Warnings for the story: incest, yaoi/slash, violence, gore, cursing, angst, some fluff, sex, rambling writing style. Also, Sasuke isn't entirely sane
Please review! Reviews help me improve my writing, and even something simple as 'update!' encourages me to write faster (and to prioritize this fic over my original stories). Feel free to flame!
Sasuke thought that he really, really needed to start thinking more before he acted. Or at least get better instincts. His body moved on its own again as he knelt before Itachi, triumphant delight filling him at the sight of his brother's pathetic state. The blind man reached a hand out to touch him. His callused palm rested on Sasuke's smooth cheek, and Sasuke's breath caught in his throat. His stupid, traitorous body rooted him to the spot, forced him to feel that gentle caress and to listen silently to the deep, sensual, hypnotic sound of Itachi's voice.
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of removing Itachi's eyes and taking them for his own. Sasuke had always loathed gore, and some part of him that still echoed with the sounds of his child feet chasing endlessly after Itachi recoiled at the thought of desecrating his brother's body. Plus, any thought of damage to the eyes had always sent revolted shivers running up Sasuke's spine. He couldn't imagine what would drive him to willingly destroying his eyes as Itachi had, or to carving them out and replacing them with another's.
It... caused him disquiet, how calm and accepting Itachi seemed of his own death. Sasuke hated him all the more for it, for daring to die with such dignity and poise, especially when Sasuke knew that he would go kicking and screaming and cursing the world right until the bitter end. He had only ever felt such peace at the thought of his own death once, in that hazy time of his past...
Sasuke shoved the thought aside before it could even fully form.
His head started spinning when Itachi requested – nearly begged – for Sasuke to kill Madara in Itachi's place... Old suspicions churned in the back of his mind, his little used analytical skills trying frantically to decode the puzzle before it turned to too late.
All thought processes ceased entirely when he felt Itachi's lips against his. Then, sheer power flooded him like millions of volts of electricity surging from the sky and ground into his body, only barely controlled through years of hard training combined with force of will. After what might have been moments or years (Sasuke couldn't tell; the time period when Itachi's chakra and soul pulsed alongside his own seemed to both drag on forever and fly past him faster than normal eyes could perceive), Sasuke's arms broke free of his mind's frozen state and moved on their own to lightly grip Itachi's upper arms, slowly sliding around to his back and then lower, pulling Itachi into him as if they could somehow meld.
And then... Itachi separated from him slightly, breathed shallowly (the sound strange and rattling, empty almost) and whispered, "I'm sorry, Sasuke... This is the last time." Sasuke's heart skipped a beat as buried recollections of his older brother as he used to be threatened to overwhelm his conscious mind.
Itachi collapsed against him, and Sasuke caught the limp body entirely on reflex, half cradling it to his chest. His blood pounded in his ears as his mind spun uselessly, trying in vain to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the past few minutes. His body shook, starting with his hands and spreading throughout, growing in intensity until he quivered like Naruto being forced to hold still.
His brother's dead body held tightly to his chest, Sasuke threw his head back and started to laugh as lightning crackled among the clouds that he'd created and rain started to fall gently down.
After his initial relief that the whole fiasco was finally over faded to a general giddy state (no doubt enhanced by the near overload of power singing through his veins), Sasuke sobered up and got down to business. Figuring that it couldn't possibly hurt, and he should prevent people from stealing Itachi's precious eyes anyways, Sasuke shifted Itachi slightly and reached into his brother's left back pocket, easily finding the aforementioned vial. He stubbornly ignored the burning itching almost-pain that had settled into the backs of his own eyes once he had come down from his brief natural high as he did so.
He carefully laid Itachi down so that his brother faced upwards. Itachi's half-lidded silvery eyes seemed to gaze blankly at something beyond mortal comprehension. Sasuke fought down shudders of revulsion and then scolded himself for them. Taking a deep breath, Sasuke set the vial down beside Itachi's head. He grabbed a dulled kunai with his right hand and leaned over his brother's prone form, using his left hand to grasp the still warm (and slightly blood-slicked) chin. He tilted Itachi's head slightly and, gritting his teeth, made several clean incisions around the eye, especially at the side creases, carefully cutting away the skin and tissue surrounding the delicate organ.
Once he had finished cutting away the extra tissue, Sasuke angled the dull kunai and gently dug it around and behind the eyeball before slowly exerting pressure. With a sickening sound, the eyeball popped free of the clinging tissue, the bundle of nerves and veins pulling up slightly with it. Sasuke grimaced and reached down to pinch the nerves with the fingers of his left hand. He pulled the eye up even more and severed the small bundle just behind where his fingers gripped it.
The eyeball cradled in his palm, Sasuke set the kunai down and grabbed the vial with his free right hand. He lifted the vial to his mouth and gripped the twist cap tightly with his teeth. He quickly separated the cap from the liquid filled vial without spilling a drop and lowered the vial. Sasuke slowly slid the eyeball into the preservative solution, carefully so as to avoid splashes. He then spit the cap into his relatively clean right hand and lightly replaced it on the vial, so that as least some fluid would remain in the event of a spill.
He set the vial down again. Sasuke then picked up the kunai and repeated the entire procedure for Itachi's right eye, the one farthest from Sasuke. Despite having confidence from the successful retrieval of the first eye, Sasuke still worked carefully. He knew that he couldn't risk damaging the eye in any way, shape, or form, or else it would likely be rendered useless. Once that eye had joined the first, Sasuke twisted the cap on as tightly as it would go. He then slowly tilted it upside-down in order to check for any leaks. None. Satisfied, Sasuke tucked the vial into one of his own pockets, an empty space supposedly reserved for small scrolls.
Inexplicably exhausted despite the energy filling him nearly to the brim, Sasuke sighed and sat back. He stared blankly at Itachi's dead body. His mind wandered meaninglessly, attempting to make sense of the whole situation and to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do next, as his life's goal had been completed.
He had originally counted on an almost immediate death following Itachi's, but he highly doubted that whatever Itachi had done to him would allow him to take such a path.
His mind started mulling on the general idea of burning Itachi's body (a proper Uchiha funeral) and then finding his team before vanishing for a time to train. Perhaps he could also look into figuring out the location of this 'Madara' that Itachi had kept harping on about. However, before he could start to make any concrete plans, a presence appeared almost immediately behind him. The presence was startlingly sharp in Sasuke's perception, like shivers running up his spine and a tightening of his skin and his hands dipped in ice.
Sasuke jumped to his feet and spun around in one smooth motion. He landed in a ready crouch with his chokuto already drawn, electricity dancing beneath his skin, his sharingan spinning rapidly (the itching in his eyes flared to a sensation almost like fire and tears). He took in the immediately relevant details first: Akatsuki cloak (potential threat, enemy), stance tense but not an opening form for any sort of attack (exuding calm, not attacking but ready to defend and counter-attack, prepared for battle), and then less immediate details: bright orange swirled mask, short black hair (entirely unknown, potential threat level raised)...
Then a glimpse of red from the single eye-hole in the mask: sharingan. (From wariness to tightly reigned hostility, threat level soared).
"What do you want?" Sasuke snarled, letting his hostility and stress show through but (hopefully) not revealing his confusion and vulnerable emotional state. "And who are you?"
The stranger (Madara, if that eye was any indication, or else he was someone like Kakashi, a thief of bloodlines) held his hands spread in front of him, palms facing upwards, the gesture of peace (or at least no immediate ill-intentions). "We've met before..." He said, and a memory tugged at Sasuke's mind – the fight against that bomb-user who hated his brother, Deidara. "As enemies." How had he survived? His threat level rose in Sasuke's perception, especially as he began to notice the drastic changes between the demeanor of the man before him and that Tobi. "But don't worry about what happened with Deidara..." Sasuke found it strange, since he had seemed to care so much originally – a good actor, then, and not someone whose word Sasuke should trust (the energy buzzing through his body seemed to whisper and encourage his skepticism, largely repressed since that horrible night). "I am no longer your enemy."
The man obviously knew little or nothing about Sasuke, because he had no friends and few allies. Those three on his 'team' were little more than tools, convenient and kept around until such time when Sasuke no longer had need of them. Sasuke did not relax from his ready position, especially as his borrowed chakra started shifting restlessly in reaction to the man's prolonged presence.
"I came here to offer you assistance and first aid after your battle, although it appears that you don't have need of my services..." As if Sasuke would willingly have let anyone so untrustworthy that close to him. "But, also, I have something very important to tell you..." Sasuke wasn't interested at all, and it apparently showed in the continued hostility in his face and posture, as the man continued with, "It's about that corpse at your feet, Uchiha Itachi."
Sasuke's head snapped up slightly, his eyes meeting the man's (a foolish gesture that he immediately berated himself for), unable to hide the widening of his eyes, the surprise evident in his body and face, or his sudden surge in interest. His grip tightened on his kunai, his suspicions that this man very well might have been the one that Itachi had wanted Sasuke to kill rising.
"There we go..." The man said, almost condescendingly, when he noticed Sasuke's attention, "You know so much about your brother, yet at the same time, you know nothing at all." Sasuke had to fight down the growl rising in his throat, the way that his mental hackles went up and his chakra almost bubbled in his veins. "You asked who I am..." Sasuke narrowed his eyes, not liking how this man directed the conversation to his own ends. The man reached up to undo the ties on his mask, saying, "As you have likely surmised already... I am, much like you, a living, breathing Uchiha." He slowly pulled the orange mask off and to the side as he spoke, holding it so that only a small portion of the right hand side of his face showed, revealing pale skin with scars running into it from the hidden left side and a sharingan eye. "And the man who knows the truth about Uchiha Itachi."
At the sight of his face, pain lanced through Sasuke's head (burning, with the intensity of the sun, the frigid cold of the moon), centering blindingly on his left eye. The chakra within him surged and twisted without his direction, roaring like a western dragon from the travelers' stories. Black flame filled his vision, roiling and twisting and coiling like snakes. The man screamed and threw himself back from Sasuke, the attack clearly centered on him. His mask went flying from his hand to clatter on the stone floor, and Sasuke hunched over, clutching at his left eye, blood running into his palm.
He struggled to overcome the pain, more debilitating than the worst of migraines, for several moments, panting at that and the exhaustion that filled him despite the energy humming in his veins. The pain subsided after a few heavy pulses of his heart, the chakra within him seeming to rise in the same beat, until his exhaustion faded into an echo of itself. His reserves refilled themselves at a rate that he had never experienced before. "Wh-What the hell was that?" he gasped out quietly once he had regained his breath, rising unsteadily from the crouch that he had fallen into.
A scuffle from the side: Sasuke glanced over to see the man, what little Sasuke could see from such an angle of the left side of his face revealed to be a ruined, scarred mess, bending over to pick up the dropped mask before fastening it back in place. "Itachi's Mangekyou..." he murmured, maybe to himself, maybe in answer to Sasuke's question, "And his Amaterasu..." The man straightened from his half-crouch and took a step towards Sasuke. "Even in death, he never ceases to amaze me. Going so far as to plan for a situation such as this..." He took another step towards Sasuke, and Sasuke tensed, not ruling out the possibility of an attack (from either himself or the other).
He must have been Madara, Sasuke decided, right after he realized what the man meant. Itachi's chakra within him still stirred angrily, urging Sasuke to fight against or flee from this masked person. "Tell me," he said, muscles bunching in preparation to throw his kunai and shuriken, "Are you the one known as Uchiha Madara?"
Madara spread his hands out wide, clearly showing his palms – a useless gesture of peace, as any skilled shinobi could quickly flow into an attack form from that (Sasuke had even heard of attack forms designed to start from such a position of apparent weakness). "I take it that Itachi mentioned me to you," he said, that same almost-condescending tone having returned. Sasuke watched him warily, sharingan eyes – able to activate with the surplus of energy granted to him – spinning rapidly. "But before you make any... hasty decisions, hear me out."
"Why should I?" Sasuke snapped back, not relaxing from his stance, but his already tattered will weakening, visible in slight twitches, the barely perceptible shifting of muscles beneath raw, newly healed skin.
"That technique he used at the very end," Madara said, clearly not answering Sasuke's question. He continued before Sasuke could interrupt, "He transferred not only his chakra and remaining life force to you, but he also deconstructed his soul just for the sake of spare energy to pour into that gift. Somehow, he still had enough strength at the end to transfer his doujutsu to you – maybe that last as a last-ditch assassination attempt against me, or possibly to try and keep me from approaching you." Sasuke believed firmly that Itachi's motives had been the former, consistent with his insistence that Sasuke kill the very man before him. "Do you understand the implications of that life-force that he poured into you? Do you even know what it means to deconstruct one's soul and give it to another?"
Reluctantly, Sasuke shook his head, admitting to his ignorance and churning curiosity. He fought against it, yet something within him yearned for the answers to questions left unanswered since his childhood – questions for which Madara hinted at the answers to.
"That life-force... He was saving it, and his chakra, throughout the fight," Madara said, and Sasuke's muscles, held tense for so long, began to quiver – he told himself that it was merely the exhaustion, but his racing heart seemed to speak a different tune. "If he hadn't... He could easily have won and survived that fight." Sasuke reeled from the implications, mind scrambling between trying to give credence to this man's words and outright accusing him of lying. "Granted, he wouldn't have survived for much longer – his overall health has been deteriorating for quite some time, and he likely would have perished on his own anyways." Sasuke's world temporarily stabilized itself, offered a potential explanation for Itachi's actions – if he had known that his death was at hand anyways, then why not arrange things so that his goals would still be fulfilled?
Madara appeared to ignore Sasuke's mercurial moods and states of mind, as he plowed right on in his explanation (almost a rant, like something that he had been preparing to say for a long while). "His soul, however... That is another matter entirely." Sasuke fought against the curiosity welling up within him, knowing that he shouldn't be listening to this man's poisoned honey words, yet entirely unable to stop himself – his muscles were already relaxing almost of their own accord, things whispering in his mind that Madara was trustworthy, correct, had no reason to lie and possessed all the knowledge that Sasuke had yearned for throughout his life.
"The soul is vital – it is the very essence of one's being, more than memories or genetics or what have you." Why, exactly, was he rehashing something that Sasuke had learned in school? Sasuke gritted his teeth at the unspoken implication that he might have been an inattentive idiot like Naruto, to forget even basics like the definition of chakra. "Without it, he cannot hope to achieve resurrection or Nirvana." As if Sasuke had any need for philosophy and superstition. Why in all the hells should he have cared about karma and life-cycles? Sasuke knew that he would readily damn himself if it meant achieving his goals, so why should Itachi have been any different? "He has sacrificed not just this moment in time, but all of eternity for you."
And? Sasuke highly doubted that Itachi's decision was anything personal.
The spell woven over his mind had lost its potency, and Sasuke sneered at Madara's pretentiousness. Sasuke still remained in his ready-stance despite his skepticism, though, remembering how those that waxed the most poetic – the Sandaime Hokage and Orochimaru came immediately to mind – were often also the most dangerous.
"Your point?" he asked, regulating his voice so that he sounded bored, detached – a tone that had always infuriated Naruto. His rudeness seemed to have a similar effect on Madara, as the man's chakra grew agitated – odd that Sasuke could notice that, light and irregular pinpricks against his skin – even though his posture and voice retained the same cajoling quality.
"Even the most ruthless of shinobi find their soul to be a precious thing." And most shinobi were complete morons as well. What was it that the philosopher had said? Even if a million people believed a stupid thing, it was still a stupid thing (in Sasuke's opinion, it then became all the more idiotic when supported by the beliefs of the unwashed masses). Impatience and frustration mixed with the agitation, three nearly identical shades of the same sensation. "Your brother loved you, Sasuke, despite all appearance to the contrary."
Sasuke scoffed aloud at that, incredulous that Madara would ever think that Sasuke could possibly fall for such an outlandish statement.
"You do not believe me." No, he was really that gullible (Sasuke ignored the suspiciously-Naruto-like voice that constantly insisted that he had listened to Orochimaru, hadn't he, so he really was quite gullible). "Do you remember, how on that night, you asked Itachi yourself about the person who helped him slaughter the Uchiha?" Sasuke clenched his teeth, starting to calculate the best course of action for hitting this bastard with one of his chidori variants. "It was me."
Sasuke's mind stuttered to a halt, his emotions numb, his blood pulsing in his ears, distantly. Madara continued, apparently oblivious to Sasuke's shock. "I know everything about Itachi, although he died without ever realizing exactly how much."
Sasuke considered screaming, crying, telling this bastard to go away and leave me the fuck alone, but his throat had clenched up, refusing to let him speak, to let him try and drown out the whispers in his ears, rising from the dark recesses of his mind where they always seemed to lie in wait. His fists tightened, driving his nails into his palms, the sharp pain seeming to temporarily quiet the screaming in his mind. He relished the sensation, wishing that Madara would just go away so he could go further, train with the agonizing lightning until he couldn't move anymore and the voices fled entirely.
That sickening voice filtered in through the racket in Sasuke's head, twining in among numerous others, dark whispers, slowly rising to drown out all the others. "Remember your loving older brother," said that mocking voice, and Sasuke's head and heart filled near to bursting with the strain.
"Don't blindly follow anything that he says..." echoed in his mind, softly, quietly, yet Sasuke latched onto that voice among all the others. The clamor quieted, yet Sasuke's misery only increased as his mind tormented him with his beloved brother's voice – not the cruel Itachi that he had come to loathe, but the god-like aniki that he had always admired. A thousand times and more those echoes resounded, tearing him apart, sending his chakra into a tumult, his blood pounding in his veins.
Sasuke curled in on himself, clutching his head, and screamed, his voice cracking and throat tearing.