His last words came to me distorted, I didn't realize if it was just my impression until I saw the sky and the earth turn upside down. The sounds disappeared, the voices of my friends, the sound of the wind, the running of the water and the birds singing. Around me there was always everything but it was as if it wasn't there. His presence was all around me, merged with the whole world.
You have always been my world.
I couldn't move, the moon I saw was small but it hurt like a pin stuck in my brain.
A feverish world, a delirious situation despite being static and firm like an expanse of oil.
"We are no longer in the real world, Kakashi, I have absolute control here."
It was impalpable but at the same time everywhere, fused with all those sounds that were around me but that couldn't reach me, as if they and I were on two different floors of the same building. He spoke through it all.
In fact, you've always had absolute control over me. But I have never been able to confide in anyone, how could I? It would be equivalent to stabbing Sasuke and Gai's heart with a dagger.
Something actually stabbed me, a razor-sharp sword through my side. The pain made me scream but it was as if I felt it in the middle of my head rather than in my flesh. When I lowered my distorted bleary gaze, the blood that had come out was gone. Yet I had felt it pouring hot and copious.
"For the next three days, I will continue to pierce you with this sword."
He was tearing my mind apart, but despite everything, I had the feeling that he wasn't going through with it, that he was purposely leaving me with a little spark of clarity instead of disintegrating that too. He could have.
As I desperately tried not to succumb to telling myself that it was an illusion, I couldn't help but wonder why this regard towards me. Or maybe it was simply a deception within a deception? Maybe I was making the real illusion towards myself by convincing myself that, in a certain sense, he was saving me because he cared about me.
"Pain is not an illusion, there is nothing more real than physical suffering."
I wasn't entirely sure as I felt myself free-falling down from the stars. There is something that hurts much more than physical pain. It was that perfect face that I could never have to admire when I got home from my days at work, those velvet lips whose texture, scent and warmth I could never know. It hurt that elegant and thin body that I could never hold, the knowledge that it would never be mine. I fell into a dive driven by the despondency cried silently by that child that I hadn't been able to protect, by his melancholy eyes that I hadn't been able to console.
Why did you do that?
He didn't wound me endlessly with the point of his sword, but by pouring all his torment directly into my soul, part of which was generated by me, by those words I had never been able to say, by gestures I had never could do.
Why? Not to hurt anyone else. And now he was so selfless that he wanted to convince me that my involuntary neglect of him had been worth it. He was yelling at me to stop loving him. Which I shouldn't have had to do no more harm.
Then you get it. You've always known that. Well, why did you do it?
I was unclean and happy with it, I couldn't stop loving him. Especially now discovering that he had always sensed my every feeling.
He had chosen not to kill me and perhaps there was a reason, feelings cannot be born and canceled on command and this did not apply only to me.
The irreversible solution hadn't arrived and I felt relieved, despite the torture something warm descended into my soul. Something could still be done, I clung to hope even though I knew I was reprehensible.
"Are you looking for Sasuke?"
Were you looking for me to force me not to love you?
Then you realized that I love you.