Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Dreams of Weapons ❯ Chapter 1

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Dreams of Weapons

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If shuriken sleeping in their pouches
were to dream
they might hear the whistling air and then
a wet impact as they reach their destiny.

If kunai dreamt, they might feel
slow warmth seeping through metal, and
the vertiginous spin on a callused finger
as its blade flicks smoothly out
from beneath a concealing palm.

Utility is foremost in the design of weapons;
they are perfect and closed. Points
are ground smooth,
fine enough to break
through skin and tissue with the
slightest pressure.

Weapons do not dream.
Their edges gleam secret in dark pockets
as they wait,
potential danger hidden beneath
dull, green canvas.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

An avenger should not dream.

He must hone himself.
He should think of the wooden floor and the way it
stuck to his cheek with something dark and viscous,
slowly cooling.
That voice, indifferent and vaguely satisfied.

He must remember that smell, the nausea,
and the sick taste of tears
in his choking throat.

(The salt made his face stiff, like a mask.)

He must live for the dead because he seems to be
the only one who can still remember them.

(Even so, the faces blur with each year that passes.
His eyes, wide and red with desperate panic,
can do nothing against the failure of memory.
Voices have long since been forgotten.
When he looks back, his mind supplies the screams.)

If an avenger dreams at all,
it should be of that final moment.
There is no future beyond it.

(He follows a map that
a murderer carved behind his eyes.
The road he walks leads deep into the woods.
At the end of a winding path,
he will find an X in the barren ground.

One of them will be buried there.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Though he knows there is no future,
sometimes he thinks about how
there will always be
blue in the sky, and
yellow fields in the autumn.

Despite what he knows to be true
and what he plans to do,
he thinks that there may always be
someone smiling -
too stupid to know how to lose, and
too thick to understand
what it means to be a tool.

These thoughts are brushed aside.
Pointless,
edgeless,
useless.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As a tool, he knows that he is imperfect.
Justice is a thing for the gods, and
he does not pretend.
He knows he will have to do things -
carve the map in his flesh into the backs of others.
He will descend with eyes wide open,
and live in an unsightly way.

The mirror has already begun to reflect
a shadow of the face he hates.
Eventually, he will give under the weight, and
after that,
he will always be
missing something.

But, by then, he will have fulfilled his purpose.

For now, he waits, sharpening his edges. He
bloodies himself as he
forces his limbs into
the mold made for him.

Each night finds him lying on his firm pallet.
His hands are blistered, knicked, and
curled soft at his sides. His cheek
turns against his hard pillow.

Muscles aching with exhaustion,
eyes raw and chakra-burned -

Heart mysteriously sore in the silence -

Sasuke wishes he could stop dreaming of the sky.



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AN - Let's look on the bright side - I didn't rhyme "rain" with "pain." Thanks for reading. Comments / critique welcome. I'm going to go read more DeathNote and stop trying to understand Sasuke, because (apparently) it makes me do weird stuff.