Unbreak

Klayter McCabe

000

Sasuke fully understands that life is circular. Cyclical. The sun is round. The moon is round. He was told that even the world is round, and that if you go up high enough you can see the horizon begin to curve into a sphere -- but Sasuke's never seen that, and the shape of the world doesn't really concern him, anyway.

Sasuke doesn't spend much time looking at the big picture. He leaves that to idiots like Naruto and destroyers like Orochimaru.

Orochimaru used to tell him things about the world when Sasuke served under him. Most of the strange facts that flit in the peripheries of his mind came from Orochimaru-sama, not the academy in Konoha. The world is round, for instance. The stars in the sky are suns, and some of them are so far away that they've been dead for years, but we're only just now seeing their light.

(Which, if you ask Sasuke, doesn't even make any sense.)

The problem with people who see in big pictures, Sasuke's decided, is that they want the big picture. Orochimaru had a way of talking about the world as if there was something else that came after it, which is ridiculous. Even Naruto (who maybe isn't particularly smart and maybe isn't particularly observant, but who is a part of something, and it's something that Sasuke doesn't fully understand) wants Konoha -- and he wants it because he loves it and he'd give his life to protect it and he's full of more goodness that Sasuke is quite willing to comprehend -- but he wants it.

If life is circular, then in the end, the very end, everything is equal and you can't own anything anyway.

Sasuke just wants one thing, and once he gave up everything to try and take it, and sometimes at night when Sakura and Naruto's breathing is steady and slow, he wonders if he'd give up everything again.

And the answer is yes.

The problem with circles is that they're endless, and therefore endlessly repeating, and this circle has reached a point where only one member of the Uchiha clan can be allowed to live, because if he doesn't stop Itachi now, the circle will repeat.

Sasuke knows that his worldview is warped. He knows that. Even if his birth as a man wasn't coeval with Itachi's betrayal, the years spent under Orochimaru would've been enough to twist anyone. Comparing himself to many of Orochimaru's other subordinates, Sasuke considers himself relatively unscathed.

(Sakura and Naruto, he knows, don't consider him unscathed. He can see it in Sakura's eyes especially, this hope and despair and disquiet all at once, and he hates it because it makes him feel as though he's failed.)

He tries to keep his circles clear and defined and separate.

If Itachi hadn't been what he was, these circles would be very different things.

Closest to his heart, huddled there against his will, are Naruto and Sakura, and that terrifies him, because he never meant to be this close to anyone ever again. Not after his family. Not after Itachi. And if he'd had any faith in humanity after that, there was none when Orochimaru finished clinically removing what was left.

So it's Naruto and Sakura in the middle, and Kakashi-sensei far away after that, but closer than anyone else.

Except that that's lying.

That's lying.

It's the same person who's always been in the middle, since Sasuke was old enough to toddle after his brother on two wobbly feet and realize that he was watching a man destined to be great, and wanting to be a part of it.

If Sasuke were truly brave, truly strong, he'd have already left Konoha again. Not to train under someone else -- after Orochimaru, Sasuke never wants to be anyone's pupil ever again -- but because he doesn't belong here anymore, and, worse than that, he's giving Naruto and Sakura more false hope every hour that he stays.

Itachi will be back, you see. It's part of the circle.

And it's bad enough that Naruto has seen Itachi, bad enough that Naruto watched Sasuke's first reunion with his brother, and that that reunion involved Sasuke being left in the exact same condition he'd been left in last time -- drooling, broken, catatonic.

Bad enough that Naruto's seen that.

Worse if he had to experience it.

Worse to see the pink and white of Sakura washed to red.

Worse if it's either of them screaming, instead of him.

And this circle is killing him, yes, because he wants out of it so badly. Every time he collapses next to Naruto after a particularly vicious sparring session, and they're nothing but post-fight panting, liquid muscles, a hundred scrapes and deeper aches, it's better than any afterglow, and he wants it. Ever since the first time he sparred with Sakura after coming back, when she laid him flat with one punch that left his jaw tender for days, when he realized that Sakura was a kunoichi and not just a girl, he's wanted it. Every time he sees Naruto's expression soften when he thinks no one's looking, and Sakura's expression harden because she can't afford to be soft, he's wanted them.

And this circle is killing him with them, killing him with fear, killing him with the quiet desperation that always comes with happiness, because he knows it's only temporary.

This circle needs to break.

It won't, as long as Itachi's in the center. It won't. If Sasuke wants to defeat Itachi, that means leaving Konoha again, and for now...

Just for now.

Let him stay.

000

End “Unbreak”

000

March 15, 2006