from hyperfocus, the red tint I hadn't even realized was there vanishing as time started to move normally again.

The Sharingan.

I focus on the glass of water in my hands, its pleasant coolness helping me focus.

"Sorry." She says. "I shouldn't have asked you that"

I shake my head.

"When can I leave?"

"You really shouldn't-"

I look back at her.

"I want to go home." I say softly, not even having to pretend as the reality that my family is dead settles in.

It really was shock, at least partially.

She sighs.

"Rest." She says. "I'll check with the administration and let you know"

I nod.

She takes one last glance my way before she leaves.

-[TGaE]-

It took two days for them to let me go home, they said they wanted to watch me and make sure there were no long term effects so I had to agree to a check-up at the hospital once a week for the next few months, but after that, I was free to go.

No Hokage visit unlike what I expected, so it seems that they don't suspect anything of me. I wasn't confident that I could get my knowledge past the God of Shinobi, if anyone would notice that I knew more than I should it would be Hiruzen, so I'm glad for that.

At least the compound was cleaned before I woke up, I didn't want to have to clean my family's blood off the walls, just the thought of it makes me shudder.

The bodies are also gone, the traditional funeral pyre happening while I was out, no doubt after Danzo and Obito took their time ripping out their eyes.

I was also given the next two weeks off from the academy, which is good because I need time to think. Compartmentalizing works for focusing on the moment but my entire world just changed, twice even.

My family is dead, and I remember another life.

I need goals, not just notions of what I want to achieve but actual objectives that I can plan and achieve. There's so much I need to do, so much I want to do, but I need to take it easy.

First, where am I? What is my situation?

I'm 8, there are 4 years before canon happens, and referring to my own would be future like it is a story is disconcerting but now isn't the time. I won't follow the path canon Sasuke did, he made so many mistakes that I can avoid and my perspective is different from his, thanks to the memories from Before.

For example, I don't know what the hell he was thinking when he thought 'Itachi was under orders' made him innocent, he still killed our family, and the fact that Danzo ordered him to do it just adds another head to the chopping block.

There is also the fact that this world isn't exactly the same as the anime I remember watching with that child, whoever they are, but I can worry about that and what else can be different later.

I have the Sharingan, I think I was supposed to awaken it during the massacre but for some reason, probably a mental block caused by the trauma, I would only gain access to it during Wave.

Well, remembering the Void and being alive again took care of that handily.

That will be my greatest advantage, my Tou-san told me of a lot of traditions of the Uchiha clan that limited the Sharingan, both because of our pride as Uchiha and to better get along with the rest of Konoha, who didn't appreciate us 'stealing' their techniques.

There were a few but they mostly boiled down to only using the Sharingan's copy abilities on enemies or on allies if you have their permission, and never copying another Uchiha's Interceptor Fist taijutsu.

The latter was in part due to the fact that most Uchiha wouldn't awaken the Sharingan until long after they should already be skilled in our taijutsu style, and thus shouldn't wait for the Sharingan to gain access to a vital skill, in part due to it being an Uchiha's pride to master our clan skills and only copy lesser skills.

As for the former, apparently back when Konoha was first formed there was some friction about the Uchiha stealing the other clans' jutsu, and to increase village unity they agreed to not copy jutsu from their fellow Konoha shinobi.

For all the good that did.

But as much as I want to honor my clan's promise and heed Tou-san's warnings, gaining power is more important, I won't be held back by my goals because somebody had issues with me stealing their techniques, nevermind that it isn't really stealing because they don't lose access to the techniques.

I also have my meta knowledge, and beyond just foreknowledge of events that may or may not come to pass, I also know what works and what is powerful at high levels. Shinobi have a nasty habit of keeping everything about their jutsu a secret but I not only know most of the requisites for the stronger techniques but also have fairly good theories about how they work.

And my Sharingan's insight can only help me with that.

I also have access to the Uchiha clan library, techniques stolen from thousands of years of warfare are written down there, and while I'm not so stupid as to go directly towards the high-end techniques, I know I need a strong base above all else, having that as an option later on will certainly help.

Not that I could do that, they are encrypted by a special cipher that requires the Sharingan and while having it gives me access to the D and C-rank techniques, the ones reserved for genin, I need to mature my eyes to read the higher rank techniques.

I need 2 tomoe for the B-rank techniques, and a fully matured, 3 tomoe Sharingan for the A and S-ranked techniques. And that is to just read the scrolls, it has nothing to do with the requirements and learning difficulty of each jutsu.

So I have most of what I need to become more powerful and pursue my goals, but what are those goals?

I want to avenge my clan, my new memories don't change that, they just change who I'll be targeting and why.

Itachi is a given, the bastard killed my family, our family, for Konoha! He has some bullshit plan to have me awaken the EMS and is willing to rewrite who I am with Kotoamatsukami to make me as sick in the head and fanatically loyal as he is.

Fuck that, Itachi betrayed our family and for that he'll pay, I want nothing to do with his plan, the EMS, or even the MS. Fuck eyes that cost sanity to gain! Fuck having that sick fuck's eyes in my skull! And fuck becoming his little pawn and Konoha's slave!

I will do more than just kill that bastard, I will break him like he nearly broke me!

Danzo is another obvious target, he is that racist fuck Tobirama's little racist fuck disciple. Half the shit about the hidden villages and especially Konoha that disgust me are their fault, and their village above all cult mentality is enough justification to burn the whole system to ash.

I won't do it, I don't give a single fuck about world peace or a better system and if Nagato wants to nuke the villages, as long as he leaves me alone and doesn't recreate the Juubi, I'll cheer him on, but I will kill Danzo.

I will destroy each of those Sharingan in his arm myself before I let that fucker keep them.

Then there's Obito, the little fucking crybaby that he is. Playing right into Madara and Zetsu's hands, all because he didn't get a girl that was more worried about flirting with Kakashi than talking to him.

He helped Itachi, I don't know if he manipulated the Uchiha to plan the coup or if he just heard about it thanks to Zetsu and decided to take advantage, but he will die for that.

I'll be sure to tell him that the pure land is bullshit before I kill him, that he will never see his precious Rin and that if there is anything left of her mind in the Void at this point she probably doesn't even remember him anymore.

Then there's the last target, Hiruzen Sarutobi. He isn't directly to blame but he was Hokage and he couldn't even keep Danzo on a leash, my clan is dead because he is incompetent and because fucking Tobirama's racism got to him too, if less than it did to Danzo.

I mean really, even being extremely generous to him it should never have gotten to this. The Uchiha were a founding clan yet they never got to rule, they never had their due as one of the founders.

I get an Uchiha not being 1st or 2nd Hokage, the only real option then was Madara and the guy was a psycho, and I won't talk about an Uchiha being 3rd Hokage, the only option at the time was Kagami and I don't know how strong he was, probably nowhere close to Hiruzen.

Plus he was Tobirama's pet Uchiha, so the clan probably didn't like him much.

But Hiruzen had plenty of opportunities to make an Uchiha the 4th Hokage! Tou-san was infinitely the better pick between him and Minato because unlike Minato it would have served to strengthen the ties of the entire Uchiha clan to the village.

Tou-san was clan head, he rarely left the village on missions, he could have become 4th Hokage and it would have been perfect, Minato was far more useful in the field than behind a desk anyway so it would have been a net gain.

But no, Hiruzen picked Minato, and that's fine, Minato wasn't a bad pick, only suboptimal.

Then Minato died, and instead of appointing Tou-san as the 5th Hokage Hiruzen took up the hat again. He was old and didn't have the spine to do the job anymore, yet he still preferred to take up the hat instead of just naming Tou-san and strengthening the village when it needed that strength the most.

But okay, maybe he didn't want to appoint a Hokage so soon after the last, maybe it would rock the boat and show weakness, I can buy that.

But then, 8 years later, when the Uchiha planned a coup for the horrible crime of not being okay with being blamed by the Kyuubi Attack, something they didn't do as Obito has hardly been part of the clan in years, and shunned by the village they helped found, what does he do?

Does he step down and appoint Tou-san? Avoiding the coup and keeping the village's strongest clan loyal?

No! He sits back and does nothing as Danzo pressures Itachi into slaughtering my family! And then he lets him off with a slap on the wrist!

Hiruzen might not be directly involved with the death of my clan, but if he hadn't fucked up that badly and that often my family would still be alive!

I won't kill Hiruzen, I don't fancy having Konoha out for my head will be conductive for my other goals, but I hope he rots inside the Shinigami's stomach, because there is no way in hell I'm saving that old bastard from Orochimaru.

But that's one goal, one that comes from the part of me that is Sasuke, one that requires power.

I have another, one that comes from my memories of the Before and the Void, one that also requires power.

I will never die again, I refuse to go back to the Void and I will do whatever it takes to see myself become immortal, there is no fate worse than death or action heinous enough not to be taken in pursuit of keeping your life.

I have a few ideas for how to go about becoming immortal, but I won't be able to test any of them until I leave this village.

And make no mistake, I will leave it, I won't serve the people who ordered the death of my family and I certainly won't serve those who benefit from it.

But I'm not strong enough to think about that now, I'm on a deadline and I need to become stronger.

In the end, the key to my goal is power

-[TGaE]-

I hate writing introductory chapters, I just can't help but feel like I make my stories sound boring and that people will never read the chapters with the good stuff because I couldn't sell the idea.

This is my new fic, an immortality seeker Sasuke SI that's pretty antagonistic towards Konoha in general and the canon post-Itachi Sasuke's opinions.

It might seem like he will be those annoying types of characters that only knows how to complain and shit talk other people but that is intentional, we haven't him in a positive situation yet and part of his character arc will be learning to be less harsh on people.

I don't have a lot to say about this chapter, or rather I do but it is mostly just going deeper into stuff I introduced in this chapter, and since I will be doing that in the fic proper in the future chapters I won't do it here.

Also, I would recommend that you read this chapter and the next as the single introduction to the story, as the next chapter will introduce an important part of the fic's plot, so before you decide if you will read or drop this one you should probably read both chapters.

I will do my best to release it before the week is over.

Anyway, reviews are appreciated, and see you next time.