The Never-Fading Light

Chapter 10: The Truth of It

How quickly a person can fall into old routines.

Sasuke had been trapped in a prison of his own making for a decade. He had only been allowed to enjoy fleeting moments of life during the blackouts. Ironic, that Itachi used to take a part of his life during those spells, and now he had become more like his brother than he had ever thought possible, and made it his mission to take the life himself.

He had woken up in the Akatsuki's hospital wing over a week ago. A month after he had slain Naruto in cold blood. Slain him for power, and if he were being honest, revenge. The Kyuubi was roiling in his belly, chakra erratic as he was being kept under constant sedation as his body adjusted. It was the only mercy Itachi had shown him. Not only because that cursed diadem wasn't fastened to his head, but the heavy sedation left his mind a befuddled mess of fog. He didn't feel guilt. He didn't feel pain. He just felt heavy. Like the weight of the world was on his shoulders as this thing swam inside of him.

He loved it.

The power was intoxicating. Sasuke had forgotten the way he could drown in this chakra. The beast inside of him growling ferally with want. He wanted to rule. He wanted to bite. He wanted to snarl out the rage he felt over having to gut his best friend. Over the fact that Itachi had taken it upon himself to kill his other half...or to put him deep enough to sleep that he couldn't reach him.

He couldn't act on any of these thoughts though. He couldn't even access the chakra he felt licking against his soul. The sedation was powerful. What was going to happen when they decided to wean him off of it? In another world it had taken Itachi months to quell the Kyuubi's fury. He had used the diadem as a leash. He wondered if Itachi would dare now. He wondered if his brother would ever grow the courage to come into the hospital room and witness the monster he had created.

Coward.

"Sasuke," he heard a voice speak from the door. He wanted it to be Itachi, but it wasn't. Of course it wasn't, but it was beyond familiar.

Mismatched eyes glanced over to the door, filling with immediate tears as emotions overcame him even in this drugged haze. "Sasori," his voice broke, sounding muddled and pained in his own ears. He hadn't seen him since the night of the forbidden jutsu. He hadn't seen him since the man had been his own hands, helping them step into the damnation Sasuke had willed upon them.

Struggling to sit up in the bed, Sasuke ignored the way his head spun with the drugs as he reached for the puppet master. "I missed you. How's Dei?"

Sasori's eyes knitted a little in confusion, and Sasuke was always fascinated how many emotions could appear on a wooden face. Why was he confused? Did he doubt his affections? No, Sasuke realized with disappointment. He just didn't understand them. This wasn't his friend...his brother.

"He's alright," Sasori murmured after a moment, and Sasuke's befuddled ears heard the slight shift in his tone. Wariness. "I'm sure he'll be more than amused that you've shown such concern."

Sasuke shut his eyes, leaning back against the pillow. "I live to amuse that idiot," he managed, aching to see his friend even as his hands were still stained with the other blonde's blood. Would Deidara suffer the same fate if he continued to care for him? Did he even care for him in this world?

"You're acting strange," Sasori pointed out, an unfamiliar coldness in his tone.

"It's probably all the drugs," Sasuke easily supplied. "I assume this was my Aniki's idea?"

"To keep you drugged and unaware?" Sasori questioned, sarcasm dripping from his tone. "I can't ever imagine Itachi doing anything like that."

Sasuke let out a snort. Well...at least Sasori still hated his brother. He didn't know if there was a place for him in this reality if they were friends. "He's scared," he informed Sasori, knowing the other would get a kick out of Itachi's weakness.

"Scared?" Sasori questioned him, coming closer to his bedside. "Of what? The Kyuubi?" his eyes glanced over Sasuke's form, shaking his head in disgust. "I can't believe you let him put that inside of you."

Again. He had let him put it inside of him again.

Itachi was especially gifted at putting things inside of him. A monstrous beast was clearly no exception. "I don't think the Jinchuuriki scare him. He's too obsessed with their power to tremble at their might." He probably shouldn't be speaking this freely, but it had been so long since he had been able to talk to anyone like this.

"What then?" Sasori asked after a moment, clearly confused with where all of this was going.

The Uchiha swallowed hard, blinking his green and red eyes at his old teacher as he debated how much to say. "Me," he finally conceded. "He's afraid of me...of the words I'm going to say to him." Even more still, Itachi feared something else even more. "He thinks I'm going to reject him."

Sasori looked sickened at the very idea. He supposed it would be repulsive to him. He didn't quite know what him and Itachi were to each other. Not yet. "Did he molest you?" was the inevitable question asked, and Sasuke felt himself laughing at the very assumption.

"Probably...at some point. I can't remember," he laughed harder than as Sasori's face shifted to fury, and he realized he must sound insane. He needed to fix this or they would put him down like a rabid dog. "It's not like that now, though. I want it."

"It's vile," Sasori supplied, face screwed up in disgust. "What he's done to you is vile. You don't even act like my student...my prodigy."

There were times he would have reveled in being called a prodigy by Sasori. The one in his world was never so approving. Though, he supposed the one in his world had always know he got fucked by his own brother.

"Are you taking the high ground?" Sasuke questioned him, sobering of his laughter. "After you let him lie to me...helped him poison me…lured me out here."

"I wouldn't if I had known how sick he was," Sasori tried, but Sasuke cut him off.

"You knew how sick he was," he wanted to vomit as he strained around the sedation, feeling chakra pulsing in his veins in spite of the drugs. His eyes slit with the fox, teeth elongating as he smirked. "You just didn't know how sick I was." Fear. It was delicious and pulsing throughout the room as he pushed himself up, insides pounding with strength and sensation. ...He was waking up.

Konan swept into the room, seemingly weightless as her dark manicured nails pushed him back, sticking a needle into his neck, as if she had been waiting for the opportunity. The Akatsuki member had been at his bedside almost as much as the healers. She had been keeping him quelled, keeping the Kyuubi bottled up inside of him.

He glowered at her as he slumped back to the bed, the slitted fox eyes fading from his own as chocolate brown and green were left over. "Bitch," he managed, not willing to admit to the woman how relieved he was that she had stopped his ascent. He wasn't ready to give into the fox yet. He wasn't ready to succumb to the power. Not before he spoke with Itachi.

Konan sighed in sadness, shaking her head. "Sasori, I told you not to upset him."

Sasori rose a dark red eyebrow at her. "Oh? And what of him upsetting me?"

She gave him a scolding look at that, eyes monitoring Sasuke's vitals as he swam in a drugged haze. "He's more delicate than you are."

"Delicate?" Sasori questioned. "I think you have him confused for someone else. Don't worry, it's a mistake people have been making around him a lot lately."

"I love you too Sasori," Sasuke whispered, sincerity in his tone. He had never expressed the affections he had felt for his friends. ...For the ones who had picked up the pieces of him once Itachi had died. He supposed it didn't matter now, but it did make him feel a bit better to know that Sasori in one world at least knew he loved him. He wondered if Itachi would care. ...In another life he had stabbed Sasori through the heart for just being his friend.

"What's wrong with him?" The puppet master asked, and Sasuke would only concede a small bit of hurt at the rejection.

"I have my suspicions," Konan admitted. "Itachi is keeping secrets again. He should have told us his plan with this boy."

"Yes," Sasori agreed, distaste in his tone. "But the day Itachi starts baring his soul is the day hell freezes over."

Sasuke laughed in spite of himself as he shifted in the bed, eyes locked on the doorway as he felt his brother's chakra long before seeing him standing there. The hate he thought would fill him was numbed with sedation and the realization that Itachi hadn't been the monster this time. Not really. He had given him the choice, and Sasuke himself had chosen to murder Naruto for his own gains.

He really was the monster at the end of his own book.

"Aniki…" he greeted, not having to look to see the way Sasori and Konan shifted uncomfortably. "Finally found time to see the results of your meticulous planning?" he dug the words in, not knowing if they got their usual bite in his tired state.

Itachi ignored him, turning to Konan instead. "I told you not to sedate him anymore unless it was absolutely necessary."

"He was turning," she argued against her leader. "It was necessary, or did you want a feral Jinchuuriki loose in the compound?" Itachi doused her in a look of pure ice water, and Konan stepped back out of nervous fear. "Itachi I didn't mean…"

"You both are dismissed," he managed, fury and insanity licking at the sharingan spreading across his irises.

Sasori looked like he wanted to argue, to say more to Sasuke. He had obviously come here for a purpose. In his madness Sasuke had completely ruined the moment of possibility. Was it just to ask him about Itachi? The Kyuubi? It didn't matter now as they both left the room, leaving him alone with his brother for the first time since Naruto...since Itachi had killed the other soul inside of him. Since they had completed their mutual damnation.

Red eyes finally focused on him, and Sasuke flinched as that familiar distaste once more filled them. The distaste he would always try to hide whenever Sasuke was looking. It was the Kyuubi...it reminded his brother so much of Naruto. Of all the pain that one name caused.

"Why didn't you come to see me when I woke up?" Sasuke finally asked, steadying himself for the inevitable rejection that would roll candidly off Itachi's tongue.

Itachi studied him for a moment, eyes calculating and hard. "All the questions you must have, and this is where you start?"

Sasuke let out a soft laugh, eyelids heavy as the drugs started to take more of an affect. "It's as good of place to start as any in this fucked up story of ours, wouldn't you agree?"

"We rarely agree with each other, I wouldn't dream of starting now, Otouto," his brother said lowly, coming closer into the room, still keeping his distance as if he was nervous to get too close. "How is your control over it?"

Always to business, his strategic Aniki. "Not as good as before...better than the last time when I first took it in." Sasuke eyed him suspiciously. "You didn't use the diadem."

"No," Itachi agreed, edging closer. "You hate it, and I must admit, I don't have it."

Sasuke grinned at that, shaking his head. "Ah. That makes more sense than your sudden benevolence."

Itachi arched an eyebrow. "Trying to say I never do anything nice for you?" he questioned, eyes locked on the blanket covering Sasuke's torso.

Sasuke understood what he was implying, and his palm went to his belly almost protectively. "Aniki, this wasn't for me." Itachi's eyes were fixed on the spot, and Sasuke's mouth tilted slightly as he remembered that particular kink. "There's no scar anymore. What's your excuse now?"

Sharingan eyes flicked up to meet his eyes, and Sasuke was taken aback by the want in them. "I've never needed an excuse to look at you, Brightness," he managed. "You're mine to do with as I please."

Arousal pulsed through his drugged form, and Sasuke's fists clenched in the sheets as his breath quickened. "You killed him," he accused, and they both knew he wasn't talking about Naruto. That blood was on his hands and his alone. Regardless of the fact that Itachi would have done it if he hadn't.

Itachi flinched in pain, guilt covering his features as he considered it. Sasuke had rarely seen him express such a thing. Perhaps it had actually hurt him to kill his other half. "Did you love him?" he questioned his brother, earning a pained glare from the other.

"What do you think, Otouto?" Itachi hissed at him. "Did I love you before we were what we were?" he asked, voice a hiss of frustration and pain.

"We're even then, aren't we?" Sasuke asked after a moment. "We both killed someone we loved...just...not as much as each other."

Itachi nodded slowly. "So forgiving," he murmured, voice a teasing lilt, and underneath he was still trying to hide the pain over what he had lost. "My benevolent, Otouto," he hesitated a moment, before lifting up his knee to crawl up onto the bed, letting him taste his approval as he blanketed his body, grabbing his face and yanking it to his.

Sasuke kissed him slowly, fighting the sedation as his lips moved of their own accord against his brother's. He was too exhausted for it to ever be anything more than a kiss, and he was sure his brother knew that, but they kneaded their lips together anyways, as if they couldn't help themselves….as if the years of separation had become too much to ever be apart again. Not here, when they had finally gotten back to the way they were. ...Almost.

Itachi shifted on top of him, rolling over and being careful of the IVs in both of Sasuke's arms as he pulled him close. The younger shuddered at how long it had been since he had felt those arms wrapped languidly around him. How long had it been since he had felt at peace?

"It could be forever for us, you know?" Sasuke asked sleepily, laying his head just over the heart he had forced inside this world's Itachi's chest. It was the only way to get it to once more start beating.

"Death comes for us all eventually...but...we got another chance," Itachi murmured, exhaustion evident in his tone as his face was buried in Sasuke's hair, breathing in and out the smell of him.

"We could have more," Sasuke told him, resting his chin against his chest as he glanced up. "I know the jutsu,"

Itachi gave a shuddering laugh, more horrified than amused. "No, Otouto, this is it for us. No more lies. No more deception. Let us live out for all our days knowing the truth of it."

"The truth?" Sasuke questioned, glancing down as Itachi grabbed his hand, slipping the engagement ring on his finger. His heart raced, spittle drying up as his eyes began to flicker with the Kyuubi trying to pulse through his blood.

"Ssshhh…." Itachi quieted his racing mind, Sharingan flooding his eyes as he put the Kyuubi inside back to sleep. "Relax...I wanted to give it back to you the moment I snapped that bracelet on your wrist...But I didn't know how long I could keep you here," he hesitated, as if debating how much to say. "I didn't know if you would take it back."

As if there ever was a question that he belonged to Itachi. As if he hadn't worn the ring that had stolen his soul every day after Itachi had died. ...As if his brother was the only one that had things to atone for.

"Always…" he managed, kissing Itachi softly. "And never," he repeated the words, fingers still shaking as he stared down at the familiar band. The Kyuubi was inside of him now. Itachi was beside him. They had messed up so very many things in their lives, but perhaps this. Perhaps this one sparkle of joy he felt laying here with him now could last forever. Perhaps they could build on it as they expanded their empire...as they took control of the Akatsuki and fulfilled their dreams.

Always…

And Never…

~FIN~

So...

I had originally planned for this to be longer, but than I got to this chapter, and I set them up to be happy. ...In their own super weird way. Happiness following death and sadness. I think it was the only true ending I could give them, and I left it open for potential future fics. I just wanted our boys to not end in death. I know it was a short conclusion, but it felt right. Please let me know what you think. I am sad to let this story go, but I will leave it up to your imagination where they go from here...if they succeed with their empire...together. Thank you so very much for reading!