- Serious Note: I’m going to Europe tomorrow. As in, flying.
I'll be gone for 15 days. If I am not back by the end of April with, at least,
a note, I am DEAD. (In
all seriousness)
- This is so influenced by Gaiman that it makes my teeth hurt.
...Dead Men Tell No Tales...
By: Pride-Fall
The old man sits in front of his grandchild and begins
his story. Perhaps, he may notice her dark pink hair, and; perhaps, he may
notice the jade glint in her eyes or the rubies that are beginning to grow in
them; but if he does, he makes no mention of it.
“…Once upon a time, when the Akatsuki still walked the earth and the
great Snake Orochimaru sowed terror amongst the Leaf, there was a child…”
Her granddaughter sighs. “Grandpa, I don’t want to hear a story. I want
to go watch TV.”
The old man snorts. “It’s always about that idiot-box with you Genin
these days. I don’t understand it, I don’t want to hear it, and if you
mention it one more time I wont be responsible for my actions…”
“Oh for the Hokage’s sake, grandpa…”
“Enough!”
His voice makes her startle. He sighs, running his hand through his
greying hair. “I don’t know what they’re teaching you at that Academy anymore. Back
when Iruka sensei was still teaching you just didn’t hear people take that name
in vain…”
She rolls her double-colored eyes. “Grandpa, it’s just a saying. Everyone
says it nowadays…”
“Oho? So if everyone suddenly decided that it would be a
good idea to slaughter their families and run away from the Village, you would
too?”
“Grandpa…”
He crosses his arms. “Fine, fine. It’s just a stupid story. Go watch
your MTV and surf your interweb if its so much more important to you than
spending time with your family…What do old men know anyway?”
She scoots closer to him, hugs his legs and tries her best to be
generally apologetic. “Grandpa…Grandpa, I’m sorry…Look, I’ll listen to your
story.”
The old man looks away, arms still crossed. “I’ve forgotten it.”
Her mouth drops. “Oh grandfather don’t be like that!”
“I told you, I’ve forgotten it.”
“Grandfather! You haven’t forgotten it, remember? It starts off: “Once
upon a time…”
He finally secedes, patting his grandchild on the head. “Fine…Once upon
a time, when the Akatsuki still walked the earth and the great Snake Orochimaru
sowed terror amongst the Leaf, there was a Village Hidden Beneath the Leaves..”
“Back then, the Leaf wasn’t as you see it now. The village was more wood
than steel. The forests weren’t clear-cut. The animals still lived nearer to us
than we really cared for; true tigers and wolves coming from the west and the
north during winter to devour anything they could get their hands on. In the
Fire Country of old, the trees grew taller than the buildings; their thick,
scraggly fingertip branches reaching to the sky or to the earth in mock prayer.
We were afraid of the forests, every single last one of us, be it during the
summer or winter, but we moved through them like shadows and falling leaves and
only the stupid would enter the forest and never return…”
“Fine, fine, I get it, It was a forest, and it was dark, and we
shouldn’t have cut it all do--”
“Am I telling the story, or do you want to? You seem so good at it.”
“….Sorry grandfather.”
The old man smiles. “…In the summers it was hotter then Hell and we
could barely move without our shoes melting when we walked and in the winters
it was cold enough to freeze your piss before it hit the ground. Those of us
who were more…shall we say, human, took it upon themselves to create chaos
during these times; using water balloons during the summer of snowballs during
the winter to…Oh, I’m rambling, aren’t I?"
His granddaughter says nothing.
“While the seasons may have been kind to us, nothing else was. Constant
wars with the Sound, two Hokage dead from trying to keep the Village together,
and everywhere you looked an Akatsuki member trying to tear us to pieces from
inside out left the Village with precious few Nin and even less high-paying
missions to go around for those who could actually do them, but we held on
somehow.”
“…Even though we fought off those who would have us dead, there were few
true shinobi left, at one point. The Hyuuga had almost died out. The Akimichi
were more samurai than ninja, the Aburame weren’t human anymore, and the
Inuzaka didn’t even try to pass themselves off as nobles. During
wartime, the Village depended more and more on its ANBU and its Jounin than on
its Chuunin, and Genin teams were being treated more as cannon fodder than
humans…”
His grandchild’s eyes are wide. He can’t see the hint of ruby clearly
now, though he somehow knows its nearer to the iris than it should be, and this
makes him both proud and terrified.
“…That all changed, in its own fashion. The young man’s mother and
father had been murdered long-ago, and his brother had vanished from the world.
Each of them, in their own turn, had left him something to inherit -- his
mother leaving behind her dreams, her hope, and his name, Sasuke, and his
father…”
“Sasuke? But grandfather…”
“It’s a pretty common name…Anyway…His father had left him a knife, a title,
and a mansion, and the only thing his brother had ever left behind that meant
anything to Sasuke was a linked necklace of fangs and beads slightly charred at
its edges. There have been worse legacies, in truth, and this was his.”
“Sasuke was a shinobi. A very good shinobi. He was fast. He was silent. He
was deadly. He killed men with fire and lightning and was known as the Crimson
Shade.”
“Though his childhood was plagued with death, and his teenage years were
spent as captive to a destiny he refuted at every step, there was a ray of
light in his life, though he was far too blind to see it.”
His granddaughters eyes go wide. “Was it a girl?”
He smiles, perhaps longingly, and ruffles her hair. “The dreams of women
are very different from the dreams of men. Though Sasuke had a light, and
though his light would do anything for him, his life was bathed in darkness. After
he was brought back from the Village Hidden In Sound, living to revive his clan
seemed to mean nothing to him. Though he had everything a man could either want
or need -- a mansion, a knife, a title, a lady in waiting, and enough money to
buy his own small island, if he ever wished it, he was dead on the inside”
“But I thought Sasuke had everything? I mean…Who doesn’t even care about
having everything they could ever need?”
The old man smiles. “True value lies only in dreams and prophecies. Material
wealth meant nothing to Sasuke when he had lost his dreams; had lost all his
goals and his one purpose in life.”
“The war with the Sound was raging and Sasuke changed from a man without
a purpose to an excellent soldier. He walked from battle to battle, mission to
mission, slaughter to slaughter, as though he were death contained in a human
body, and his name changed from the Crimson Shade to the Red Death.”
“The war lasted more than three years before it ended with the
destruction of the Sound Nation, and it took its toll on everyone -- moreso
Sasuke, who had lost someone who was, perhaps, the only kindred spirit he had
ever had in life.”
“At Hatake Kakashi’s funeral, both the child Rokudaime and Uchiha Sasuke
placed a broken Tanto, hilt separated from blade, onto the funeral pyre. Haruno
Sakura placed two small, cracked bells on top of the weapon. No one knew what
it meant, but somewhere, we all knew that the damned pervert was smiling down
at us, and that made it alright to cry over the man who never cried his own
tears.”
“Time passed, seasons changed and went. People died and people were born
and missions came and went. Sasuke had just turned twenty-four when he met
Orochimaru for the second time.”
“Orochimaru! But I thought he died when the Sound fell?”
The old-man sighs. “Ino, daughter of my daughter, blood-of-my-blood, I
am a man of extreme patience, but if you interrupt me one more time I’m going to
use Tsukuyomi on you.”
“…Sorry grandpa.”
“As I was saying…The Demon Snake offered Sasuke the world -- offered him
light, and purpose, and strength. He asked Sasuke to help him rebuild the Sound
in secret, and in turn, would give Uchiha the exact directions that would lead
him to find his brother. The only catch was that when time came, Sasuke would
have to betray the Leaf yet again.”
“Again…? But the history books say…”
“Ino!”
“Eep! Sorry grandfather!”
He sighs. “…You must learn that men lie, in time... Especially in their
written words…Sasuke knew what Orochimaru offered him was a devil’s bargain and
that he would gain nothing from accepting it, but he wanted, moreso than power,
to regain his dreams…”
“Sasuke asked for seven days. Orochimaru agreed.”
“On the first day, Sasuke drank until he could not see anything, even
while the Sharingan was activated.”
“On the second day. Sasuke woke from his stupor, tired and alone, in a
mansion he hadn’t set foot in since he was a child.”
“On the third day, Sasuke trained.”
“One the fourth day, Sasuke told the child Hokage, now a man, that his
betrothed was a Bitch in heat who hadn’t eradicated the Village yet because she
hadn’t had her fill of human cock.”
“On the fifth day, from sun up till sun down, Sasuke battled the
Rokudaime on the common grounds of Konoha no Sato. When the stars finally came
out into the sky, Sasuke, beaten and tired bruised and broken, stared up at the
Rokudaime, and told him, with a smile on his face: “I love you, you stupid
dead-last bastard.”
“On the sixth day, Uchiha Sasuke visited his family. By the night of
that same day, flowers lay at Uchiha Mikoto’s feet, both Uchiha Fugaku and
Obito’s graves lay in ruin, and the entire compound was aflame. ”
“On the seventh and final day, Orochimaru came to Sasuke in the Forest
of Death and laid Uchiha Itachi at his feet, drugged and blind and helpless. After
a fashion, he told Sasuke: Even if you do not accept my offer, Sasuke-kun, I
will take your body, and you will still have your revenge.”
“What happened then, Grandfather?”
“…Sasuke did not accept the offer, but nonetheless gave Orochimaru
exactly what he wanted.”
“What was that, grandpa?”
“He gave Orochimaru the only gift you could give an immortal -- he gave
him death, and the rumors suggest that Orochimaru’s plan was the most
well-thought out suicide in history.”
“…Woah…How do you know all of this, Grandpa?”
“Because I was there, and the story isn’t over yet, now hush.”
“There came a time,
shortly-after, in which the Council of Konoha came at a crossroads...They had
the feared Uchiha Itachi, slaughterer of his entire family, chained and blind
deep beneath the Village, but they had no idea how to deal with him. Too many
of the old generation saw him as valuable breeding stock. Too many of the new
generation called for his death or release. ”
“When the time came, the
only decision that could be made was to give the outcome of Uchiha Itachi’s
life over to his next of kin, Uchiha Sasuke…”
“But…Wouldn’t Sasuke
kill…?”
“…Though many believed he
would die, Uchiha Sasuke gave his older brother a different kind of freedom,
and smuggled him to the outskirts of the Fire Country. An old, sun-dried man
with the face of a shark was waiting for them, and helped the blind Uchiha
walk. Before they parted ways, Sasuke’s final act towards the man who had
killed his entire family was to give Itachi a small, finely crafted knife and a
charred-necklace of fangs.
The final words between
the brothers were:
‘I only did what I had
to do to make sure you never ended up like me, Sasuke…Do you hate me for it?’
‘..You may have taken
everything away from me, Itachi…And…And…though I…Though I do hate you brother…
I…I love you…You took everything I cherished away and even though I hated…have
never stopped hating you till this very day because of it, you have given me so
much more. I blame you for everything that has gone wrong in my life, but I
love you, and I cannot bring myself to kill you.’
Itachi, for the first time
in Uchiha Sasuke‘s life, smiles, then and there. ‘…Then I have not failed,
and you have stepped out of my shadow.’
“…And Uchiha Itachi was
gone, and Uchiha Sasuke returned to Konoha to marry his lady in waiting and
live his life as a shinobi until he was too old to walk, too senile to
strategize, and the Rokudaime passed on.”
“…That’s it, huh?”
“Yep. That’s the whole
story.”
“It’s kinda clichéd.”
“It isn’t clichéd at all.
Do all stories have to have a dark and mysterious orphan hero without parents
or a girl who loves a boy but can't have him?”
“My parents put you up to this, didn’t they? None of what you said ever
happened like that, and you’re just making all this up! Itachi died! The
Rokudaime killed Orochimaru! The moral of this story is that strength
shouldn’t matter when you have friends to fall back on, and this whole thing is
about me trying to learn the Mangekyou and be more like Itachi, isn’t it?”
The old man sighs. Gets up from his chair and stretches. “The story
isn’t about friendship. It isn’t about strength. It isn’t even about Sasuke, really.
It’s about trust. It’s about dreams and how they can change. It’s about letting
go of the things that tie you down and letting others close to you.”
The old man reaches the door. Opens it.
“That’s bullshit and you know it, grandpa…”
He stands in the doorway. His granddaughter turns on the television.
“Your parents will be here soon, Ino.”
“…What, grandpa?”
The old man turns. His eyes flash dull blood crimson and three spiral
wheels spin languorously in the darkness.
“…I wish you had known your uncle. He was an amazing man who knew the
true value of things. He laughed where others cried. He remembered where others
forgot. He taught me how to un-eclipse the sun and gave me happiness; but that
dead-last bastard never let me forget that he gave me the choice to kill Itachi
and I turned it down.”
“Grandfather?”
“Goodnight.”
...But in time, the old will
tell their tales for them...
-Finis-