Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Path of No Regrets: Renewal ❯ Chapter 3

Disclaimer: If I had a million dollars/(If I had a million dollars!)/Well, I'd buy you a house/(I would buy you a house!)/And if I had a million dollars/I'd buy your loooooooooooove…

…But seriously, I would buy Naruto. Because I still don't friggin' own it.

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I escape every now and then
And to think, I find myself back here again
And again
I used to know who I was until you came along
I return to the only place I've ever felt that I belong

--Nine Inch Nails, “Home”

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Path of No Regrets

-Chapter 3-

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He was the only one alive.

The street was filled with bodies bathed in moonlight. He stood alone, the metallic, acrid smell of their blood filling his nostrils and making his stomach turn. Everyone here had been a member of his clan. Everyone here, he had known. Everyone here had been alive so short a time ago that it seemed impossible.

Now they were all dead. He was the only one left. The only one alive.

…Except for him.

(why did you do it?)

(to measure my capacity)

He didn't understand. His brother was not a killer, his brother could not have done this.

(…)

(but he did)

He saw his parents standing in the dojo. He saw Itachi raise his katana and ruthlessly cut them down. He saw them hit the floor, saw them lying there, dead, their blood pooling slowly beneath them. He stared into his father's lifeless eyes—

(and for a moment they weren't his father's, they were blue instead)

—as tears silently flowed from his. Fear and grief and horror filled him, and he ran.

And then his brother was there again, and he was staring at him, coldly, spitefully.

(foolish little brother)

And all of a sudden, his eyes changed. Became crueler, darker, deadlier.

(the Mangekyou Sharingan)

(you are also capable of obtaining these eyes)

(but there is one requirement)

And then suddenly, it wasn't Itachi standing there at all, but Naruto.

(…you must kill your closest friend)

Then Itachi was behind him, raising the katana again, and Sasuke screamed for the idiot to run, but he didn't, he just looked at him—

(what about all the time you spent with Team Seven, was all of that just meaningless to you?)

—and suddenly it wasn't Itachi holding the katana at all, but Sasuke himself.

(it wasn't meaningless)

(you have become my closest friend)

And Naruto stared at him, betrayed, as the katana swung down. And Sasuke—

—Sasuke woke up.

---

It happened so fast that for a minute he didn't recognize or remember where he was at all. All he could think about was the dream. The nightmare-images kept flashing brutally through his mind as he lay there gasping for breath, and he pushed his palms hard against his eyes in a desperate attempt to make them go away.

It was his left arm's sharp jolt of protest at the sudden movement that actually snapped him out of it and brought him back to where he was. He stared up at the stark, white ceiling, and let out a deep sigh when he finally remembered. The hospital.

Sasuke hated hospitals. He had ever since he'd woken up alone in one five years ago, with a stinging injury in his arm very similar to the one he felt now, and had realized in that moment that he'd just become an orphan. And none of his subsequent hospital stays had helped much to change his initial impression.

He pushed himself up gingerly on his elbows and waited, and when none of his muscles trembled or threatened to give out the way they had the last time he'd attempted this, he pulled himself carefully up to a sitting position. Having done so, he closed his eyes again.

…It wasn't like it was the first time he'd dreamed about the murder of his clan. On the contrary; sometimes it seemed like that was all he ever dreamed about. By this point, he should have almost been used to it. But he wasn't. He hated that—that the nightmares never got any easier to bear, that the pain and dread and the sick feeling in his stomach never lessened over time.

And this time had been even worse. Because Naruto had never before visited any of those dreams. He had never before seen Naruto's face appear among those of his dead family; never before seen Naruto stare at him, into him, as if he'd failed to save him too.

You never failed to save him, no; you just tried to kill him.

He clenched his left fist, hard, and this time welcomed the pain that flared up, because it distracted him, if just for a moment.

He couldn't stand this.

He was a mess. He was broken and conflicted and unsure and he couldn't stand it—he hated not having any idea of just what the hell he was supposed to do next.

It was Naruto's fault. Damn it. Before he'd come along, it had been easy; Sasuke had known exactly what he was and exactly what path he was supposed to walk. He was an avenger, and his plans in life were simple—kill Itachi, and restore his clan. And even that last part wasn't truly essential; if he died taking Itachi down, that was still just fine with him. In fact, some days he even thought he might prefer it.

There had been nothing else, just revenge, and it had been easy that way. He'd trained and trained, hating and spiting his brother just like he had said, living only to kill him. He had been willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to reach his goal.

And then he'd come along, and somehow everything had changed.

And he hated it. Because now it wasn't simple. Because now he knew, for certain, that there were some things he wasn't willing to do to kill his brother. Or at the very least, there was one thing. He would not kill his closest friend. He couldn't.

And that one thing… that one damned thing… it changed everything.

Where did that put him if he was no longer willing to put his revenge above everything else? Where did it leave him if he wanted Naruto to live more than he wanted Itachi to die? And why was he so weak—so completely, unforgivably weak—that he hadn't even been able to leave when he'd finally started to see how weak he was getting? He'd failed even at that.

And now he was stuck sitting here in this fucking hospital while a bunch of aging shinobi who didn't even know him decided his fate, and all the while his goal, the one that had been so simple, the one he had been so sure of, drifted further and further away.

It was all Naruto's fault. But the worst part was that he could not, even now, make himself regret for even a second that he had not killed him.

…So maybe, he supposed, the fault was really his own.

He thought back to the Valley of the End again, remembering what had happened when Kabuto showed up. He remembered the horror and urgency he'd felt when Kabuto had gone after Naruto, and how he'd just jumped in, without even thinking about it, to stop him.

He sighed, thinking back to what Kakashi had said.

“You need to decide, right now, which of those two things it's going to be from now on.”

…Well, he had decided, hadn't he? At least he did know that much—he would never again let his revenge drive him that far. No matter what happened, he would not let Naruto or Sakura get dragged down along with him, ever. He grimaced—how could he have been so stupid? That had even been one of the reasons he'd left in the first place. To keep them out of it, to keep them safe. He'd protected them this far, and he wasn't about to let his brother change that now. Itachi had taken enough from him as it was.

A bleak defiance swept through him, and a grim smile touched his lips. Yes, at least he did have that one bit of surety, if nothing else.

I won't become what you are. I won't become a murderer. At least, not until it's finally your blood on my hands.

And if that meant not ever gaining those eyes… well, so be it. He'd just find another way, then. He had to.

Cautiously, he slid out of bed and onto the cool floor, carefully testing his weight on his legs before finally deciding it was safe to walk. Ever so slowly—he could move, yes, but it still hurt—he made his way to the bathroom adjoining his room. After closing the door behind him, he strode to the mirror and judged his reflection with a frown.

He didn't look much better on the surface than he felt on the inside. His face was scratched, bandaged, and beaten, and judging from what else he could see, the rest of him was not much better off. Gingerly, he lifted his shirt to examine the damage underneath, only to find that much of his torso was in fact one big, ugly, still-healing bruise. It brought back more memories of the battle with Naruto—he recalled rather clearly being slammed into the side of a cliff several times, among other things—and he fought the urge to wince as he started to pull his shirt back down.

He paused. Then slowly, tentatively, he reached back with his good hand and carefully moved it along his shoulder blades.

…No scars. At least, nothing that he could actually feel.

His fingers hovered over his back for a moment longer. Then he shuddered, and decided that it was probably for the best.

---

Kakashi—it could have been anyone, he supposed, but he just assumed it was Kakashi—had been nice enough to leave some of his clothes lying on the bathroom counter, so after washing up as best as he could, he changed and stepped back out again, wondering just what to do now.

His hospital room, not particularly inviting even at the best of times, looked even less so now that he felt slightly more refreshed and much less inclined to lie back down on that uncomfortable bed. But the trouble was, there wasn't much else he could do. Under most circumstances, this was more or less the point where he would either sneak out past the nurses outside, or bypass them entirely by simply escaping through the window. (He wasn't particularly well-known for following doctors' orders to the letter, and well… he really did hate hospitals.) But under most circumstances, he didn't have two squads of Anbu waiting for him just outside the door.

He sat down to consider it for a moment, wondering what the most likely outcome would be if he did decide to leave the room. Would he be pounced upon as soon as he touched the door handle, or would they actually allow him to move about? Part of the answer, he supposed, rested on the exact reasons why they were guarding him to begin with. Was it to keep him from leaving again (probably, although if they really believed he could do it in his current condition, they were sure giving him an awful lot of credit)… or was it to keep others from getting to him?

That idea gave him pause and sent him reflecting back on Orochimaru, an aspect of his current situation that he hadn't given much thought to until now. Maybe he should have been thinking about him a little more, though. There was no doubt that the issue of Orochimaru was a serious one. And the man certainly possessed incredible power, he knew that much. But when he considered it now, he realized that he knew surprisingly little else about the person who, not three days ago, he had been so willing to give up everything he knew to go train under.

…In fact, he didn't even know why Orochimaru was so apparently interested in him. At the time, it hadn't seemed important enough to question. He knew that Orochimaru did want him, and was willing to offer him the power he needed, and that was enough. If he was completely honest with himself, the fact was that a large part of him hadn't really wanted to know. Because deep down, he'd known from the start that the answer would not be something he liked.

After all, nothing in this world came free. Or at least, nothing did that was worth having to begin with.

And the one thing that he did know for certain about Orochimaru was that he was bad. He never had learned the specifics, and he'd only even met him once for that matter, but once had been more than enough. It had been an encounter Sasuke was not likely to soon forget. Orochimaru's very presence had held an air of menace to it. He was sadistic in a calm and refined way that had been profoundly disturbing, and more than once Sasuke had been utterly certain that he was going to die.

But he hadn't. Instead, Orochimaru had left him with that parting gift, the curse seal, and the implicit promise that the power it offered had been only a taste of what Orochimaru himself could give.

And because Sasuke was so desperate for that power, because he had been so sure that he needed it, he had willingly ignored the rest. He'd turned a deliberate blind eye to the consequences that, in truth, he'd still known would be there. He had managed to convince himself that it didn't matter—that whatever Orochimaru really wanted from him, he could deal with as it came. Because after all, in the end nothing could be more important than killing Itachi. And that goal was worth the risk.

…Only now, he wasn't so sure.

“He just wants your body to use as his container! You might not come back! You might get killed!”

At the time, he had ignored Naruto, just like he'd ignored his own doubts about Orochimaru's intentions. Now, though, he couldn't help but wonder if what Naruto had said might not have been closer to the truth than he wanted to admit. He wasn't even sure what the part about his container meant, but the rest… loathe as he was to acknowledge it, the rest may have very well been close to the mark.

It wasn't like he'd ever expected to just march into Hidden Sound, demand that Orochimaru train him, and then just leave freely again when the time finally came. Not really. But it wasn't really like he'd had a plan, either. He'd just…

He'd just been winging it and trusting to luck. And the more he thought about it now, the more he started to realize just how stupid it had been.

Trusting to luck… if there was a more surefire way to get killed, he'd yet to hear it.

…Shit.

He reached up toward the back of his neck, then stopped when he caught himself. That was quickly becoming a habit, and one far too revealing for his tastes. It was that damn seal that had started all of this trouble to begin with.

He sighed, then wondered again about Kakashi's earlier words.

“That curse seal… did you know, all it really does is draw on your own power?”

Could that really be true? Was it even possible? It sounded far too much like wishful thinking for him to even dare to believe. If getting power without consequences from Orochimaru had been a stretch, how much more of one was it to think he could possibly gain that kind of power just by training normally, especially since absolutely nothing had come of that in the past?

The strength he'd felt when using the new form of the curse seal for the first time had been unimaginable, like absolutely nothing he'd ever experienced. How could Kakashi, or anyone, least of all himself, possibly believe that something like that had been his own power?

The answer was: he couldn't. But it seemed like he had no other choice.

…So here he was, back in Konoha, all guarantees of achieving his goal now gone… and of all the ironies, the only option he had left was to, once more, simply trust to luck.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at the door and abruptly decided that in that case, he might as well just take his chances.

---

As it turned out, the Anbu did not pounce as soon as he touched the door handle, nor did they spring when he stepped out cautiously into the hall, shutting the door behind him. In fact, at first he didn't even see them at all. The hallway was nearly deserted, with the exception of a pair of orderlies chatting in hushed tones at one end, and a nurse wheeling an IV away down the other. No one had seemed to take notice when he left his room, and no one seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to him now. Which seemed slightly off, to say the least.

It took him a moment before he finally noticed the faint but telling hint of chakra down at the far end of the corridor. Genjutsu, and a masterfully applied one at that; even though he now knew it was there, he would not be able to see through it at all unless he activated his Sharingan. It took him a moment further before he caught a glimpse of the peculiar shadow standing in one of the other rooms and watching him through the window in the door. And it was still another moment before he realized that the nurse who had been moving the IV had paused by another door, and was now innocuously reading something scribbled on a pad.

Huh.

After a pause of consideration, he finally headed down the hall anyway (although in the opposite direction of the nurse; he didn't feel like tempting fate). Kakashi hadn't specifically said not to leave the hospital, after all; all he'd said was to stay out of trouble. And if his “guards” had decided to be nice and unobtrusive for the time being, then he wasn't about to start arguing with it. As long as they left him alone, far be it from him to question their motives. He just wanted to get out of this place.

He turned a corner, then descended a flight of stairs, emerging on a more active level of the building. Here there were several doctors, nurses, and patients milling about, some engaged in conversation, some striding hurriedly past the others, and some simply loitering about or apparently stretching their legs. He slipped between two of them and made his way toward the elevator, brushing past a couple more as they headed the opposite way. Then he passed another boy around his own age, and frowned as he felt a brief, puzzling tingle of familiarity.

Suddenly, it dawned on him just where he had seen that face before, and before he could stop himself, he had turned around in shock. He wondered if he was just imagining things, and for a moment he was sure he was. But then the other teen began to turn as well, his eyes also wide with surprise… and yes, it was definitely him.

“…Chouji?” he mumbled anyway just to be certain, failing to hide the slight note of incredulity in his voice.

The other boy had blinked, but a moment later a warm, if hesitant smile appeared on his face. “Sasuke!” he said, and if there was perhaps something slightly reluctant about the way he said it, it was still overshadowed by friendliness and sincere relief, and Sasuke did not give it much thought.

Especially since there was something else that had already drawn his immediate attention.

Sasuke did not know Akimichi Chouji particularly well, but they had been in the same class back at the Academy. And Chouji had been one of the few people who'd never fawned over Sasuke, competed with him, or talked about him behind his back, so Sasuke had never harbored any ill will toward the other boy.

And perhaps that was why, even though they'd never much interacted and Sasuke certainly didn't consider him a friend, as he now stared at the undeniably and unhealthily thin genin before him, a sick uneasiness settled itself deep into his gut.

His first thought was to ask what had happened, but something inside of him kept his mouth shut. Because part of him—the part that felt uneasy—already had a good idea of the answer, and his second thought was that maybe he didn't really want to know.

So instead, at something of a loss, he just stared back. Finally, Chouji answered the unspoken question with a simple, sheepish shrug.

“I, uh… kind of ran into some trouble on my last mission.”

For a moment he glanced down awkwardly, but when he looked back up, his expression was friendly. “But I'm all right now.”

Sasuke gave a hesitant nod, then cast his gaze downward himself and opened his mouth to say something. But when he still could not think of anything, he pressed his lips together and simply nodded once more.

Chouji nodded in return, then gave one last shrug and turned to go back on his way. Just before he took a step, however, Sasuke finally found his voice.

“…What happened to the others?”

Chouji turned, looking surprised for a moment, but then he smiled. “They're all right too. Shikamaru broke a finger, but otherwise he's fine, and Neji and Kiba had some more serious injuries, but they're recovering pretty well. Naruto, too.”

The mention of Naruto only sent more guilt running through Sasuke, and he sighed. Finally, he looked up and met Chouji's eyes.

“I never asked any of you to come after me.”

Chouji looked back thoughtfully for a moment. Then finally, he answered, “…I know. But if you're comrades, you don't have to ask, right? That's part of being a ninja.”

With that, he turned and headed down the hall. Sasuke watched him for a moment.

“Chouji,” he finally called.

Chouji glanced back over his shoulder, and Sasuke looked away.

“…I'm glad you're all right.”

It was the closest he could get to an apology. Luckily, Chouji seemed to understand. He smiled again.

“Same to you.”

Then he turned and continued back on his way. After a moment, Sasuke did the same. When he reached the main floor, he ducked into the first out-of-the-way room he could find, opened the window, and smoothly slipped out, no longer caring whether the Anbu tried to stop him or not.

He only paused again when he had finally put the hospital out of his immediate view. Then he briefly considered whether to go home, go someplace else, or just continue wandering about.

It didn't take that long to decide. He didn't feel like heading home much more than he felt like going back to the hospital, but his aching muscles were already starting to protest once again. So finally, he turned down a road and started heading toward a place where he knew that he would be able to just sit and think for a while.

He had a lot to think about anyway.

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-to be continued-

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Author's Notes:

If it seems to anyone like I'm purposely putting off Naruto and Sasuke's inevitable meeting, it's only because I am. I just wanted to give them a little breathing space before I finally throw them back together. Give them time to process everything first, and so forth. But now that that's finally done with, well… (shifty eyes)

Concerning Sasuke and Orochimaru… well, the question of just how much Sasuke actually knows about Oro (or knew at this point, anyway) is something that can probably be debated on and on, and I've certainly seen my fair share of said debates. But for the purposes of this story, I went with my own interpretation, which is that Sasuke didn't really know much at all. I'm basing this on the fact that Naruto was clueless himself until he heard more about Oro from Jiraiya during the Tsunade Arc, and on the fact that what Naruto shouted to Sasuke at the Valley of the End really was pretty vague. If someone screamed at me that I was wanted as “a container”, I know I would personally be a little confused. XD So anyway, that's my reasoning.