Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the universe they live in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for myself and don't make any money with it.
A/N: The longest chapter so far... Thanks go again to my beta, Eowyn Unquendor.
I am glad that in the canon Sasuke is now asking some questions, though not yet the ones that are really important - so my story is still a little bit ahead (even though it is mainly AU.) I hope that the canon will also address these questions soon. I really don't know what to make of Itachi.
Chapter Six: From the kyuubi
To be honest, I was not a hundred percent sure of what I said. Some things I knew, and what I did not know, I made up, interpolating from what I knew. Of course my speculations were inspired by what I hoped to be true, and by my plans to make Sasuke join me.
The problem was of course consistency, which I have never been good at, as I don't plan in advance what I am going to say but rather make it up as I go along. Sometimes I forget what I said before, sometimes it just won't fit. That's also why I am rather reluctant when it comes to open lies – it's too difficult to keep track.
"If I had not been denied my own chakra, or my parents' love and recognition no one would have been able to turn me into a weapon", Sasuke repeated.
"It's not that simple", I reminded him. "You were extremely strong, and you could not control your chakra – not because you were evil or easy to manipulate, but because you were too young. Young children have not yet learnt to control their impulses but act directly according to their emotions. Normally that is not a problem as they are too weak to be dangerous, but with you it was different. Something had to be done."
"It's still all wrong", he said after some thinking. "Everyone says they are controlling me in my best interest, and still they are controlling me."
I pitied him. He was desperate, and desperately trying to find the exact point where everything was all wrong, and yet he was not able to put his finger on it. I could have told him, but it could have been dangerous – it would have looked like an attempt from my side to manipulate him. He would have to find it himself.
"It was too dangerous", I continued. "It was not your fault, nor theirs – except perhaps of those who really wanted to turn you into a weapon, as Danzou."
He thought for a while. "It's about the kyuubi", he said suddenly. "I can control it, even without the Mangekyou Sharingan."
"You were born with the power", I confirmed him. "Just as I was. That's why everyone was afraid of you – that's why your chakra had to be partly sealed away. You had summoned it when you were a few months old, unconsciously and unwillingly, as you were far too small to understand what was happening, and still you had caused a lot of damage, forcing the Fourth Hokage to sacrifice himself. Nobody could afford it to happen again."
"And thus the clan planned to seal away my chakra completely, and Danzou made Itachi gain the Mangekyou Sharingan, so that he as well could control the kyuubi."
"Itachi wanted to take the burden of responsibility from your shoulders", I said. "He wanted you to remain innocent, to remain the cute little brother he loved."
"Would he have even gone so far as to blind me, just to make sure that I would remain innocent, and not burdened by the responsibility for the kyuubi?"
"Maybe", I said, even though I still had no idea whether Itachi had really planned to take his eyes. "Maybe however he simply did not want to be blind himself."
He fell back into his brooding.
"Your strength has been your curse", I said.
"You have the same strength, he replied, very bitter. "And no one ever tried to gain control over you."
"Times were different times", I said. "Every clan fought for itself. A child with an enormous chakra would be welcomed then, not feared, as it gave power to the clan. Nowadays all they can think of is the danger such a child presents to the community, and how they will be scared of him when he is grown up."
"You have the same strength", he said again. "And no one ever managed to control you."
"Of course not. I was not like Itachi, or my nephews. I did not depend on others. I did not desperately try to gain the recognition of others. Not everything I did was good, or wise, but I never followed the plans or the orders of another man. Yes, I killed, from passion, and sometimes for power, and sometimes simply to prove my strength, but I never did any strange calculations as Itachi, weighing one life against another, and I never let another man manipulate me."
"What about the woman you keep talking about?" Sasuke asked, and again he managed to catch me off guard with his change of subject. "There are a lot of stories about men who fell in love and got used and manipulated by the woman they fell in love with."
"Not me!" I said. "I was not used and manipulated. I know these stories – I have even met some men who were like this, blinded by their infatuation for this or that woman – but not me. I was different. My love was too pure for this – no one, neither she nor anyone else, would have been able to use it to turn me into a weapon, or a tool"
"Would you have killed for her?" he went on with his questions.
"Of course! Did I not tell you that I was ready to challenge the entire village, and the Hokage himself, when they were planning to sacrifice her?"
"That's not what I mean", he said. "Would you have killed because she wanted you to kill?"
"She did not want me to kill", I answered, rather irritated. "She did not want me to fight the Hokage. She did not want me to confront the village. She herself had agreed to have the kyuubi extracted. She pleaded to me not to fight for her, but I could not have born it if she had died."
"But if she had asked you to kill", Sasuke insisted, "If she had asked you to kill for her sake, or just on a whim of hers, and promised you" - he thought for some seconds for a promise that might have been tempting - "promised you to accept you as her lover again, would you have killed?"
"She would not have done it", I said, taken back by the absurdity of this idea. "She would not have asked me to kill – she was not evil, and she would not have wanted me to do anything evil, and least of all she would have given herself to me as a reward for doing something evil. I would have ceased to love her if she had – I would have ceased to respect her. I know the stories you are talking about, I have known men who would have followed every whim of the woman they loved, just in order to gain her favours. But I was not like that – she was not like that. You did not know her – otherwise you would not speak about her as you do."
I was agitated again – I could not go on talking. I got up and went outside to breathe and calm down. What did he know about her? I thought. What did he know about love?
When I returned he had prepared coffee, and this time it was drinkable.
"You say that you could not be manipulated because you did not try to be reasonable, weighing one life against the other, or the life of your brother's widow against that of the whole village population. But it is possible to use a man's feeling to manipulate him – you said it yourself, they would have used my jealousy and ambition, and later Itachi used my pain and my desire finally to be recognised by my family, even though they were dead, because I had avenged them. Itachi himself made me hate him and set me on my path of revenge, telling me to become as strong as possible."
He hesitated. "Why did he do that?" he asked. "Did he want me to kill him?"
"I am not sure", I answered. "I think it was when he got aware of what had happened, when he realized that there was no way that Danzou or any of the village leaders would be able to cover up for him, so that he would have to flee the village. He understood that he had been betrayed, and that he had to find a means to protect you against becoming Danzou's weapon. Making you think of nothing but your revenge would have prevented you from joining the usual competition for power, honour, recognition and popularity. They would not even be able to use your love of the village to manipulate you."
"As they did with Itachi."
"Indeed."
"Still it was dangerous", Sasuke continued. "He might have used my desire for revenge against me. Orochimaru did. He almost turned me into one of his puppets with the promise of making me strong. I was rather lucky that I escaped the trap."
I knew about his stay at Orochimaru's place. It had worried me, and Itachi, and all members of Akatsuki – all for different reason.
"I know better now then to become the tool of my own emotions", he continued. "Even Itachi used it to manipulate me – he would have made me kill my best friend."
So this was why he had asked me whether I would have killed if my lover had demanded it.
"Well, it's the price for the Mangekyou Sharingan", I said carefully. "He wanted you as strong as possible."
"But I don't need it! I can control the kyuubi even without it, and he knew it. He wanted me to be a murderer, and never to be free."
"Or the opposite – he wanted you to severe all bonds and connections to other people, as he thought it were them that had turned him into a tool and made him unfree."
"It's still ridiculous", he said.
He wanted to pour himself another cup of coffee but I hindered him.
"You've had enough", I said. "You should be more careful – it's not healthy. For a short time it boosts up your energy, but afterwards you are completely drained. Just like Orochimaru's Cursed Seal. You should not depend on it. - Are you sure that you don't drink such a lot of coffee because you have lost the Cursed Seal?"
"We always drank coffee at Orochimaru's place – even more than now."
"It's still not healthy. It dehydrates you, and it hurts your stomach. You've had enough for today. Let us rather go outside and enjoy the evening: I have found a bottle of wine, that we may open."
"I am too young for it - "
"One glass won't hurt you."
I took two glasses with me outside, and he allowed me to fill his glass till it was half full. He drank a bit, relaxed, closed his eyes.
"Tell me more", he said, "about that woman whom you loved."
I was surprised again. Why did he want to know about her?
"What shall I tell you?"
"Everything", he said. "What she was like, why you loved her, what it was like to be in love with her."
He was weird, I thought.
"What it was like to be in love with her? It was the same as it is for everyone who is in love and who has chosen well and who is loved back: It was pure bliss. Just being near her made me happier than I had ever been before, her smile made me feel as if a black cloud had moved away, so that the sun could shine again after a rain that had lasted for hours, and when she was sad, my heart hurt as if it was going to break. I would have done everything for her."
"But you would not have killed for her."
"She would not have demanded it of me. As I said, I am not one of those men who fall victim to the charm of this or that beautiful woman, not realizing that her soul is all ugly and that she does not deserve to be loved like this. The woman I loved would have deserved the love of the best men of the world – it was me who did not deserve her."
"And so she turned you down after you plucked out your brother's eyes."
"I could not have respected her if she had not."
"And you went on loving her, even after she married your brother."
"I did – I could not have loved another woman. I kept longing for her; also I had to stay close because my brother no longer could control the kyuubi. When he was dead she again accepted me as a friend, though not as a lover, but it did not matter. My love had nothing to do with wanting to be loved back – though I longed for it through all my life, more than anything else."
"Did she love you as much as you loved her?"
"She did, at least before I plucked out my brother's eyes. I was in no way as pure of heart as she was."
"How did it come that she loved you?"
"We had found her when she was desperate – she had never learnt to control the kyuubi, and every other day she was overcome by it. She had had to leave her town because of it, even though she was married and had a small child. She had to leave it in her husband's and his family's care because she did not want to hurt it accidentally. She was attempting to survive on her own without being fit for it. It had been a choice between starving herself to death and killing others when the kyuubi overcame her, and she had come to the conclusion that starving herself to death was the better choice. My brother and I helped her get the kyuubi under control, and we took her with us, promising to protect her. We cared for her, and soon she recovered, both from starvation and despair, and we saw the beauty and purity of her soul. We loved her both, each in his own way, but she chose me as her lover. I did not know why, as he was the better man, so once I asked her, and she said: You make me laugh.´".
"I can well imagine that", he said. "You are absolutely crazy – everyone would laugh about you."
He smiled a bit himself, for the first time since I had met him. It made his fine features shine with a beauty that took my breath.
"She was the first woman who loved me because I made her laugh. The ones I had before her only saw the strong shinobi and I did not realize that something was wrong with it. I thought it natural, and actually I was quite content that being very powerful allowed me to have any woman for my bed that I desired. With her, I did not care about being powerful, safe in order to protect her, and when there was no danger, I was always ready to make a fool of myself, just to hear the sweet melody of her laughter, so that I could laugh together with her and be happy as if I was in heaven. She had been all too controlled when we had met her, controlled and desperate and always on the alert, for fear of losing control. With my brother and me around to intervene if anything should happen she could finally loosen her tight grip on herself and allow herself to become a bit more spontaneous. We would even teach her some taijutsu, which was rather scary to her, because before, whenever she had fought someone, the kyuubi had got out of control."
"Did she not mind your rather violent character?"
"I often wondered myself. But when I asked her, she said: You are not bad! You think that you are bad, but in my heart I know that you are good.´ And she looked at me with her eyes full of love, and caressed my cheek, and I felt that I could become more than just the strongest fighter in the Shinobi world."
"Did you get her into your bed?"
"We had sex, if that's what you mean", I answered rather sharply. "I told you she became my lover, didn't I?"
Only after I had answered I wondered if I should not have told him off for asking such a personal question instead of answering him. But I have always acted spontaneously and on impulse, and I could not change myself.
"You make her seem high above you" he said. "An angel rather than a woman."
"Of course she was a woman", I replied. "The most tender and most exciting lover I ever had."
"I thought that when you took her in you did it for selfless reasons, not because you wanted her for your bed."
"We did it for selfless reasons, and I did not want her for my bed when we found her. Did I not tell you? We found her by chance, when she was helpless and desperate, and we happened to be able to control the kyuubi, so we took her with us. It wasn't very heroic, or altruistic, as it was not dangerous to us and cost us nothing – but it was selfless in that we did not think of ourselves, and we were highly rewarded when we found that we had saved the best woman who had ever lived."
"But you did not have to make her your lover."
"I did not make her my lover. I did not force her, or try to seduce her, or to manipulate her in any other way to make her share my bed – and neither did she seduce me, in order to secure my protection or whatever."
I tried to calm down and to speak in a less angry tone. It was not his fault that he had no idea about love.
"It just happened that we came together. One day we went on a walk by ourselves and came upon a tiger; she was scared and clung to me for protection, I put my arm around her, and, well, first of course I had to chase away the tiger, but when it had retreated I became aware of what I had not admitted to myself before – that I not only liked her, and admire her for the purity of her heart, as I had done for quite some time, but that I longed for her with my whole heart, and my whole soul and my whole body, that I desired to be near her, to exist for her, more than anything else. I kissed her hair, very softly, because, as you would put it, I still saw her as an angel rather than a woman and had no idea how she would react to it – but she turned to me and kissed me, and I forgot myself in the pure happiness of the moment. And then, well, one thing led to the other."
"You were never married", he observed.
"No, we weren't. We could not marry as she was still legally married to the husband she had left behind in her own country... It was not easy for her to be permitted to divorce from him – remember that back then divorce was still very unusual, and a dishonour for all who were involved, so that you had to have very good reasons. In the end it was her husband who got permission to divorce from her because she had a demon inside her. She was pregnant then, and I asked her to marry me, and nothing would have made me happier than her acceptance – but it was after I had plucked out my brother's eyes, and so she refused me."
"And rightly", Sasuke said.
"I had not turned out the good person she had seen in me", I answered."
"And still you went on loving her, even though she would not let you touch her again. You are really weird."
"No", I replied. "You are weird. Where did you get your ideas about love, sex and marriage? At Orochimaru's place?"
There had been a lot of discussion among the members of Akatsuki whether Sasuke would survive his stay at Orochimaru's place without any major damage. I had always been rather pessimistic, though still pretending to be the junior member and a clown in the bargain, I kept it for myself. When Sasuke had defeated Orochimaru, those who had always known that he would survive unscathed, were triumphing, but, as it seemed, I had not been that wrong at all.
"Everybody there was using everybody else", he said. "I was lucky that I could stay clear of it."
So at least he had been able to avoid the worst: Being abused himself.
"It's not the real thing", I told him. "You will learn about the real thing when you are old enough. I was well over thirty when I learnt it, and she in her mid-twenties, and both of us had a lot of rubbish to unlearn, and still it was not too late. We learnt how it can be like when it is not any more about receiving pleasure, but about being close, and about giving pleasure – how it is to be naked, truly naked for the first time and not any more even in bed trying to be the strongest shinobi of the world – while she had to learn to accept that I loved everything about her, even what she herself deemed ugly. Nothing is ugly when you are truly in love... To feel insecure again, as if it was your first time, because this is in fact the first time you are truly in love, and you don't want to hurt her, but instead to give all the pleasure you can, and have no idea how, but it does not really matter, as she is no virgin either, and in the end it turns out that in spite of your insecurity you managed to avoid most of the stupid mistakes you made when you were seventeen."
"I am only fifteen", he said. "And I have never been with a woman."
"But you will", I said. "You still have a lot of time."
I filled myself another glass of wine. He had barely touched his.
"Maybe I will", he said, carefully taking another sip of his glass. He thought for some time, looking to the sun that now hung low above the horizon. "But I don't have to love Itachi, do I?" he continued.
"Of course not. He's your brother, I mean."
"Not like this! Just as a brother. You told me that he did everything he did in order to protect me – that he loved me – that he meant well – but I still don't have to love him – I am allowed to think of him as an evil person, killing the whole clan, using my pain and my naivetë to manipulate me, and even trying to make me kill my best friend – I don't have to love him, or to think of him as a good person, just because he did it for my sake."
So this was why he made me tell about my lover, I thought.
"Of course you don't", I said. "You don't have to love anyone."
"I thought you wanted me to like him, and to regret that I fought him and that I spent several years of my life training to become strong enough to kill him."
"It was not my intention to make you like him, or think of him as a good person", I said. "Though maybe one day you will think differently about him than you do now, with more generosity and more understanding, and perhaps be able to forgive where you cannot excuse him. Just take your time."
For some minutes we sat in comfortable silence, once at last peaceful. Then he sat up straight.
"You still haven't answered the most important question", he said.
"Didn't I?" I asked back, startled what would come now – I should not have trusted the peace. "If that's the case then it's only because you haven't asked it yet. So which is the question that is more important than whether I had sex with the woman I loved?"
"You said you did not have the intention to make me like Itachi – but what is your intention? Why are you keeping me? What are your plans for me?"
