Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Let it Burst and Bloom ❯ Let it Burst and Bloom ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 2

 

Sasuke wrapped his hands very carefully around Itachi's forearm, fingers gripping wiry muscle that wasn't giving an inch. He looked up with slightly pleading eyes. Itachi smiled just a little, his battered lips weeping droplets of bright red blood that quickly turned pink and washed away as fat drops of rain began to fall.

 

“Are you having trouble breathing, little brother?”

 

Itachi's fingers tightened and Sasuke groaned. His limbs felt like wet sand bags. He wasn't sure he could get his muscles to respond the way they needed to. His eyes burned and watered to the point that Itachi was only a blurred shadow. His heart labored in his chest, pounding against his ribs and in his temples. He wondered if he was old enough to have a heart attack or a stroke. He was only 19. He wondered what Kakashi would think if or when he arrived, finding Sasuke dead from heart failure. Now pushing 35, Kakashi was still one of the healthiest people Sasuke had ever known. He'd live to be 100, probably. Sasuke was satisfied that he'd almost completed two decades - not bad for a Konoha chuunnin. True, this was peace time and shinobi tended to live longer when there wasn't a front line to defend, but Sasuke was an Uchiha, soon to be the last Uchiha, and he was willing to bet that a fair number of people had lost a few of their own bets on how long he would live.

 

His 19th birthday had been a quiet affair, Sasuke recalled fondly. Kakashi cooked dinner - but then he always did - and they celebrated - as they usually did - by kicking the spit out of each other and finishing up against a tree. However, since it was Sasuke's birthday, he had Kakashi's pants shoved down on his hips and his wrists tied up in tripwire, instead of the reverse. Kakashi usually liked to be in control during sex, and Sasuke allowed it because it gave him the chance to see Kakashi as the micro-manager instead of the sleepy, lazy old sensei. Sasuke was the micro-manager outside the bedroom - except on his birthday. He smiled slightly at the thought of -

 

And then he remembered that his brother had asked him a question. He remembered that, while his limbs may have felt like wet sand bags, and his blood vessels felt like they might burst in his brain, his chakra channels burned and flowed with hot, vibrant life. His mind was leaping from move to move, going over all the jutsu he knew - ninjutsu, genjutsu, dojutsu, taijutsu, kenjutsu, the healing jutsu he'd learned from Kabuto, the chakra control he'd learned watching Sakura spar with Tsunade - his body might nearly be finished but his chakra levels had never been higher, and watching Itachi, he knew his brother was almost out.

 

His eyes ached fiercely and so he closed them, not using the sharingan, not wanting Itachi to know that he still could. After his return from Sound three years ago, he'd spent weeks in Konoha's psych ward, blinded by his own hand - a last-ditch effort to make himself undesirable to Orochimaru - and then blindfolded during the healing process. He'd learned to see without his sight and without the sharingan. After his release, he'd often found himself more comfortable with his eyes closed. And now, three years after his self-inflicted injury, the sharingan was reminding him of what he'd done to himself. His eyes were failing him. No matter, though. He didn't need them. The ANBU-issue tanto lay on the ground only two meters away. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd dropped it. If he could feel his extremities better, he'd at least be able to tell what Itachi had done to him to make him drop it, but his hands were numb. Again, he reminded himself that Itachi had asked him a question. Without opening his eyes, and forcing the rest of the air in his lungs out between his teeth, he managed to hiss, “Yes, I am.”

 

Then, because his muscles certainly weren't responding to his commands, he forced as much chakra as he could into his right elbow, surging up and to the side, against Itachi's arm. His elbow struck his brother's forearm right in the middle, snapping both bones. Itachi didn't make a sound, but stumbled back a step, releasing Sasuke's throat. Sasuke's knees buckled as he sucked in a painful breath. He fell to the side, in one smooth motion, grabbing up the tanto. As his hand closed around the worn grip, his exhausted brain gave him a swift and graphic replay of what he'd done to get the blade from Kakashi's closet.

 

His lover was backed up against the wardrobe, Sasuke leaning into him hard enough to make the cheap metal door buckle slightly in protest. Kakashi had broken the seals encircling his wrists, his ankles, his throat and his temples perhaps 20 minutes before. His whole body was humming with power and breath and blood. He didn't think he'd ever been so hard in his life. He thought he was probably purring a little because Kakashi's fingers were massaging the base of his skull, and he loved that. His body was feeling things it hadn't felt in two years, his chakra channels finally opened and clear and filled to bursting with energy and sensation. His head was clear and focused for the first time... well since Orochimaru had started the body possession jutsu three years ago, tossing him out of his own mind and into thick, oppressive, suffocating fog. It'd been three years since he'd felt so sharp and ready. He thought that sex with Kakashi right then probably would have been the best sex of his life. They were kissing. He remembered the feel of sharp stubble and a bunched-up cotton-nylon mask rubbing against his chin. He remembered opening his eyes to slits to see that Kakashi's eye was closed. The sharingan was also shut but he got an eye-full of the still-angry red scar bisecting his old sensei's cheek. The sex would have been amazing, but his mind and his body would never be sharper, would never be more powerful than they were right then. And Itachi was somewhere to the southeast. He'd heard the rumors. He wondered if Kakashi knew about those rumors, if he would have broken the seals, knowing that Sasuke was still an avenger. Sasuke was a chuunin, a good shinobi given his mental and physical limitations and, a decent lover if he did say so himself. Sasuke was Kakashi's friend and lover, and he was active in Konoha's service, but he was still an avenger, and it looked like Kakashi had forgotten that. He took his hand away from Kakashi's hip, started to undo the top button of his old sensei's uniform pants and instead performed the few seals he needed just as Kakashi realized something was off and tensed up to shove Sasuke away. Sasuke's palm slammed back into Kakashi's hip, throwing him against the wardrobe, pulverizing the joint and a fair portion of his pelvis. Kakashi grunted and slid towards the floor - but not before he managed to bury a kunai in Sasuke's belly. Sasuke back-handed him, putting a little extra chakra into the blow. Kakashi's head snapped to the side and he was out cold - not for long, Sasuke knew, as he pushed him away from the door and groped around inside for Kakashi's ANBU tanto. He found the blade quickly and then, without really feeling it, he wrenched the kunai out of his gut. His blood poured out of him onto the wood floor and with it, the pain rushed in. He fell to his knees beside his old sensei, crying out in spite of his best efforts to remain silent. But Sasuke was not afraid. He'd trained with Kabuto as well as Orochimaru. With slightly shaking hands, his fingers formed different seals, glowing with soft green light. He focused the outside healing with the inside, directing the flow of his newly released chakra to the external and internal injury. The wound all but disappeared in a matter of minutes. The pain was slower to leave him. He thought briefly that if Sakura didn't kill him for what he'd done to Kakashi, she'd be quite proud of his skill. From necessity, he'd been a quick student of Kabuto's. Had he not been, some of the injuries he sustained while training may have been permanent.

 

He gripped the tanto in his right hand until it started to slide and he realized that he'd dropped it in the first place because Itachi had stepped on his fingers, breaking three of them. He switched the blade to his left and took a step towards his brother. Darkness had fallen while they fought and, with the rain, Sasuke would have had a hard time seeing his opponent, but with his eyes closed and the sound of his brother's breathing as well as the raindrops striking his clothes, Itachi's position was as obvious as if it were broad daylight.

 

Sasuke spoke softly, mostly to himself. “I was having trouble breathing. I was. It's fixed now.”

 

Itachi may have laughed, or it may have been a cough. “What have they done to you, little brother?” he murmured. “They made you crazy.”

 

“Why, are you frightened?” He smiled and knew that his mouth was as ugly a sight as Itachi's. His lips were numb, though, so he didn't care.

 

Itachi lunged for him and Sasuke heard the sound of a blade cutting through raindrops. He brought up Kakashi's tanto and fell back under the force of his brother's strike. He stepped to the side and heard his brother stumble and then roll away. He felt his brother's exhaustion coming off him in waves, though he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't his own exhaustion he was breathing in.

 

“Are you having trouble standing, brother?” Sasuke asked, his voice half-mocking, half serious. Again, Itachi did not respond. Sasuke sniffed the air and smelled blood and burned fabric, turning to the left, where he knew his brother to be. His muscles were only the vehicle for his chakra as he flew forward, rising into the air and pouncing on his brother, chakra-charged fist still clutching the tanto. The grip of the knife struck Itachi full in the face. Sasuke felt bone give way under his hand and knew that Itachi had one less sharingan.

 

His brother gave a strange barking sound, voice harsh and broken. Sasuke wasn't sure he'd ever heard Itachi cry, not even when they were very young boys. He was not crying now, but he was certainly damaged. Even now, 19 years old, an avenger, a man, Sasuke did not like to hear Itachi's suffering. He backed away quickly and dropped into a low defensive stance, trying to regulate his breathing, trying to keep his body functioning for just a few more minutes. He was almost finished. He had to finish. He didn't have much time. The eyes working for him, scattered about the ruined ground, knew that others were close. Konoha shinobi were coming for him.

 

He opened his eyes just briefly, long enough to see through all the eyes he'd pulled out of the ground. They worked for him, fought for him, did his bidding because they were him, essentially. The dead of this abandoned village were his because Orochimaru had taught him very very well before he'd run away, before he'd tried to blind himself, before Naruto had stormed the mountain and put his fist through the old Snake's heart. The long-dead villagers walked the earth now with Sasuke's chakra pulsing through long-dead channels. They fought Itachi's traveling companion for him - because Itachi never traveled alone - and they saw who was coming from the hidden village of the Leaf.

 

They were just arriving - a four-man cell. Nara Shikamaru - probably squad leader, not much use in the dark, though the size of his brain made up for that. Hyuuga Neji - the most skilled fighter, certainly more than Sasuke could handle right then. He groaned. Uzumaki Naruto - spitting fire and boundless energy. Haruno Sakura - a bundle of emotional wreckage, strong enough to put him through a really big wall. After this was over, those four Konoha nin could kill him any number of different ways, but that particular combination of Konoha nin just might not actually be all that interested in killing him at all. He didn't quite allow himself to hope on that front, but he thought about it.

 

His eyes began to slide closed again, pulling back from the dozens of eyes he'd been peering through. Just as his attention returned to the battle in front of him, Itachi attacked again. Sasuke's briefly scattered mind was just a bit too slow reassembling itself as he was bowled over by his brother's slight weight. He grunted as his back hit the ground, Itachi's knee in his gut. He kept hold of the tanto in his left hand, even as he cried out in pain, Itachi's kunai buried deep in his shoulder. He struggled to breath and wondered vaguely how he was supposed to kill his brother now that he had a skewered left shoulder and a crippled right hand.

 

“Silly little brother,” Itachi said, voice ragged. “You're still distracted. You still don't hate me enough. You can never hate me enough to beat me. You're still so human.”

 

Sasuke could feel consciousness slipping away from him, eyes slipping back in his head. His body was finished.

 

His chakra was not. It burned, painfully alive inside him. Two years it'd been muzzled, bent into a shape that kept it safely locked away from his use. But Kakashi had broken all the seals. Sasuke's mind and body had both started to suffer from the inky black marks that had been placed there. The twisted, leashed chakra had begun to twist his own head and weaken his muscles. Kakashi had seen this - the way his body trembled after training, the way he trailed off mid-sentence and was never able to pick up his lost thought - he'd seen it and acted in spite of the consequences to himself and to the village. Sasuke thought that, if he lived through this fight, he would... well, he hadn't gotten much beyond that. He'd do something... nice. And if Kakashi lived, he'd at least apologize to him.

 

It occurred to Sasuke in that infinite second between when Itachi stabbed him and when Itachi killed him, that he had yet to make his point about hatred, to his brother. Sasuke wanted to be very clear on that point. It'd been quite a revelation to him when he'd stumbled upon it two years previous, when he and Kakashi had first started fucking, had first become lovers.

 

“Brother,” he mumbled.

 

“Yes,” Itachi hissed at him, long slender fingers again closing around Sasuke's throat.

 

“This isn't about you, and it hasn't been about hate for a long time.”

 

Those fingers froze.

 

“You are half the person I am.”

 

Sasuke's chakra sizzled and spat behind his eyes as the sharingan whirled to life. He saw his brother's movements shimmering before him, just before they happened. He smiled an ugly smile and kicked his brother back, fingers flying through seals, the sound of a thousand chirping birds splitting the night air. He sent the electric chakra pounding through him into Kakashi's tanto, and using the technique that he'd developed himself while slowly losing his mind in Sound, he sliced through his brother's windpipe, esophagus, and jugular.

 

When the chidori finally dissipated and the smell of burning skin assailed his nostrels, Sasuke realized he'd been shouting the entire time he'd used the jutsu. He closed his mouth and dropped the tanto, shuffling a few steps away from his brother's body before his knees gave out again and dropped him on his ass. His muscles shuddered and twitched a few times before he slouched to the side and passed out, hoping with his last conscious thought that, when the Konoha nin found him, they'd at least have the decency to kill him without waking him up first.