A/N: So I broke my promise...I'M SORRY. On the bright side, I did come back and that counts for something? Right? Riiiiiiiight?

Everything around Sasuke was darkness at first. Blurred darkness tinted with green. He felt his eyes blinking, grasping at some sort of focus he knew he possessed and yet that hazy darkness never escaped his sight. At some point though, somewhere in between indiscriminate eye shutting, his vision began to settle and all he could see, through his long and overgrown bangs, was a wall, with a distant outline of a door. To his right were two computer terminals that barely let the lime colored lights leak into the room. He remembered having heard a voice, Ino's voice, and his breath felt ragged as it swarmed in his chest, readying for a reply.

"Wh-"

"Try to remain calm," Ino's voice responded.

Only it wasn't Ino's voice. It sounded like her but it was mechanical, calculated. The emotions he normally heard were absent and in their place was just a dry, robotic monotone. Sasuke looked down, as if the floor would hold some answers. He was shocked as he realized that floor beneath him was a gaping pit that he remained suspended over. His mind focused on the fact the he was levitating and he became aware of his body's presence; the absence of ground under his naked feet, the feel of a cold metallic arm around his torso also naked, his arms spread and punctured with needles and wires. He felt like screaming, screaming to high hell, but his throat seized up in his panic. He went to thrash and tear away from his bindings but movement was even more impossible than speech.

"Y-y-y-" It was Hinata's voice, just as robotic as Ino's, stuttering like a cracked speak and spell, "-you're heart rate is reaching a critical point. Please attempt to regulate you b-breathing."

Sasuke didn't want to calm down. Why was his body so non responsive Why could he only manage to let out an airy "wh-" and barely at that? Where was he and why was he here?

"My scanners indicate that you are looking for answers," Ino's voice said, "I will give them to you but you will not enjoy them."

"Perhaps you would like the s-s-sedative now instead?"

Sedative? Dear God, what was this place? What hell was this? The air shambling into chest was sharp and painful as if someone had put knives in the spaces of his rib cage Under him, the scent of the pit wafted upwards and he smell urine and feces. He grew sick in his mouth and with the airiest and most pathetic couch he managed the softest vomit in liquid was mostly bile and slowly streamed down his lip, past his neck and down his chest.

"W-we apologize for you chambers not being empty of waste material," Hinata's words strained comfort through their lack of emotions, "most of our services are a-automated but wast material requires a a removal team."

"They visit less frequently now. Most of the human staff have forgotten about you now that you have served their purpose."

Sasuke's mind raced. Staff? Purpose? Why did this sound familiar?

And then, it came back to him.

Flashes of men wearing surgical masks, holding small utensils. Hot needles in his skin. The sounds of the machines being constructed around him. The conversations of cold men, men of science. He appears comatose. Alive by any means necessary. Imagine, the Matrix brought to life. It's not immoral. Still breathing. Scapal, Rogers.

Sasuke remember watching the flap of forehead fall over his eyes and the crunching break of skull.

How long?

"Twenty-five years, seven months, and fourteen days," the computerized Ino replies.

Sasuke had been hospitalized since he was twelve. He remembered that. He remembered being silent, having nothing to say. He remembered gazing at air, not walls or faces, or even the sky. Just air. Doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, they were all puzzled as to why the little boy was such a way so early in life but Sasuke knew even at his tender age. Sasuke gazed because he had nothing to do but gaze, that's what one does when they are going empty and waiting to die, they gaze.

Sasuke looked down to his right arm, barely illuminated by the green from the twin terminals. His veins were blatant through his almost translucent skin. His hands were wrinkled and his flesh, though clearly bordering looking emaciated, was beginning to sag. He must be nearing his elder years.

"You will be fifty one years of age by within the n-next month."

He had been so alive not moments ago. Hadn't he been running down corridors all washed white? Hadn't he been speaking, hadn't he lifted and pulled? Clearly he remembered the tap of his shoes against the tile, the smell of cleaner. And heat. He remembered feeling heat, that of another human body pulled close to him. The feel of blonde hair, of lips pressed against lips.

Naruto..

"It is all a simulation," Ino points out, "or perhaps a term better suited ot your understanding would be, dream."

The asylum. All the strange things that happened. The lapses in memory and judgement. It made sense but Sasuke didn't want it to. He didn't want that younger version of himself, his Naruto to be a dream but then for the rest of that nightmare to be real...it would almost be as painful as it not being real.

But why an asylum? Why would I put myself through that...?

"You c-chose a dreamscape based off your memories and un-un-understanding."

Always sick. Always silent. Since I was a little boy. Since I was twelve. Twelve. Institutionalized eventually because I got tired of waiting. Of gazing. Needed emptiness there and then. Needed to die. Tried. Failed. White walls. White coats. Asylums.

Yeah, I suppose I would have an understanding of that wouldn't I?

"You are remembering. Is it necessary that I show you the rest? It is a much faster process to access your memories than explain them to you."

Sasuke mentally nodded, not having the strength to lift his weary head. He let his eyes flutter for a moment. He knew the computer spoke the truth and that he indeed would not like what he was about to see. Something told him not to get pulled to far under, lest he literally relive his past and begin a new dream...or nightmare.

When his eyes opened again, everything was bright, the floor was a print of textile ranging in bright and dark blues. And there was his mother, her legs splayed out in the worst angle, the upper half of her body face down in bathtub.

A/N: Short chapter is short. And all the fucking sadness is about to ensue. I'm not even kidding. Literally, all the sadness is coming. It's going to answer your questions but it's going to be depressing as shit up in here.