Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Brother's Love ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Warnings: Later Uchihacest, angst, yaoi.

 

* * *Sasuke's POV

 

In me is a shattered soul, splintered in many pieces, each one painful and agonizing, like a knife driven in the heart. Every time I suffered a new knife impaled me, plunged deeper in my psyche. Only so many knifes can be taken before the psyche cracks, and when it does, everything you thought was real and sane collapses, in a world turned upside down where reality loses all meaning. That's what happened to me the day I lost everything.

 

I was eight years old. All I ever wanted was big brother's love. It meant more to me than life itself. Everyday I'd ask him, “Big brother, practice some shuriken jutsu me with!” And then he'd poke me in he forehead, grin and say, “Not today, little brother, I'm busy. Maybe tomorrow.” Then, the next day he broke his promise. He lied and lied, so I cried myself to sleep one night.

 

“Big brother…lied…” I wept, burying my face in the pillow, its soft dry cotton pillow casing drenched by my tears.

 

“Quiet down! Will you?” Itachi hissed through the sliding paper door that divided our rooms.

 

“But you…you lied…” I sobbed, my wails muffled slightly by the pillow in my face.

 

The sliding door creaked; an old screechy sound of wood rubbing wood hurt my ears. Light footsteps on polished wood plank neared then stopped by my bed. I felt his shadow fall on me, backlit by light streaming in from his room through the crack between our rooms. “As a captain in the Anbu I'm busy, Sasuke.”

 

“That's what you always say.” I gazed up from my pillow, over my shoulder searching him for answers.

 

“Tears.” He lifted a pale hand, wiping the tears off my cheek with a single finger. They glistened like diamonds, the invading light hitting them in the darkness. “Tomorrow, you start at the Ninja Academy, right?”

 

I nodded, sitting up.

 

“I'll go to your entrance ceremony at the Academy tomorrow.”

 

“R-really?” I threw myself into his chest and hugged him. “Now that I'm a Ninja Academy student, I'll become as strong as you, big brother!” I exclaimed excitedly.

 

He ran his fingers in my ebony black hair, smiling faintly. “I'm sure you will.”

 

I knew then he loved me, and it meant everything in the world. For some reason, I lived for his approval, his love. He was the only one who gave it, who cared about me. But when it came to everyone else, he distanced himself. And as time passed, he distanced himself even from me.

 

“Big brother, you're so far away…” I whispered, falling asleep.

 

* * *Itachi's POV

 

As far back as I can remember Father only valued my abilities in life. “Well done, as I expected you are my child,” he'd always say. He never saw me for who I was as an individual with my own hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Perhaps it was my own fault for being born such a skilled and talented shinobi. I mastered the sharingan at eight, at ten I became a chuunin, and thirteen I became a captain in the Anbu. Those accomplishments were all that mattered to my Father during my entire life. How did it make me feel? Angry, neglected, hateful, unloved. I felt alone, empty inside with no love to fill me. In the human heart, if love doesn't fill it, all that's left is hate. And in a heart of hate, the soul seeks power to fill that void. Yet no matter how much power the person acquires, it never fills the void. They seek power because that's all they know how to do. Then they forget why they desired power in the first place. They become lost in the darkness of forgetfulness. In that darkness so dark, not even the sun could illuminate it, power became my Light and my God.

 

To fall into the darkness is like plunging in a pit dug so deep you could fall forever and never hit the bottom. The only way out, if you're lucky enough to escape is through a rope, symbolic of love. If no one outside the pit grabs it and pulls you up through love, you fall for all eternity. Love is the Light that is the rope to save you from darkness. For me no one ever grabbed the end of that rope to pull me out from darkness. If my father loved me, along with the rest of the clan, I wouldn't have fallen. But it's too late. I've fallen, I'm alone and I'm cold.

 

In that pit no sunlight penetrates. It's so cold down there the temperature plunges far below zero. My hands, my feet, my limbs, my body and every cell froze over within seconds. Lastly, layer-by-layer, molecule-by-molecule eventually my heart froze over too. I couldn't feel anything. Numbness. No smiles, no joy, no laughter, no tears. Cut off from my emotions I lost all humanity. At best I felt emptiness best described as a bottomless well of loneliness. I cried out in the pitch black dark, only to hear my own voice echo back, growing fainter and fainter until I heard it no more. The state of being alone, where no matter how hard you cry out, humanity doesn't hear and God doesn't answer is hell. It is in that place the mind loses its sanity, not knowing what's real and what isn't.

 

It's a scary place where those who go never return, and if they do they're never the same. It's the place I'm destined to go and on that day I do, my brother Sasuke will hate me.

 

* * *Sasuke's POV

 

“Big brother! Nooo!” I wailed in my sleep.

 

I dreamed that on a dark and stormy night bodies lined the street, in the small Uchiha village right outside Konoha. Aunts, uncles, neighbors, cousins and friends, all of them were dead. Some had kunai knives impaled in the back; others had their throats slit. Crimson rivulets ran from each body out into the rainwater coloring it red. It washed every inch of pavement, reeking of death, flooding the streets as a river of blood.

 

At the entrance to my house a voice cried out, “Sasuke, don't come in!”

 

I burst in anyway, driven by anxiety. On the floor lay two bodies, one strewn over the other visible in the light of the full moon that streamed in through a single larger window.

 

“Mother? Father?” I screamed.

 

A shuriken shot out slamming the door behind me.

 

“Foolish little brother,” echoed a deep and scornful voice. It came from a figure cloaked in the dark beyond my parents' bodies. Lightning struck illuminating its eyes as a flash of angry red.

 

I collapsed on the floor, paralyzed with fear. “Mom and Dad…you didn't, did you!? Big brother! Noooooo!”

 

“Sasuke! Sasuke! Wake up,” whispered Itachi, shaking me.

 

My eyes snapped open, my heart beat wildly, and my body trembled violently drenched in sweat. “Mother! Father! Don't kill them!”

 

Itachi frowned at me, wrinkling his nose. “What are you talking about, little brother? You were having a nightmare.”

 

“No,” I cried, sniffling. “Mother, Father, everyone will die.” An intense foreboding fell on me like the shadow of death, the grim reaper's scythe grazing my neck.

 

Itachi froze, feeling the same shadow pass over him. “Even if they do, you won't.”

 

I grabbed him, nuzzling my head in his neck. “Big brother, I don't understand.”

 

“No matter what happens, I won't let you die. You're special to me, Sasuke.” Big brother's eyes welled; large empty pools of sadness, clear like the rain in my dream before it mixed with blood. A part of him knew something would happen. It was as if he said goodbye to me with the last of his emotions. “It's hard to explain. Its like I'm falling in a pit and I can't get out.”

 

“A pit?” I asked.

 

“Yes, a big empty hole. Only once I fall in, I can't get out. Mother, father, the entire Uchiha clan, none of them care about me, just you, little brother. That's why you'd give me a rope,” Itachi said.

 

“A rope? Why me?” I murmured.

 

“You love me.” He pushed back my bangs, kissing me on the forehead.

 

“Of course, I'll always love you, big brother!” I kissed him back and hugged him

 

TBC…