AN: Last chapter next week :)
Chapter 30: Victory and Defeat
Sasuke knew the name the moment Obito said it; he had heard this voice behind a mask, telling him the truth about his brother, a looming and deep rumble that made him feel like there were eyes peering into his very mind.
"Madara."
He heard himself repeat the name and knew that was exactly who this was. For the first time since he had arrived in this world, he felt truly like he was facing down someone that he should be afraid of, especially in his current state.
Ahead of them, Madara stretched out his arms as though pretending to be Itachi had been rather constricting to him. He looked skyward, his cracked and unnatural face smiling at the sky. Beside him, Sasuke felt Obito shift where he stood as he asked,
"What are you doing here? Are you the reason we're here?"
Turning his head back down to face them, Sasuke had to resist taking a step back as the most infamous Uchiha he had ever heard of narrowed his eyes at them. He didn't directly answer Obito's question, instead asking one of his own.
"How much do you both remember about your lives beyond this world?"
They both spoke at the same time, with Sasuke muttering, "Almost everything," and Obito responding with "Everything." Madara nodded slowly as he considered their responses.
"Interesting…" he mused, sounding genuinely intrigued at their current states. "The journey over must have given you different reactions considering you both were forced here by different methods, even though how you arrived in this world was the same."
As Sasuke realized that Madara was talking in the regards of someone who actually knew the reason for their current reality, and he couldn't keep himself from immediately firing off the questions that had been plaguing the back of his mind in recent days as often as anything else.
"How are we here? Why are we here?"
He was fairly confident that Madara would have just laughed his questions off as Sasuke truly was in no position to be demanding anything, but Madara just smiled at him, a perpetual personification of victory written all across his arrogant expression.
"I suppose considering you've set me up so… exquisitely, granting you some answers is the least I can do."
He walked over to stand between the unconscious bodies of both Ozai and Aang, looking down at them both with amusement before continuing.
"We'll start with me then, since the only reason any of us are here is because of my toying with the space between dimensions."
Pointing at Obito, Madara grinned. "It was your eye that got me thinking. I arranged for an Impure World Resurrection in advance of when I told you I would return, and I apologize for that, but your ability to use Kamui made me truly think on what could be achieved if I could peel back the folds of our world and twist into another."
"For over a year, I dug through as many forbidden and incomplete jutsu as I could in after my first resurrection. There was much on the theory of it, but very little on the actual methodology of carrying out of any such process. So, it fell on me to begin doing what I could to start experimenting and potentially crack into some secret. Then, I made a connection. I was able to open a gateway into what I could only call, a world more and less than the one we originally resided in."
Obito interrupted then, "What makes this world so special?"
Madara gave him a somewhat mocking look, like a parent might give their child for talking out of turn.
"Ah, I hadn't finished just yet, my friend," he said, his voice also mockingly reproachful. "This wasn't the world I was referring to. It was what I believe they refer to here as the 'Spirit World'."
This name brought up a memory and Sasuke thought to Aang talking about how he was able to transport himself into an astral plane of sorts as a result of his Avatar state, or something to that effect. How it was a place made up of memories and pieces of their real world, but could become whatever location was behest to their occupants. A place that didn't quite make sense in the way of space and time as they knew it, and one that contained a number of unimaginable creatures with otherworldly powers and a fair number of spirits that had once been alive in the real world, including every previous existing Avatar.
"So that's what that bird was talking about," Obito said and Sasuke looked over to see a look of realization spreading across the other man's face. "You were tampering with the Spirit World this whole time, and they knew you were doing it."
For the first time, a look of annoyance crossed over Madara's face. "They most certainly did. My first trip inside and I was able to learn that the Spirit World was connected with this world, but I wasn't able to work with much more than that. Several animal appearing spirits and a few of the Avatars residing there caught onto me and rejected my presence, somehow expelling me back into that hidden cave I was using as my research facility. It would take months more of attempted breaches to make any form of progress after that point when they realized that their world was being interfered with and they became much more wise to my later attempts. Again and again, I tried to spend as much time as I could inside in order to figure out the nature of the world itself, but the bastards kept at me. Somehow they could always find me, and eventually they began getting more and more desperate. If not for my existence being predicated by Edo Tensei, I may have gotten my face taken by a being named Koh who quite literally steals the faces of victims, if you can imagine something so wildly absurd. But it was Koh who revealed to me, perhaps unintentionally, the basis of this world and the nature of the people within and it was then that I knew my workings could be deeply beneficial."
"Finally, I determined that with the right amount of force and energy, as well as a particular genetic gift granted to use in particular…"
He gestured towards his eyes and Sasuke saw the red flicker of Madara's Sharingan dancing at him.
"… and from there, I decided to attempt to breach through to this world with a… test run of sorts."
His fingers moved to point at Sasuke then. "You were my test, Sasuke. The only way I was able to pierce my way into the Spirit World in the first place was by the ability of my Sharingan; something about it lets us perceive the area between time and space invisible and inaccessible to most. Not that it just lets us pass through multi-faceted worlds that don't belong to us, but they help us… see, shall we say. So, when I plucked you out of your little half-assed quest for salvation, or vengeance, or whatever you want to call it, you truly had to do nothing at all for me other than just be yourself."
Sasuke listened to these words ring against his aching ears and tried to wrap his head around the idea that Madara was presenting, the truth for why he was even a part of this world in his current state. Here finally was a solution to the queries that had been looming over him with such oppressive uncertainty, and now all of the sudden, he really wished Madara would stop talking.
He didn't of course; "I plucked you away from that after putting you out and threw you into this Spirit World to dash against you against the other side just to see if I could. I had already tried it with many others, you must understand, but no ninja I enlisted or otherwise coerced was able to make it through, though I should have seen the signs. None of them could see either the initial slip into the Spirit World nor find themselves able to perceive it as anything beyond a endless series of landscapes that stretched around and twisted into an infinite loop. It took only my guidance to even direct them to where the split into this world was, and even then, all that came of them was… well, let's just say that attempting traversing either end of these splits I forced open makes non-Sharingan users into a real interdimensional mess. So, I finally decided to try one of my own kind, you."
Sucking in a long breath of air, Madara looked to the cloudy sky, to the blue above as though he were living out a truly fantastic dream.
"And I believe you can tell what happened next. I placed a seal on you prior to injecting you into this world, and when it dissipated, that was how I knew that you had arrived successfully and so I followed in after you. After so many days, digging through hours of unsuccessful theory, it turned out all I needed was you. The memory loss was a side effect I hadn't foreseen, but of all the consequences that could have come about as a result of such dangerous practices, I would call that almost a miracle by itself."
"A miracle," Sasuke said. The relative silence around him was buzzing and his voice didn't quite sound like his own as though it had been spoken by someone else. A spark had snapped to life inside his gut, lighting his insides like tinder, but he somehow found himself more than able to speak calmly, despite the growing heat within.
"So, you worked as hard as you did on all this… put us all into this world, for what? Just some stupid experiment, that seems like a lot of work just to see if you could jump between worlds."
"Two things to refute," Madara said, his controlled and relaxed expression never waning. "Firstly, I didn't pull us all into this world."
Sasuke blinked in confusion as he jerked his chin towards Obito.
"I haven't a clue what he's doing here or how he was able to cross over. I brought you inside and then followed after once I had confirmed that my hypothesis was correct. Obito's being here is not something I anticipated, nor is it something I would have expected regardless, though it makes sense that he would be able to, considering our collective heritage. And how humorous that the only person knowing of my continued existence would be the third and final part of our collective group of travelers."
Throughout the entire day, Sasuke had felt nothing short of reserved suspicion of every move, every look, every breath Obito made, even more so after he had pulled him into Kamui. If this was some twisted agenda, something that he had done in pretending to work with Ozai to put himself beside Sasuke for some final goal…
Don't get paranoid. Even if that's the case, and he's working with Madara, I can't worry about it right now. Besides, if they wanted to put me in a place where I would be too weak to defend myself, then Obito would never have done what he did to put himself in a similar state.
He let himself think this as best he could; if Obito and Madara were working together, there was no way he had a chance against them both anyway.
But even if it was just Madara on his own, Sasuke had to admit that their odds weren't exactly favorable.
"And secondly," Madara continued ahead of them, "there is much more to my coming here than merely the experimental procedure of managing it. Do you really think I went to all that effort just to say that I could? That it was just to prove to myself that I was able?"
He chuckled, a grating and hair-raising sound, sinister in how deeply smooth it was.
"This world will be the one that stands before me as the true test: with the greatest threat this world can offer now destroyed as a result of that comet's obliteration, can you imagine how easy it will be to claim it all as my own? Mind you, the mantle of world ruler here is of no interest to me, but when the weak inhabitants of this place are at my will, I can use this world as my own personal laboratory, to test my machinations and determine exactly how best to force my own world to kneel and submit to my dream. Millions of people here, that I may freely test my theories, my craft on. These so called benders and their chi, I will take much interest in dissecting their strange little forms and learning how you might compare it to us and our chakra. There is a great deal to learn and experiment with. So that when I return to my world, our world, my plan will proceed that much easier."
As this truth settled over him, Sasuke felt his insides tighten as he imagined what Madara meant when he mentioned tests, experiments, theories. Would he take Aang apart? Toph? Azula? What would he do to everyone else, what were his plans for this world, precisely? Enslavement? Subjugation? Elimination?
I can't let him do this… I can't let this happen.
His fists clenched at his side as he felt the worst feeling he could have felt right then. There had been fear before, though he never would have admitted it, going after the army and Obito and then the comet. He had felt worry over the unknown he faced, the possibility that he could fall to any one of these obstacles, but there was something to this situation now that made things so much worse.
Sasuke knew that he was totally and completely helpless before Madara.
"After Sasuke's injection into the world," Madara was continuing almost casually, "that was when I made my own cut and slipped through myself. My largest problem that I faced when taking that risk of crossing over was not having a surefire way back into the Spirit World; from there, I could get back to our world with relative ease, but I learned quite quickly being here that I didn't have quite the advantage of knowing just how to access the Spirit World again. But I knew it wouldn't remain a problem forever, and I quickly adopted Itachi's form shortly thereafter to continue my journey to make a stable bridge between our world and this one."
Hearing the mention of his brother being used as nothing more than a disguise filled Sasuke with a brimming hate that nearly brought a snarl to his face, but he hid his anger underneath fists that clenched tightly at his side. The idea that he had so immediately accepted the reality that Itachi was there beside him aboard the Azulon was nothing short of humiliating and Madara's use of that jutsu to pretend to be him was disrespectful to an infuriating degree. Sasuke wanted to walk forward and throttle the older man then and there, but knew there was nothing to be gained from such a stunt, beyond his defeat.
It was the hardest thing he had done all day, but Sasuke forced himself then to ignore Madara's actions, what he had done and what he planned to do, in order to look for a path forward. In his mind, he could hear the words of his teacher, the white-haired, masked man he now remembered to be Kakashi speaking to him.
"Remember you three, there is nothing more wasteful than rash action. If you are confronted with a foe you cannot avoid and cannot defeat, you do everything in your power to stall the taking of action by that foe. You keep him talking, you stall, you act however you need to in order to buy yourself time, and in that time, you think of a way to win. There will always be a way to win if only you are willing to look for it."
Sasuke ground his teeth behind closed lips.
Alright, Kakashi… I'll try.
He fired away the first relevant question that came into his mind.
"So you pretend to be my brother and have all this power at your disposal and are perfectly disguised… yet you do nothing this entire day? You hide and just wait? There was nothing you could do to forward these 'plans' you speak of?"
Reaching into his pockets, Madara fiddled within the folds of his robes as he replied.
"Sasuke, I wasted no such time as you suggest. I was solving the problem I only just now mentioned."
Problem?
Madara's smile widened as he surely noted the blank that Sasuke was drawing.
"You see, while you were desperately doing all you could to protect this city and these people you have come to somehow develop such weighty and burdening feelings for, I dove deeper into the city. You both were drawn to the city at the promise that knowledge to return to our world rested within Ba Sing Se's walls, correct?"
This mention caused Sasuke to stiffen and he knew Obito must have done the same beside him or given some sign that this was familiar diction as Madara nodded knowingly at them.
"I thought so. I started my search for answers in the Fire Nation, slipping my way into their most secure archives to find whatever I could on the Spirit World and accessing its hidden doors. The only true leads I found directed me to this city and the grand library within. It was also in the Fire Nation that I first heard tell of Sasuke's misadventures; you didn't wait long to make a splash here with the locals, did you?"
Sasuke made no reply and Madara continued with an incline of his head.
"So when I arrived here, the fighting had just about begun and I had the perfect window to begin pillaging the information I needed. There were so many documents and texts at the grand library, it would have taken me a thousand lifetimes to browse them all, but fortunately our little gift…"
He tapped the side of his head, near where his Sharingan glowed.
"… I was able to speed up the process by a manageable degree. An hour later, I had uncovered the text that told me the only way known of accessing the Spirit World beyond being an Avatar is with a pair of sacred relics known as Archstones. Seldom few were ever created, and most were destroyed after it was deemed their power was not something that ought to be wielded by man. Most of the last remaining stones were taken beyond the borders of the Four Nations, taken away to lands beyond the known reaches of anyone living within these petty societies, beyond the impossible storms and perilous oceans."
There was a pause of silence and Sasuke could tell that Madara was trying to get them to probe and Obito finally gave in.
"So, if they were all taken and banished to lands far beyond, why do you look so smug about it?"
Madara, whose expression was indeed smug, pulled his hands from his pockets.
"I did say 'most' of the last remaining stones were taken."
He opened his palms and Sasuke could see two dark grey stones resting in them, both inscribed with intricate and unfamiliar symbols. Sasuke suddenly felt rather uneasy beyond even what Madara was causing him to feel, but still managed to grunt out, "What's so special about those? You sure they're not just pretty rocks?"
Madara's undead eyes stared at him with a sudden intensity. "Come now, Sasuke, surely you can feel the power emanating from these. They are more than simple stones and you know it."
His smile peaked then as though he were in utter disbelief of his own fortunes, though his voice remained calm and controlled.
"Two had been moved to the royal palace here in Ba Sing Se, where they were put on display as artifacts and nothing more for fear of them being identified and stolen. And of course, the entire center of the city has been utterly deserted, making it more than easy to waltz in and take them for my own as it seems that no thieves have tried to take advantage of the state of things, or perhaps another individual or group like myself looking to make their way into the Spirit World. Though without this… they would have been hard pressed to do so."
He moved them both to one of his hands and he reached down to pick up an unconscious Aang by the back of the neck; Sasuke took a step forward on instinct and Obito put a hand on his shoulder to stay his advance. Madara seemed to have noticed Sasuke's fleeting moment of concern and gave him what was surely supposed to be a reassuring smile.
"Don't you worry; all he needs to offer me is something that's hardly of permanent damage to him."
From within his robes, he pulled a kunai free and brought it swiftly towards Aang and even despite his warning, Sasuke still jumped at the movement, fear for Aang sending adrenaline pumping into through him ravenously. The tip of Madara's kunai did what he promised however, the only harm dealt to him was a thin cut along his forearm. Blood leaked from the opened skin and Madara reached down to rub the stones against the red running from the open wound. Somehow, the strange feeling that Sasuke felt coming from the stones became worse and he felt a wave of nausea flooding through his insides and he tried to keep from swaying where he stood.
"These stones… they are nothing more than trinkets without the aid of this boy's blood," Madara murmured before dropping both of them on the floor about a meter apart from one another. Unceremoniously, nothing seemed to happen for a good few seconds and Sasuke allowed himself a moment to smirk.
"Fakes then? Or do you just not have any idea what you're talking about?" he said, trying to put as much Azula-esque snark into his voice as he could manage. Madara made no reaction to his comments and instead just stared at the rocks as though his pure will would cause something to happen; the dirt began to quiver around the stones and in a matter of moments following that, twin beams of colored light that seemed to manipulate the air it passed over, as they turned up and connected with one another, creating an arch a meter wide and about two meters high. As soon as the beams touched and became a single strip to create the curved arch, a collage of blue and green coloration burst to life between them; it was impossible to discern what laid beyond, and it looked to Sasuke like he was trying to make out the bottom of a riverbed beneath some very choppy water.
Sasuke stared at the color, trying to rationalize what he was seeing as Madara turned back to them, looking utterly unshaken by the otherworldly phenomenon.
"I have my way home. I have my door between both worlds and will now be able to use the Spirit World as a conduit to access both. And I may begin my process of taking this world as I so desire."
For a long moment, they regarded one another, Madara in his infinite confidence and composure and Sasuke and Obito both struggling to stay on their feet. It occurred to Sasuke then, that Madara had answered just about everything he had been curious about, and had no reason to keep talking then.
And nor had he any reason to have told them all that in the first place.
"You didn't need to tell us any of that," he said slowly. Madara shook his head.
"No, I didn't."
Sasuke grit his teeth. "Then why did you?"
Before Madara could offer a reply, Obito spoke up next to him, "Because one way or another, the only people walking away from this are those who are on his side. He was more than happy to let us pound down the Fire Nation because they were the biggest threat that could have posed themselves at him, though with his power, Ozai's military wouldn't have been much more than walking over an anthill. And then just now, us battering each other almost to death worked perfectly for him, since if we don't do whatever it is he wishes, he can just snuff us out here and now, and there's not much we can do to stop him."
Raising his eyebrows in what was likely impressment at the situation's reading, Madara extended a hand towards Obito. "I couldn't have said it any better myself."
"You want to elaborate on what you want from us?" Sasuke asked, but he already knew the gist of what was about to be said.
"Certainly. All I want is for you two to take yourselves home and leave this world."
He gestured first to Sasuke.
"I know you're rather lost, Sasuke, in purpose and in direction. You've found something in these… these disturbed children perhaps, but surely you'd like to return home wouldn't you? Return to your purpose of taking revenge on Konoha, or becoming Hokage, or living up to your brother's expectations, or whatever it is you were most recently after before you assisted me in my penetration of this world. I offer you that now; I can take you back home if you follow me through the Spirit World and you can put your troubling times in this world behind you, and come back to where you belong."
He turned slightly to the right.
"And you, Obito. In truth, I don't know how you wound up joining us here, but I detect that you are not the same person who I rescued and who witnessed Rin's extermination at the hands of your friend. Something has brought about a change in you, hasn't it?"
"Something has," Obito replied flatly and Madara nodded slowly before replying quietly. Sasuke realized as they talked that he truly knew nothing about Obito, the man he had battled with all his might and had allied with to throw down Ozai's penultimate assault.
Another Uchiha… and all I know is what Itachi… no, what Madara said aboard the Azulon.
"I could sense your resolve and dedication to restoring her and achieving the dream we spoke of when I showed myself to you aboard that ship. This was something I experienced emanating from you from the moment we met to the moment I put our plan in your hands and waited to be resurrected. And when I awoke, I kept tabs on you still, and I know for certain you continued to hold up your end of the deal, doing everything in order to make our plans come to fruition."
"That I did," Obito replied just as flatly, and Sasuke found some pleasure in seeing Madara's face twist in annoyance briefly.
"Might I ask as to the nature of this change, then?" he inquired, in his silky, deep voice. Just as interested to hear what the causation of Obito's shift in allegiance, or at the very least, what had caused him to turn against Ozai and his cause, Sasuke kept his gaze carefully locked on Madara, but listened closely next to him.
Obito was quiet for a brief spell, before answering as directly Sasuke supposed he could have.
"I realized that the subjugation of a population is not something that belongs in the hands of a single person, or even multiple persons," he said. "I believe our plan, our quest for the Infinite Tsukuyomi, remains something that holds honor and value in a sense, but…"
Strangely enough, he chuckled then, a sad sound against the desolate quiet of the dust swept landscape around them.
"… but I… experienced something that showed me the truth of such a thing. The gravity of taking away that freedom and that humanity that is taken away from instigating such a thing."
He ground his heels into the dirt besides Sasuke and straightened, his voice now ringing out with an edge of confidence and finality.
"So, while I am your ally in our world, Madara, I cannot let you subject this world and its people to your whims."
His heart hammering at the words spoken next to him, Sasuke waited for Madara to grow angry, or further persist with his questions in an attempt to sway Obito's mind, but he only looked ahead calmly, nodding his head so gently it was almost imperceivable. After a beat, he turned towards Sasuke, a question in his eyes.
"And you, Sasuke?"
In that moment, a great deal rushed through Sasuke's head.
He thought of all the memories that had returned to him over the course of the past several longs days, the faces, events and names that had slowly slipped their way back into his conscience. He remembered people like Kakashi, Sakura and Naruto, people like Danzo, the Kage and the Akasuki. He remembered going to Orochimaru in his quest for revenge and he remembered coming to a head with Itachi and all the pain the truth of his brother's betrayal had caused him. He remembered all things he wanted to, just as well as the things he rather wished had stayed forgotten. Sasuke had a life, one full of ambition and promise, and he finally now not only remembered it, but had a chance to return to it. In a sense, Madara had done all the work for him, securing passage home and now he was openly offering it. This legendary revived member of his clan had put before him now what he so intently had sought and all he had to do was walk away from this world, a place that didn't want him and one he didn't belong in. He could just shrug and let Madara take him home. It wasn't like they stood a chance against him anyway; despite his attempt to work Kakashi's teachings as best he could, he knew they didn't have a prayer against someone like Madara. Even if he wanted to resist, there was nothing they could do. Why not at least benefit from something like this now? He had nothing to lose anyways, the decision should honestly have been a stupidly easy one to make.
"Can you stay? Just for a bit?"
In his mind, he felt her tug on his wrist and he smiled fearlessly at Madara.
"You so much as try and hurt a single one of these people and I'll gut you like a fish."
Madara heaved a sigh as though he were looking at two of his children tell him they could drain the ocean by pouring buckets of it into a hole they had dug on the beach.
"I'm saddened by this, truly I am. The both of you held such promise."
He clenched his hands into fists and his knuckles popped before he extended his fingers and wiggled them, loosening them up.
"But if the first two causalities of my experiment must be you two, then so be it. This world will be my testing ground to know just how our plan might work when it is put properly into play, Obito, and I'm sorry you're not able to make this last sacrifice to achieve our dream."
Obito tensed next to Sasuke who also tightened his aching and groaning muscles as Madara drew himself into a readied stance, his arrogant smile returning.
"But first thing's first… if I have to put you both down, the first thing I'll need to do is take your eyes. Such powers they hold, your unique Sharingan, but first, I think I'll take that Rinnegan, shall I?"
With an extreme swiftness that without his unique eyes Sasuke would never have been ready for, he slammed a foot on the ground and there was a violent quake just beneath them that knocked them off their feet and Sasuke knew he must have performed some hand signs with an invisible speed. As Madara's smile widened, he took a step forwards reaching out as Obito grabbed Sasuke's shoulder for balance.
This is it.
Sasuke drew up his hands to make a few hand signs of his own to truly make what he knew would be a last stand, but Obito's hand fell from his shoulder to catch his wrist.
"Wait," was all he said and Sasuke was about to shout that they had no time to wait, as Madara was barreling down at them, surely with no mercy ready to show, but Sasuke's exhausted mind made note of a very curious thing just then.
Ahead of them, Madara wasn't moving. He wasn't even so much as breathing, as the hand coming up to reach for Obito hovered half-raised at his side, the foot behind his forwardmost step coming up to push him forward. Sasuke realized too then that the dirt around his initial step was also motionless, a slightly raised cloud just sitting a few inches off the ground, totally stagnant.
Obito winced next to him, and Madara's hand twitched an inch forward then before stopping again and Sasuke looked over to try and get a grip on what was happening, and what he saw then made some things very clear.
Ahead of him was the real world, cloudy skies and dirt ground, but behnd him as though he had half submerged underwater was Obito's Kamui dimension, a black and desolate void that they both seemed to have entered. Sasuke looked down at his waist and saw with a start that both of their midsections were swirling nauseatingly, obscured by the same effect that occurred whenever Obito tapped into his Kamui.
"What did you do?" Sasuke asked and noted the pain written all over Obito's face as he replied.
"The only thing I could think to," he grunted. "I half-pulled us into Kamui. I've sped up time for us in this dimension, so our upper halves are moving at a rate much quicker than that of the real world, hence why it looks like ol' Madara is having a senior moment."
He smiled briefly at the state of his plan before gritting his teeth, the smile sliding away just as quickly.
"But I can't keep this up for very long; it was all I could think to do though, to buy us some measure of time and ask you if by any chance you have some idea on how to deal with him?"
Sasuke shook his head and Obito nodded in grim resignation. "I thought not. We're both spent, I can tell by how pale and exhausted you look and I know that it's taking just about all the chakra I have left to hold us here. He'll tear us apart the minute we try and kind of counterattack."
There was nothing Sasuke could really say to this since it was at its core a very real and painful truth. Instead, he cocked his head, asking something that actually had been on his mind since Obito had just mentioned it a minute ago.
"So, you really changed your mind? You're willing to give up your life to protect a world that really doesn't owe you anything? Why?"
Obito's gaze drifted down for a moment and his eyes glazed over as a sad smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
"You wouldn't get it."
Sasuke looked at him more intently, finding himself very adamant on getting some more answers before they both were forced to submit to Madara's advance. "Who are you, really? I thought there weren't any Uchiha's left, and yet here you are! I never took the time to think about it, because it wasn't there, but if we're about to both bite it, I think I'd like to know a little more about you and why you've wound up here after all you've done."
Obito looked up then, his eyes focusing as resolve flashed in them. "That doesn't matter now. Not who we were before, not even who we are now. I know you want answers, and I guess you might be entitled to them. But we have one shot to stop Madara and ensure this world doesn't become ensnared by his twisted mind. So there's not a lot of time for storytelling."
Sasuke blinked at him, shaking his head. "I don't get it. How do you expect to stop someone like him? If the stories are true about Madara and his unyielding and almost endless depth of chakra and skill…"
Nodding firmly, Obito said, "I can tell you without a doubt that they are."
Rolling his eyes in aggravation, Sasuke threw his arms up. "Well, then what exactly did you have in mind? You really think we have any kind of chance?"
Fixing his eyes on the figure of Madara which Sasuke could see was now slowly moving consistently forward, Obito's voice lowered as he spoke with that same resolve that glinted in his eyes.
"I asked if you had any ideas because I really would rather not have to go through with this one. It's going to put me in a bad way, but our only chance is the element of surprise and something like that will only work once."
He gave a bitter smile.
"Madara told me that he hadn't set things in motion for himself to be resurrected until the Fourth Great Ninja War was upon us…"
Sasuke opened his mouth to demand what exactly he meant by 'Fourth Great Ninja War' and Obito rolled his eyes. "Don't ask. Anyway, clearly that was not his entire motive since he's hidden this from me and spent years maybe digging into the secrets of dimensional splitting and tapping into this world's Spirit World."
He clenched a fist slowly.
"But Madara isn't the only one who was doing his private research. I did a lot of scavenging into our clan's more hidden documentation, trying to find anything else that I could have as my own secret weapon. And because of that time I spent digging, I might have something we can use to get an upper hand on Madara."
Sasuke watched as single bead of sweat slid down Obito's gore and dirt smeared face.
"It is going to require something from you though, and it might be the hardest thing you've had to do today, honestly."
Not sure exactly what Obito could ask of him that would stress more difficulty than every other hardship he had experienced that day, Sasuke raised an eyebrow, "Yeah? And what's that?"
Obito turned to face him, his mouth curving into a fearless and resigned smile.
"You're gonna have to trust me."
Katara pulled her hands away from the soldier who's burned stump of an arm she had been working on and felt her body decrease in energy not anywhere close to the first time and let out a long sigh. The solider, an Earth Nation man who couldn't have been much older than her; he had been brought before her by Suki and Mai, screaming his head off as he looked at the burnt stub just past his shoulder where firebending had seared away the majority of his right arm. He had passed out as she had worked on him, his screams fading into soft inhales as his body gave in to the physical and mental trauma the war had dealt to him. Katara wondered if he would ever be of sound mind again, an armless, brutally shaken young man with his mind totally shattered by war.
As she took in oxygen in slow long breaths to try and calm herself, trying to enter a state of calm that she hadn't felt all day. More than once, she had nearly caught herself faltering in her perpetual battle to remain in control of her emotions and she knew everyone else was feeling the same way; she saw Ty Lee's lower lip trembling, she watched Suki tighten her lips in a pale line, she saw Mai's hands shaking when she moved the bodies of injured soldiers. She saw it on the face of her own brother, seeing his usually upbeat face pulled into an expression that looked to her like he was about to be sick any moment. Jin had gone running by a few minutes ago and Katara had seen both tracks of tears down her cheeks and what could have been a streak of vomit running down the front of her torn robe; nonetheless, she had been running around as quickly as anyone participating in the relief effort, her ill appearance notwithstanding as her willpower and emotion surged her onward, a sight Katara found extremely impressive, and she grudgingly considered that she may have misjudged the girl.
But even at least with all of them, everyone she knew aiding in the attempt to help and protect injured troops, Katara could see at least them. She got a look at them every couple minutes, helping to carry bodies or provide support to whomever needed them at the time. They were all experiencing mental trauma of an awful sort, but at least Katara knew they were okay.
The same could not be said for anyone else she cared for.
How could I have been so stupid?
She thought of how quickly she had blown off everyone, especially Aang, as she had bullheadedly strode down towards the injured men and women below. In her head, she had done so under the pretense of a responsible outlook on the situation, rooted in common sense, or at least that was what she hoped the others had taken from her actions. But now, Aang, Zuko, Azula, Iroh and Toph were all gone into the fray, with any number of them having the potential of being hurt or…
Damn him.
Yes, they could be dead. And she knew the reality of it, why she had pushed aside everything else in favor of rushing to the injured soldiers and busying her mind with anything but thinking. She had done it to get Sasuke out of her head.
Damn him.
Katara sat back on a pile of rags that had been being used to clean the injured, utterly too tired and angry to care about the uncleanliness of it. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but Sasuke had been on the forefront of her mind for longer than she assumed anyone would have guessed; it had been no secret that she had utterly enthralled in her hate for him, but following their escape from the ship and their one on one time they had spent together, things had changed. Of course, no one knew what had been exchanged between them then, the words they had said and the words that Katara spent time every day trying to imagine what they had been, what Sasuke had been about to tell her. From that moment onward, she had no longer treated him with such animosity, but her emotions had gotten no less tempered; if anything, they had become more overwhelming.
She knew Sasuke meant more to her than she would have admitted to anyone, especially him and even herself to a certain extent, but that meaning was something she hated the idea of confronting. More than anything, she knew that if she were able to speak alone with him just one more time, she would be able to come to terms with everything that was there, but by herself… she didn't think she could handle it. She didn't want to handle it.
And while her much more amenable attitude towards Sasuke had done a good deal in keeping Azula from shooting death glares at her, it had gotten a deal worse overall; Toph had gone from being angry at her that she was constantly so hostile towards him to being constantly of the mind that she Katara was somehow trying to get between her and Sasuke. Mai said much less the same, but Katara still caught the looks the sullen girl would send her way every once in a while when Sasuke was brought up.
He hadn't just made a mess of their world, he had made a mess of her mind and her feelings.
Damn you, Sasuke.
She was shaken from her thoughts then as what sounded like cheers rose up a great distance away, swelling towards her like a wave and Katara looked up, and her eyes widened as she saw what was causing the noise.
She was about a half-kilometer into the city from where the wall had collapsed, moving amongst the rubble of the wall where a base of operations of sorts had been setup, where the higher ranking officers were trying to redirect the counterattack and where the medical effort had been set up. Katara had done her best to pay no mind to the war raging ahead of her beyond the wall's collapsed section, doing everything in her power to just focus on healing the wounded immediately in front of her. But as she listened to the raucous and joyous sound echoing louder and louder in her ears, and she watched the string of Ozai's airships crashed and piled on the heat blasted earth, she dared for the first time that day to hope.
Katara walked a couple paces forward, trying to focus on the distant shadows rolling across the ground that she knew to be the fronts of the armies. Bursts of fire were now extremely infrequent and as she squinted to try and get a better idea on what was happening, Mai came up beside her, out of breath.
"What's happened? I saw the airships going down while working on the supply line, but—"
Before she could finish her question that Katara was sure she wouldn't have an answer for, a great roar of cheers resounded much closer and Katara turned her eyes away from the battlefield to see General Gokan pushing his way into the head camp, shaking hands with Earth and Water nation soldiers as he came before holding up his palms to call for silence. Katara was vaguely aware of Suki, Sokka, Ty Lee and Jin all coming up to stand beside her as the call for quiet was passed amongst the hundreds of men and women and after several long seconds, something close to silence was achieved.
Gokan's voice rang out loud and proud and Katara felt another wave of positive emotion in the form of relief swell up as she saw Iroh, Zuko and Azula all just behind him.
"Due to the destruction of Sozin's Comet, Ozai's forces are being routed and are falling into full retreat! The Fire Lord himself has been captured and will be brought in to be placed in Ba Sing Se custody shortly! His airships have fallen, his forces have been broken! The day is won!"
In a rising tide of sound that nearly made Katara want to cover her ears, the forward camp erupted in a roar of triumph, picked up by nearly every conscious man and woman. Katara supposed this raw outburst made a good deal of sense; an hour ago, standing against Ozai's offense was as much a suicidal mission as there was. And now, through means that surely not a person there understood, the comet had been destroyed and the Fire Nation was retreating. A victory that had seemed impossible was upon them and Katara knew that was surely just as much confusion spread about her, stifled as it was by the joy of triumph.
Katara had to catch herself being more than a little selfish; seeing Zuko and Iroh, and even Azula to a certain extent was just about as relieving to her as any declaration of victory could be.
Ty Lee must have caught sight of the three of them then and gave a loud and deep sigh, "Oh, thank God," as she leaned into Mai who put an arm around her. Suki stepped up, looking around with her hawklike eyes. Her voice was raised to be heard over the only slightly diminishing cheering that surrounded them.
"That's two of our group down then, three to go. Just need Toph and—"
"Toph's here."
At the sound of her voice, Katara whirled on her heel to see Toph standing just behind them with her arms crossed, looking mostly indifferent to the situation. Sokka gave a whoop of happiness and surprise, clapping her on the back as he laughed, "Hey, you little jerk! Why'd you go running off like that, we all thought you were gonna stay with us! How are you gonna tell us you ran off like that and almost just straight up got yourself killed?!"
"I might have, honestly, if Aang hadn't shown up," Toph said in a tone that matched the indifference on her face, though Katara watched her face soften as Ty Lee walked up and dropped to her knees to pull Toph into a hug. Of all the relationships that had sprouted up as a result of their group growing in size, Toph and Ty Lee's almost silent connection that had become a sisterly sort of bond was the most surprising. As she wrapped her small arms around Ty Lee, she pointed her head in their direction, asking, "Where is he, anyway?"
"He's not with you?" Katara asked and she felt a pang as she watched Toph's face stiffen at the sound of her voice.
"No," the earthbender said as she and Ty Lee broke apart. "He came back with me to the front line and then left to find you guys, I thought."
Immediately, a fair number of them lifted their eyes to the sky as though expecting to see Aang zip by above; Katara's relief immediately had begun to wane into anxiety at the thought that no one among them knew where he was.
Mai then also asked the question that Katara had desperately been hoping she wouldn't have to be the one to ask.
"And no one's… seen Sasuke either?"
She almost sounded like she wasn't quite able to get the question out and as she said it Katara met her eyes and they spent a single moment glaring at one another before they both looked away intently.
"Well… obviously, I didn't see him, but me and Aang ran into him just before the airships came down," Toph said casually. Katara found herself deeply glad Aang wasn't there in that moment as she turned and practically shouted out, "Where?!" before immediately feeling extreme guilt in being glad Aang wasn't present in their group just then.
Toph blinked, and for a moment Katara was sure Toph was going to get in her face about her reaction, but fortunately, her words were nothing more than her explanation.
"Aang caught up with me as I was going full on at the army and tried to talk me into leaving. But right when the army was coming up on us, Sasuke showed up and saved us."
Katara closed her eyes as she considered what Sasuke still being alive meant.
He destroyed a comet and he survived. He's still alive, he's okay.
When she realized that last thought might not actually have been true, she aired it out as a question.
"Is he okay?"
Toph's face turned down slightly and Katara had to fight down the urge to run up and shake the girl by the shoulders when she didn't immediately reply.
"He was… he was hurt. He was really worn out. But he was still…"
She swallowed and Katara could tell that what Toph was saying was hard for her to relive.
"He still just wouldn't stop, even though the day was over, he had won it for us, but he still wouldn't stop until Ozai was done. He went after the Fire Lord after saving Aang and I, so if Iroh, Azula and Zuko are there after they went to fight him…"
Even as she trailed off, Jin picked up on her train of thought. "…Then Sasuke must be fine, right?"
Everyone's attention turned back to the three members of Ozai's family, pondering if that was truly the case. Even from the good distance away that they were, Katara could see Azula looking relatively composed, so nothing too terrible could have happened, right?
"Let's go find out," she said curtly. "Aang and Sasuke aren't going to find themselves."
With that, she marched down towards the crowd of soldiers, intent on weaving her way through them to reach Azula and demand where Sasuke was; if anyone on the planet knew of his whereabouts, it would probably be her.
Only having half-disappeared into Kamui for what was about a couple seconds in real world time, Sasuke collapsed out of Obito's pocket dimension to fall to his hands and knees, utterly overwhelmed and gasping for breath. Ahead of him, he was vaguely aware of Aang's unconscious form still resting on the ground, the light show that was the blue and green portal that had been tapped into, and Madara's imposing and dominating silhouette towering a couple meters before them. He stopped walking their way as both Sasuke and Obito were dumped unceremoniously on the craggy ground before him.
"Dear oh dear," he intoned almost sadly. "Was even just trying to escape into Kamui too much for you both? You really shouldn't resist; if some mad sense of righteousness is keeping you from accepting the reality I will bring to this world, fighting back will hardly be something that will grant either of you badly weakened souls much dignity. Why don't you just give me your eyes and I vow to end you quickly?"
The barely managed timing of what he and Obito had just managed to achieve was not lost on Sasuke and he panted towards the ground, trying to get ahold of himself; if he didn't, this last ditch plan would be for nothing. They would have a single window in which to make their play and it was all on Obito's clock now and Sasuke waited for the move as the pair of them gasped for air from where they now rested, both on all fours. Sasuke flicked a glance towards Obito who looked to be even worse condition now, but in truth, all Sasuke needed was for his ears and legs to work; if they did, it would all come down to Sasuke and his very limited knowledge of the technique he was about to attempt.
Ahead of them, Madara sighed.
"Youth clouds your judgement, both of you. You are both so certain of your own idealism that you can't see the path forward. This world is nothing to us, we are gods to these people. Why shouldn't we be able to use this place as a means to our own ends?"
Neither of them replied or looked up towards him and he sighed again.
"But I can see my words are falling on deaf ears. Very well, allow me to end this, and put you both out of your misery."
Sasuke, despite his surging mind, barely could hold back a smile at those words; deaf ears were the only thing that could keep this plan from working after all.
Come on… do it.
Madara took another step their way and Obito sprung into action. He pushed himself as swiftly as his beaten body would allow to his feet and swayed for a moment, his face still directed groundward as he let out a shaking roar of determination and broke into a sprint towards Madara, crashing into him and wrapping his arms around the undead man's waist in an attempt to tackle him.
Madara didn't even budge as Obito's weakened form crashed into him and he looked down at him with a smile of pity.
"That's it, then? A sorry attempt to say the least. Bu no matter; in essence, you have just brought your eyes to me, making this honestly the best move I would have liked you to make, even if—"
As he spoke, Madara reached down with a hand and pulled Obito's head back by the hair to get a good look at his face, his other hand coming back, fingers arched and poised to jab into Obito's face and pull free his eyes. But as he saw that face, he stopped talking and froze.
Where once had burned both an eye of red and black, and another of light purple, there were now two black pits staring up at Madara as a grin broke over Obito's face and he reached around Madara's body to try and force him off balance.
"Now!" he shouted, but Sasuke was already on it. Even as Madara's gaze stunned gaze looked towards him, the Rinnegan that had just now been infused into his own eye blazed with energy as Sasuke dug deep to muster up the chakra to perform a last technique to protect this world from total subservience.
What happened next would be something Sasuke would replay over and over in his head afterwards, contemplating all the different ways he could have prevented it from happening.
As Sasuke fired off the Shinra Tensei, Madara's expression turned to a snarl, his reflexes clearly still well in order as he shook off his surprise at this turn of events. As he and Obito both stumbled back towards the glowing arch behind them, he snapped off a quick few hand seals and fire crackled around his hands as he prepared to cast a jutsu; as he did, Obito must have felt the movements despite not being able to see them, and his arms went from wrapped around Madara's waist to swiping towards his opponent's arms. The jutsu that would have been heading straight for Sasuke blasted away and into the sky as Obito's arms knocked Madara's askew and a jet of compressed orange flame whirled up, spiraling madly through the air above them. As it did, the Shinra Tensei struck both Obito and Madara, hurling them into the portal. Sasuke had a moment to hear Madara scream in anger as he and Obito disappeared behind a brilliant glow of green and blue energy; remembering the last step of their plan, Sasuke sprinted towards the portal, but stopped dead in his tracks as he watched Madara's jutsu whip wildly through the air. It wisped in a psychotic pattern above him and Sasuke felt the world almost seem to fall into slow motion as the fire finally arced down and hit the ground between him and the archway.
It was all Sasuke could do to hurl another miniscule cast of Shinra Tensei at Aang's body and fling it clear of harm as Madara's Fire Release jutsu impacted the earth and he put the rest of his energy into vaulting away as best he could; Sasuke didn't know exactly what it had been, a compressed combustion attack of some sort, one that would have burned away his life in a flash had Obito not redirected it. Despite the fact that it had appeared as a thin tongue of fire, only about as wide as his forearm, when it impacted the ground, the resounding impact resulted in a blinding explosion, the constricted fire bursting out in a flower of heat and energy that was sufficient to throw Sasuke back in its wrath. Sasuke could practically hear Madara scream again as the blast seared at his body, sending him hurling to skid away from its searing wrath.
The heat and light that the jutsu had created died away quickly, but Sasuke remained where he lay for several seconds after, almost wishing the attack had killed him or at least knocked him unconscious; that would have been preferable to the absolute pain that wracked his entire body. Not only had his aching and scorched form just been laid bare to another devastating strike, his head was throbbing with so much pain after Obito's transfusion, it felt like his skull was about to split open.
Still, his focus and raw determination were enough to get through to him as he clenched his eyes tightly shut in agony.
Get ahold of yourself! You have to follow them through and seal off the—
As he shakily lifted his head, his heart skipped a beat.
The glowing archway was gone. No longer could Sasuke see the shifting and swirling colors, or the readied and angry expressions that had lingered behind it. He and Obito had planned to take Madara through together and the spirits waiting for them would have dealt with the rest; Madara had clearly made a great deal of enemies in the Spirit World and while he had opened the portal, he hadn't bothered to look through it and seen the numerous spirits that were clearly waiting for him to pass through to dish out their anger on him for his intrusion. Neither Sasuke or Obito could have ensured their own safety, but they had hoped that pointing their finger at Madara immediately might have been enough to save their own skin; the surely infinite power of the waiting spirits would deal with him and perhaps the pair of them could then try and negotiate passage back to their own world.
Of course, this had only come about as a result of the plan that they had put into motion inside Kamui. Obito had told Sasuke of an old practice that the Uchiha had abandoned likely a few decades before Madara's birth, the art of transfusing eyes. Sasuke had heard many stories of Uchiha taking the eyes of their fellow clanmates, and had even nearly experienced this with Itachi, or so he had thought, but the practice of infusing eyes was a much more dangerous and invasive act; one Uchiha would infuse the powers of their eyes into the eyes of another, essentially combining them and allowing for an individual to have access to the powers of both. It was abandoned early on as a result of its dangerously low success rate in that the host body would often reject the infusion and often result in permanent damage or death to either the transfusing host or the donor.
Obito had informed Sasuke however, that while studying this forbidden technique, he had theorized that the reason the transfusion often failed had been due to the host's body involuntarily rejecting the eyes being offered, rather like an immune system fighting a virus. Hence, he said, the odds of them both surviving the process were favorable, considering Sasuke's body was in no real condition to protect itself from what was essentially an invasive attack on its physical self.
And to the credit of his theory and after an exceptionally painful and uncomfortable process, Sasuke had been granted the abilities of the Rinnegan and Obito's Sharingan. But when the process was nearly over, Sasuke had seen through a blur of pain that Obito's eyes hadn't just transfused their power, but they had been withered out and destroyed; apparently there was indeed a side effect after all that would result in Obito's blindness as a result of the procedure.
"Don't mind me," Obito had said with a smile, a disturbing sight when coupled with the gaping pits now sunken into his face. "This is the least of what I deserve."
He had moved his Sharingan's abilities last as he knew the moment he did, Kamui would collapse around them with him no longer in control; in an extremely tight window, he had performed the last of the transfusion as he pulled them out of it with Kamui closing in a nauseating fashion behind them.
Obito's plan had worked perfectly: he had moved the power of his eyes to Sasuke, he had taken Madara completely by surprise and thus allowed Sasuke to use Shinra Tensei, something Madara would not have been able to see coming and thus had no time to dry and deflect or counter it, and he and Madara were flung into the Spirit World.
But there was a piece missing as Sasuke scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pounding in his head and the swaying wildness of his vision. He staggered over to where the gate had been, throwing out an arm as though expecting himself to pass into the now invisible Spirit World entrance, but his arm found only dusty air.
He looked about wildly as though expecting some trick, to perhaps see Obito and Madara standing somewhere nearby. But all he saw was Aang's body thrown free of the blast area and the now charred corpse of Fire Lord Ozai, the wood and roots that had held him now burned away, leaving only a blackened smoldering husk. While he had given himself the wherewithal to move Aang free of the explosive combustion, Ozai's unconscious form had been granted no such consideration and was now a gently smoking heap, a rather stomach-churning sight. Sasuke gave him a moment of his attention, wondering if Ozai had felt any pain just before the end and imagining that if he himself had been much closer, he might have suffered the same fate. But his disdain for the man quickly moved him along, his mind racing past this casualty of Madara's desperate attack. There was something much more important to him than Ozai's state of being, and when he caught sight of that, his heart flipped.
No.
He crashed to his knees to look down in stunned silence at the two archstones that Madara had produced. Both were in about the same place they had been when they were activated, but the one on the right, surrounded by the explosive blast residue from the Fire Release jutsu had cracked down its middle. It was clear that the attack had impacted it directly and had taken apart any conductive properties it had previously held in being able to create access to the Spirit World.
No.
Not willing to accept it, Sasuke grabbed both the rocks in shaking hands and crawled over to Aang; frantically, he rubbed them against the blood that still leaked from where Madara had cut his arm and then placed both the rocks back at about a meter apart. When nothing happened, he moved them, tweaking them again and again when they remained nothing more than ornate stones, one of them completely broken. Sasuke kept at it, ignoring the fact that the undamaged stone felt rather as though there were something in it, like a shell of some kind while the one that was cracked felt as empty as he did just then.
No.
As he picked up the cracked archstone for the umpteenth time, it broke along the crack that ran over its surface, the two pieces dropping to the ground at his feet unceremoniously. He stared stupidly down at them, his mind drawing a complete blank.
God damn it, no.
He closed his aching and throbbing eyes and slowly slid back to his knees, bowing his head and digging his fingers into his scalp. How had this happened? How had the one person who had been openly glad to be there in that world been taken back, and he, Sasuke, remained there, stagnant amongst the gore and dirt of the battlefield, despite his whole goal having been to travel home? How was this fair?
Sasuke felt his mouth pulling into a disgusted snarl at his train of thought; he knew better, there was no fairness in his life. He had long since learned not to let self-pity plague his steps as it would have taken him apart had he let it the day Itachi had killed his family and clan.
But truly, this was the worst it could have been.
Had the spirits caught up to Madara, the Avatars of the past and the creatures that dwelled beyond imagination? Had they captured and imprisoned him somewhere within to keep him from ever wreaking such havoc on their world? Or had they thrown him back to where he had come, somewhere where he would be free to continue trying to penetrate both worlds? Or perhaps conversely, maybe in his immense rage and power, he had laid waste to the Spirit World, tearing it apart beyond what Sasuke could see. Was he taking out his fury on Obito, torturing or killing him for this setback?
It was all pointless to consider: they were there and Sasuke was here. Madara had said that in his findings, the only other archstones had been taken far beyond the borders of the four nations. Sasuke had been offered a path home, but yet here he remained, breathing in smoke and dirt, while his body longed for relief. He wanted to tip over then and there, and never wake up.
"No."
The sound of his own voice sounded foreign on his ringing ears and he lifted up the surviving archstone, and began to squeeze it in anger, willing it to explode and shatter just as the first one had before the strength fell from his arms and his whole body slumped. He half-expected for another rip in spacetime to appear before him and for Madara to step out again, full of rage for this inconvenience, thus putting him down then and there. Sasuke would have been powerless to stop him, and the promise of oblivion didn't quite seem so terrible just then.
But there was nothing else. Just the gentle sound of the wind pulling across the wasteland and the still steady pounding of his heart.
Aang would return to consciousness minutes later, eyes springing open and coughing in the dust around him as he rolled to an upright position, wincing at the throbbing pain in his head and blinking in confusion at the blood smeared on his arm from a rather severe cut he had sustained. He pushed himself up, remembering what had been happening just before he had been knocked out and he looked around for the three people who had been around him at the last point he recalled, but the sight before him was much different. He could only see two people and they were a couple dozen meters away and he was forced to pick himself up and jog weakly over only to come to a grinding halt as he realized what he was looking at.
The first thing he laid eyes on was a body, one surrounded by the shriveled remains of roots and crackling bits of wood here and there. From where the body lay, Aang didn't need much more confirmation to know that the traumatizingly scorched corpse was what was left of the Fire Lord and he was barely able to turn his head away in time before he vomited what little was in his stomach, adding a sickeningly wet splatting sound to the relative quiet that surrounded him and the one other living person present.
As his watering eyes laid themselves on the slumped form of Sasuke resting on his knees, he called out to him, but the only other living person he saw was unresponsive. Aang grimaced, determinedly not looking at the Fire Lord's body as he staggered over to stand just behind Sasuke, shouting the only two words that made any sense to cry out with just then.
"What happened?!"
Somehow, Sasuke seemed to be even stiller than what remained of Ozai and Aang waited for several long and ponderous seconds as he tried to imagine what could have just occurred in the brief time he was unconscious. Sasuke's brother was gone, as was Obito and even as Aang looked around desperately, trying to spot where they might have gone, he somehow knew he wasn't going to see either of them.
Finally, not able to take it anymore, he prepared to yell at Sasuke again, but before he could, the kneeling young man before him pushed himself to his feet, his back still to Aang. He swayed there for a moment before turning around and walking towards Ozai's body, slipping a hand into his pocket as he did.
The expression he wore was one that Aang didn't think he had seen on Sasuke's face before. He had grown used to Sasuke's usual attitude of apathy and coldness, his face always reflecting that level of thinking, that same stoic outlook, almost always remaining unshaken by anything around him. For the few times he had grown angry, frustrated, even hysterical, he had always returned to a look of pure calm, as though nothing in his life could offer him any reason to look otherwise. Here too, his expression was devoid of emotion or anything that would tell Aang how he was feeling, but it was his eyes that told the story. Those black orbs that Aang had before tried many a time to avoid staring down were rich with a despair that was almost resigned in its simplicity. To Aang, it looked like Sasuke had suffered the most grievous personal defeat he could have, but had already come to terms with his reality.
He walked past Aang without a word, kicking aside two small darkly-colored rocks that Aang hadn't noticed before, sending them flying away. Stopping above the form of Ozai's charred remains, he looked down at him for a long second before reaching down and grabbing the Fire Lord by what was left of his neck. Aang closed his eyes and ground his teeth as there followed an almost crunching and crackling sound as Sasuke peeled the body from where it had been essentially grafted to the dirt. Utterly composed even as Aang regarded the battered and shaking form that he was in, Sasuke turned and started to limp towards Ba Sing Se, Ozai's body in tow behind him. Aang watched him go and let him walk several dozen meters before he began to follow after him.
He caught up to Sasuke on his left, not particularly because he wanted to be walking beside him just then, but because he didn't want to be anywhere where he might accident a glance at the horrible form that remained. As they walked, they reached a point where the ground at their feet became littered with much residue from the day, bodies amongst them; Aang looked away from them too, turning his eyes mostly to the clouds above in an attempt to avoid having to see any more gore and carnage than he already had, but still, there was something deeply personal about Ozai's body as it continued to make a scuffed dragging sound behind them as Sasuke pulled it along.
The walk took them about twenty minutes to go from where they had been out in the wasteland to reaching the blasted remains of the wall itself. Aang joined Sasuke in ignoring the stares of the soldiers they passed as they neared a tall pile of rubble just about where the wall of Ba Sing Se had originally stood. A cacophony of noise echoed from just up ahead past the hill of debris and Aang was the first up it to look over the other side of it to see what was causing all the noise.
A plethora of soldiers clogged the ground in front of them, many cheering and hugging one another, while the rest were talking amongst one another. The soldiers closest to the center of the camp were silent, their attention on the activity happening right about in the middle of it all. Aang could see both General Gokan and Iroh attempting to pull Katara and Azula away from one another, both of them shouting furiously at the other. Just beside them, Aang could see Mai, Zuko, Sokka, Suki, Jin, Ty Lee and Toph just beside them, all looking like they wanted to intervene, but unsure of how they could.
The sight of them all made Aang want to smile, but he couldn't convince his mouth to obey that desire. He could only stare blankly ahead as he laid eyes on all of his friends and companions, all looking to be alive and well. His body felt rather numb and a distant part of him wondered if he was in shock as for the most part, any real emotion continued to evade him.
This didn't stop a soldier near the base of the hill of debris to notice him and point him out and before long, a resounding cheer rolled over the camp as every face in sight turned to face him. He saw too Azula and Katara stop looking like they were about to kill each other and look over, along with everyone else; Aang saw them all break into smiles or relieved expressions at the sight of him, as General Gokan called out over the congratulatory shouts of the soldiers.
"Avatar Aang! How good it is to see you in good health! I don't suppose you—"
Even as the general started asking the question, Sasuke breached the top of the hill beside him and Aang immediately could sense the change in tone amongst the forward camp. Cheering didn't die away completely, but it softened to a significant degree and as he looked around, he could see the fear and worry written on every face in sight. This didn't translate to his friends as he saw Azula's face break into a beaming grin and Toph's expression too perked up. Sokka waved stupidly at them which was almost enough to make Aang smile properly, but as he watched Katara's face clearly attempt to hide the relief she felt, he couldn't manage it as he wondered who exactly it was she was looking at when she felt that relief.
Gokan too seemed not at all nervous about welcoming them both back to the city.
"Sasuke! I heard that on top of everything else you've managed, you took down the Fire Lord! I hope he's with you?"
Sasuke said nothing and Aang looked towards him. His expression was still that dead, resigned look, but after a moment, he pulled back and threw the body of Fire Lord Ozai down the pile of rubble.
The sound it made as it thumped unceremoniously down into the midst of the soldiers present was one that made Aang's stomach churn again, but this time, he couldn't look away from it. The body rolled to a stop at the front of the camp and the soldiers nearest it pulled away as though afraid it might attack them as the silence fell just about entirely then. Soldiers continued to pull away, opening up a great open berth around the corpse, stretching all the way to the center of camp where Aang's companions stood.
Their faces all echoed the same shock that Aang knew was subduing him at that very moment. Ty Lee clapped her hands over her mouth as Mai's mouth pulled at the corners in pitying disgust. Zuko's mouth was agape and he dropped to his knees as Iroh put a hand on his shoulder, the older man's face rich with a deep sadness. Katara had stiffened though she stared ahead at Ozai's remains with her eyes full of iron, though Aang thought even from that distance that he could see her hands clenched into fists and shaking at her side. Suki had pulled herself almost involuntarily towards Sokka who had put an arm around her as they both stared resolutely at the remains as Jin buried her face in her hands beside them as she turned away. Even Azula, in all of her bravado, attitude and disdain, had been paralyzed into stunned silence at what lay before her.
Aang couldn't find himself able to follow Sasuke as the older boy walked down the hill and stepped over the body without even the slightest hint that he knew it was there. He walked towards their group, ignoring the looks cast towards him and the way Jin and Ty Lee pulled back from his approach. Sasuke didn't address a single one of them as he passed by, ignoring Azula reaching a hand shakily for him and Toph who did the same. The soldiers behind them parted silently as he walked their way and Aang watched as Sasuke walked away into the city, alone, disappearing into the layer of dust that omnisciently remained, leaving only silence in his wake.