Chapter Text
I wander aimlessly through streets long embedded into my memory that I now barely recall. There are houses all around me: houses, carts, people and activity.
They are the road signs to someone else's life.
I can't feel anything but that gaping hole, expanding every moment throughout my chest, swelling past the limits of what I can withstand.
As I walk, I bump into person after person, faceless heads on fingerless bodies that say something, yell something, and hit me back. But I can't help it.
My sharingan swirls in a blood red tempest over my eyes.
But I cannot see.
-----
"Forget this!"
Yamanaka shrieks and storms to the closed door. At the brink, she whips her head around and glowers at me in a blonde, white and black swirl. I can hardly make out any details. "Your mind is somewhere else entirely. I don't know how you expect to work this way!"
I say nothing and glare at the opposite wall as if there is a window there to peer through. The girl didn't even try, just groused at me for fifteen minutes then started screaming. There’s no point. I’ve never cared about Konoha.
"The next time you come here, you'd better be ready to work," she warns. Her voice is higher than I remember. "Otherwise, you're just wasting my time."
She slams the door spectacularly behind her, the sound echoing abrasively a thousand times within the chasm inside me.
There won't be any more times.
There is nothing left of me to function.
It is just barrenness like desert, and when a wind blows through it, it strikes me inside like ice.
-----
Dark is good.
The quiet, concealed, solitary darkness of my room is a welcome match to the darkness inside me. There's a bed beneath me, but I can't feel it. I know it's there simply because if I wanted to I could touch the sill of the window with my fingertips, something I couldn't do from the floor. But I don’t want to do that.
My body is made of a substance heavier than lead and will not be uprooted from this spot.
I don't know how long I've been here, curled up on my side like a bloody fetus expelled too early from the womb. The clock is on my other side, in a world where time matters. It's a meaningless distraction I doubt I could read with my blind eyes anyway. But that’s only when they’re open. When I close them, they fill with losses I can't bear and the pain is stabbing sharp and bottomless. So I keep my eyes diligently open and gaze at the featureless wall for minutes, hours, days, months, forever.
There is still that constant empty ache, but it doesn’t hurt. Not now.
My lungs continue to pump air in. Out. In. Out. Sustaining my life like it means something. But still I cannot breathe.
The surfaces of my eyes burn like dry sand melting to glass, but I can't blink either.
It takes too much damn effort to move.
I can feel nothing.
And yet there is so much of it to feel.
The room, in all its darkness, grows darker and the air goes cool, still, and stagnant like me. And the time passes.
Or it doesn't.
I can't say and I don't care.
I just wait. Though there is nothing to wait for.
I'm done with it all. None of what I put myself through serves any purpose.
The silence is good. Not because it is calming or gentle, but because it simply asks nothing of me. In the hermetic seal of my room, I can't even hear the birds outside, assuming there are any. Perhaps they’ve all died.
Foolish little brother.
Itachi sits in a chair facing me as he has now for quite some time. I don't know where he got that chair; it isn't mine and he hasn't told me where he found it.
Is this what you are to become now?
A useless waste of all my time and energy?
I blink for the first time and it blisters my pupils like acid.
Do you see what happens?
I told you to hate.
Hate is protection.
Itachi shifts, leans back, and crosses his arms.
You never did listen.
I swallow and the large jagged stone that has replaced my Adam's apple bobs, scrapes, and bleeds, trying to fill the cavern in my chest but there is no more room. The emptiness takes up too much space.
Itachi is talking nonsense that has no bearing on my current life. I'm tired and overworked and nothing more. He needs to just shut up and give me a little space.
My sacrifice means nothing, does it?
The trade means nothing?
He waits, with his disdain hovering over me like the storm clouds of my life. He can do what he likes; I don't care.
What will you do now?
He's not coming.
Itachi doesn't sound unkind, he's merely reminding me of the facts.
He has left you.
The pang returns, the many faceted star bursting outward, slicing through my heart and pulling back, stabbing through it again and again and tenderizing it like cheap meat.
He has excised you like a boil, a wart, a diseased abscess better to be rid of quickly.
The heaviness rises to my throat, presses up until the backs of my teeth hurt, but nothing comes out because there is nothing there to begin with.
Abandoned.
Somewhere, in a land not my own, a door slams. And another opens.
"Sasuke."
Kakashi sounds disapproving of the fact that my bloody entrails have leaked all over the bedroom floor. So be it.
"What are you doing here? We have training."
He approaches, his feet squishing messily in the remnants of my self that have spilled across his path, though only I can hear it.
"Why are you here?"
Why indeed?
I don't answer. I should be allowed one damn day off without having to give explanations.
"Answer the question, Sasuke."
Little brother, someone is speaking to you. Don't you know it's impolite not to answer?
Like I've ever cared about politeness. Besides, the synapses in my brain seem to have given up. After so many failed attempts, they don't even bother anymore.
"Sasuke, would you look at me."
Kakashi looks mad.
Itachi smiles at me from his chair, smug and all-knowing.
Then there are fingers at my throat pressing in, choking me with their unnatural presence. "Well, you're not dead."
I wouldn't be so sure about that. It's a highly debatable point. You've cheated death too many times already, haven't you little brother?
The fingers are now gone, but the impression remains. Just like every knife, needle, and burn, they all leave their mark.
"So this is it now? You're just going to lay there and do nothing?"
I can do nothing because there is nothing. I stare at the wall. I want to be left alone, that is what I want.
You always were so melodramatic, little Sasuke.
"Look at me."
Your commanding officer is giving you an order.
It doesn't matter if God were issuing the orders; movement is impossible. I have become like moss growing on the side of a log, only I'm stuck to this bed, still and intractable and unnecessary.
Plus, I just don’t care.
A strong hand grabs my shoulder and tries to force me onto my back, but I’m firm in my position, too heavy to move. Kakashi grumbles and lets go and my body rolls resentfully back to its original position.
You are nothing but a disappointment to all.
And what do I owe them anyway?
"So you're just going to lay there. Had enough of wasting everybody's time?"
I suppose I'm meant to feel guilty. But I don't. There's nothing left in me to feel guilt. Besides, I’ve spent too long in the service of those who would manipulate me to their own advantage. I can’t really care.
"This is what you're going to do now? All the effort and time and pain put into bringing you here and helping you out and this is your repayment?"
Does seem rather self-indulgent, doesn't it?
Everyone is selfish; I have never claimed to be different.
"I'd thought you'd changed."
But you are incapable of it.
"And you did."
You have lost. Tell me, little brother, how does it feel to honestly, truly, irrevocably lose? It's a new experience for you, is it not?
"Before, you were someone. Now you're nobody."
There is disappointment in the air, along with disgust, hate, and anger, making it thick and heavy. And I do not feel it. I know it's there, but it never touches me. I am separate from it, from him, from everyone, just like it's always been.
A heavy breath, like an expulsion of the last of the faith he had in me, and Kakashi leaves in a gigantic, childish huff. He doesn't close the door completely, so the light from the hallway slices offensively through the room like a knife, exposing the emptiness like my spilt entrails. I stare blankly at the light reflecting off the plain meaningless wall.
-----
My bones and mind are weary. I need a little peace and quiet, but Itachi won’t cease.
You have truly become nothing.
He will not stop.
Nothing of worth, anyway.
My eyes burn.
Thought you knew what it was like, did you?
I try to blink, but my eyelids are carved from implacable stone.
Thought you knew yourself.
They burn.
But there are always lower depths to fall to. The truth is you are nothing without him to balance you.
The pain in my chest stabs outward, angry that it is neglected. But I can't do anything about it. My body is too heavy to move.
And he's gone.
It fills with cement and ice, abrading my bloody insides.
Now the world knows what you are really worth.
My mouth falls open, dry with cotton.
Nothing.
I still cannot breathe.
At some point I fall asleep.
-----
When I open my eyes, the sight is the same as it has ever been: a white wall turned gray by darkness almost black now. Night has fallen down around me.
I close my eyes again and sleep some more, though I get no rest.
There are too many drams within me for rest: Naruto and Itachi and mother, Orochimaru and Kabuto, and sometimes my father.
Always, I try to steer my mind back to Naruto, back to the make-believe world where things are right and times are happy, but it never quite works.
It never quite works.
"All right. That's enough. Get up."
With difficulty, my eyes open.
The room is a gray lightness now, so it must be day. Not that that's of any significance either.
"Get. Up."
A bunching of fingers prods my back a couple times so that I rock a little. I don’t reply.
There's an exaggerated huff and then a thin white hand reaches for the cords of my blinds.
I move instantly.
I clamp my hand over the other and grip tight. I don't want light. Darkness is good. Darkness has long been my companion. Another hand enters the picture and easily pries the first free but since neither of them returns to the blinds, I let them be.
"Not so helpless after all," the girl muses. "Good. Here. Eat."
A bowl is dropped unceremoniously onto the bedspread. It’s piled high with apple slices and cheese and their noxious fumes invade the stagnant air of my asylum. Some of the apple spills out onto the bed. I glance at them a moment and turn away.
The food is dirty dark gray in this low light, unpleasant and unappetizing. My stomach flips down closed, refusing them outright.
I do not want them.
I turn back to the window and stare at the sliver of light that pushes through the space between blinds and window frame, bright and offensive. I pick at the edge of the blinds to try blocking it out, but it just appears on the far side instead. I drop my hand. It's not worth the effort.
The bowl jangles behind me, the apples and cheese banging like bamboo wind chimes. The girl picks up the fallen bits and deposits them back in the bowl as if nothing has happened. Now the dish is thrust into my face, the sweetness of fruit and the milky scent of cheese mixing unappealingly. My stomach protests forcefully by twisting itself up and wringing itself out.
I turn away.
The bowl rattles unrelentingly.
"You'll eat this one way or another," the voice threatens. "Even if I have to shove it down your throat myself."
Thin unwelcome fingers grab for my chin but I pull away snarling. She snarls back.
The girl is not backing down and somehow I know that she never will; that she's not a person to be taken lightly. I dip my fingers into the bowl and lift out a slice of apple. It hurts my teeth when I bite into it, too cold, crisp, and sweet against my tongue, all alien sensations over the last . . how many days has it been?
The first bite settles like granite in my stomach.
"Good," the girl says, inordinately pleased with herself. She rattles the bowl in my face. "All of it."
I scowl at the bowl, then at the dark air and the amorphous shape that speaks. The edges and curves of her face are barely distinguishable, but I know her.
Sakura.
Yes, that is her name. Sakura.
I don't want her here.
But my stomach whines pathetically because it doesn’t care what I want. I take another slice and force it down. The two pieces in my stomach meld into a heavy boulder, blocking my throat.
Sakura shakes the bowl, but when I make no move to continue, she drops it to the bed, and shoves a pieces of fruit into my face as if I am an invalid.
Lazily, I take it from her and laboriously swallow it down, bite by horrible bite.
Then she forces a piece of cheese onto me. It lands especially heavy in my gut and my stomach mounts a terrific protest.
Sakura doesn't care.
And it is apple, cheese, apple, cheese until it is all gone except for the giant lump plugging up my belly. I want to throw it back up.
"Now," she triumphs, placing the empty bowl on the nearby bed stand. "Was that so hard?"
'Yes', I think, as the acid in my stomach sloshes ominously. 'I might die now.'
"So then," she muses, rather cheerily. "Are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself?"
I scowl at her, but in this room with no light, she can't see it.
"I am not feeling sorry for myself." My voice is hoarse and scratchy from lack of use, an unwelcome sound that has no place here.
Sakura straightens and through the crack in the window a glint of light reflects off her smiling teeth. "Yes you are."
I focus back on the wall that asks nothing.
" What kind of behavior is this for a shinobi," she states, still somewhat amiable, but not as cheerful as before. "What kind of behavior is this for you, Uchiha Sasuke?" Her voice has grown in volume.
She's right.
"What?" She asks tartly. "Do you think you're the only one who's had pain? You think that makes you special? Well," she snipes, sarcastic and angry. "Welcome to the world."
I shift my eyes in her direction, until they practically roll to the back of my head, and narrow them to slits.
"This is part of life. There is always bad with good. There's not some simple black and white answer to everything." Her words are hard, yet the hand she places on my shoulder is gentle. I listlessly try to shrug away.
But you cannot understand the grays, can you little brother?
"I am not feeling sorry for myself," I reiterate sharply. "Am I not allowed to take a fucking break?"
"Sure you are," Sakura replies, completely calm. "But that's not what you're doing. And you're not going to accomplish anything by lying here like a lump." I whirl my head in her direction. "Like a lump," she repeats pointedly.
I pull away from her and my muscles groan painfully form their long hibernation.
"You're absolutely no use to anyone like this," she condemns. "Is that what you want to leave behind? That after everything you did, you really did nothing?"
"Nothing?" I snarl back. But it is. "Nothing."
She sighs with exasperation and throws her hands up in the air once before dropping them back to her lap with a loud slap. "This is not Uchiha Sasuke." She growls. "I don't know who this is, but he's just wasting my time."
"Then go," I snap.
"Oh," she says, straightening up in the chair. "That would make it easy for you, now wouldn't it? Then you can go back to sulking at your little pity party. Yes, that's very helpful."
I clench my jaw until it hurts. "You know nothing." My voice is still gravelly, only gradually returning to normal.
There's a long pregnant pause.
"You're right," she concedes quietly. "I don't know anything. And whose fault is that, do you think?" She crosses her arms over her chest and remains unbending. "No one understands because you won’t let them.” Her voice softens until it is almost a whisper. "You're not the only one who's ever had their heart broken."
I blink at her and a film washes over my eyes like fog. They are burning dry yet blurry. My heart is not broken. It is iron, has long been iron, and is not so tender a thing.
And yet I say, "I can't," without really meaning to.
Sakura tilts her head like a curious cat. "Can't what?"
I put my hand to my chest and drive my fingers into it, because the ache is as fresh as when it started, and still as shocking. I take a breath and it is like swallowing liquid nitrogen.
I can't.
I still can't.
Sakura looks down at my hand for a long time before raising her face back to mine. I search for the shapes that make her but I don’t know what they are. To my surprise, she places her hand, soft and warm, over my ice-cold fist.
"And you do no one any good by staying here." She squeezes my hand once before guiding them both down. I don't have the energy to fight her; my body is lead. "We need your help. Konoha is in danger; you know that better than any of us." Her fingers dig into the back of my hand. "Doesn't that count for something?"
She doesn't understand.
Konoha means little without a reason.
I look away. "I don't care about Konoha."
"And what about the people who live here?" Her tone is no longer kind. "Don't we count for something?" She pulls her hand free, making mine cold again. "Don't I count for something?"
Does she, little brother?
Swiftly, Sakura leaps to her feet, pacing the inadequate width of the room several times before speaking again. "Then know this," her fists start to shake furiously at her sides. "Naruto loves Konoha. You don't have to understand why, just that he does. And if you care about him as much as you pretend, you'd want to protect it too." She stands there for a moment, trembling with rage. Then she adds, forcing it between her teeth, "You're a fool. But even so, I'll stand by you. If you ask me, I will stay." She waits, her stance rigid like a tin soldier and I turn my head only faintly in her direction.
It's still dark, and though my eyes have adjusted, I can't see her face clearly.
"Do you want me to stay?" She repeats, her voice far too controlled.
I don't move; don't actually look at her. Itachi still sits in his chair, observing me like I’m a lab rat. Then he smiles grimly like all the knowledge in the world is his.
Sakura huffs disgustedly, throws her hands up and stalks towards the door. She pulls it open, the light cascading through the doorway to a different world and I see the edge of her hair and the curve of her shoulder, pink and peach in the half-light.
So this is to be your answer?
"Yes."
I know it’s me who spoke, but was it to Sakura or Itachi? I myself don't know the answer and maybe it was both. Or neither. And the fact that I don't know - what does that make of me?
Sakura pauses and angles her head down. She waits there for the count of two whole minutes, 120 seconds. Then she softly closes the door.
She turns, straightens up suddenly taller, and walks back to me. She pulls up the chair Itachi was in- the chair I don’t remember owning – and drops herself down noisily.
And she smiles. Even if I couldn't see the shadow of her upturned lips, I would know.
"Took you long enough," she says and puts her fingers to the curtain cord.