Morbid Humour
Chapter Fourteen: The Id and I
Sasuke walked into the Hokage's office through the door rather than the window. The Hokage was sitting at her desk doing paperwork under Shizune's watchful eye with her ANBU stationed at various points in her office. She looked up from her tedious work and sighed with relief. "Thank God you decided to come back, Uchiha, I was afraid I would have to do paperwork all afternoon."
"So what am I down for?" Sasuke snapped, wanting to get this over and done with.
"Down for? I haven't put you down for anything."
Sasuke looked up confusedly. "What?"
"I'm being flooded with pleas to let you go free – in some sense – since you were considered to be our village's most popular claim to fame. We had a larger turnout of Daimyos and their families in the Chuunin Exams when you competed compared to any other Chuunin Exam and even though most of the ninja—particularly the shinobi—don't really like you, I'll admit that I have a liking towards you. But that's only because you are Naruto's friend. On the other hand, the Council also agreed to my decision. They're eager to have the Sharingan back in Konoha and have implied that reviving the Uchiha Clan is in their best interest as well as the village."
"You're kidding! This is completely ridiculous!" Sasuke shouted.
"What? You don't want to go free? I can send you to a life sentence in prison, or death," Tsunade replied coolly. "Or would you rather a life sentence with your brother?"
"I don't care what you do as long as you punish me," Sasuke retorted.
A breeze blew in when the window opened. Sasuke gasped when he saw the person jumping in was his brother. Itachi courteously closed the window behind him and hung his battered cloak over his arm. Sasuke's eyes darted around the room, waiting for the ANBU to attack, but they all held their positions even as Itachi sat on the edge of Tsunade's desk and smiled warmly at his little brother. Sasuke seethed.
"What are you doing here?" Sasuke hissed. "Why are you letting him come here? He's an S-Class criminal! So kill him!"
"Sorry, Sasuke, I can't do that," Tsunade replied.
"What do you mean? He betrayed Konoha like I did."
"But you're being allowed to live, so give me a chance to explain." Tsunade sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"What's there to explain?"
Itachi coughed.
"Who do you think Jiraiya's referee for all of his crucial information was?" asked Tsunade. "He certainly doesn't have the attention span to do it himself."
Sasuke threw a kunai at his brother which was dodged with ease and flew through the glass window. Itachi raised an eyebrow. "I haven't said anything," he stated.
"Itachi has secretly been selling out Akatsuki to outside sources, mainly to us," Tsunade explained. "For that reason the Council has decided to give him slight pardon."
"You tried to take Naruto! You killed our entire clan!" Sasuke exclaimed, pointing another kunai at Itachi. "Don't tell me this means nothing to you, Hokage – if you can even call yourself that! Or was that all fake too? Are you about to suddenly tell me that mom and dad are still alive?"
"No," Itachi sighed.
"Then what are you doing back here?"
"Ah… sorry," Itachi mumbled.
"It's too late to be sorry, Itachi."
"I'm not sorry about killing everyone. I'm sorry that it turned out this way but that's my fault because I expected you to be more intelligent. You're not the same as me and I forgot that. But watching you attempt to surpass me was still amusing while it lasted."
"Exactly how often do you spy on me?"
Itachi put his coat down and walked over to Sasuke who took a defensive step backwards. The older brother wrapped his arms tightly around Sasuke's waist and lifted him off his feet. Sasuke sucked in a pained breath. "This isn't the place to talk about it." Itachi turned to the Hokage. "May I?"
"Hey, I-" Tsunade started.
"As a favour?"
Tsunade stopped. She inhaled a deep breath, ready to berate him or something, but sighed in defeat instead. Sasuke looked confused.
"What the hell is all of that about?" he asked.
Tsunade grinned sheepishly and giggled. "Well… it's a bit like… uh… Itachi was giving me money while he was with the Akatsuki as favours."
"Itachi lent you money?" Sasuke and Shizune exclaimed at the same time.
"No, he gave me money," Tsunade clarified. "It was particularly helpful with my gambling debts and fees and I have to admit… I kind of miss the allowance."
Sasuke snorted. "And everyone thinks Konoha is going to Hell when Naruto becomes Hokage."
"You have a really nice apartment," Itachi commented as he walked in. Sasuke snorted and tried to ignore it.
Itachi surveyed his surroundings. The living and kitchen space was very compact but spacious enough to comfortably accommodate a family of four. It was a little bit too modern for his tastes, though. He started to explore the house, making his way to Sasuke's bedroom.
"Stay here," Sasuke barked. Itachi put his hand on the door handle, just to tease. "I said don't go anywhere, especially not in there."
"You know, you've been away for so long and left this apartment abandoned… it's very clean, considering…"
"This block has a janitorial service," Sasuke explained. "The janitors come every month as long as the apartment is neat and the manager pays them."
"That's very convenient."
"Sit down," Sasuke commanded.
Itachi obediently left Sasuke's bedroom door. He sat down at the traditional Japanese table made of modern stainless steel. He placed his hands on his lap and stared at the stainless steel tabletop critically while Sasuke prepared the tea. They shared a silence except for the whistling of the kettle and the tick of Sasuke's wall clock. Sasuke brought his attention back to the table when he put a cloth coaster and a hot cup of green tea down in front of him and took his seat on the opposite side of the table. Sitting down was a slow and painful effort for Itachi's little brother. Itachi was almost amused.
"You're actually faring very well… you were only injured two days ago."
"Konoha has some of the most competent medics, even by the standards of other nations. It feels like I've been healed a week in advance."
"Kanpai," they murmured in unison.
The table fell back to silence. Itachi sipped his tea and stared at Sasuke. He didn't touch his own tea; he just glared at Itachi warily. Itachi flashed a warm smile in Sasuke's direction and Sasuke scoffed at it. "You know," Itachi piped up, "I think there's something missing… you don't have dango, do you?"
"I thought you made me bring you here so that you could tell me something important," Sasuke snapped back, slamming his fist against the table. The tea splashed up to the rim of the cups but didn't overflow. "And no, I have no dango! I hate sweets!"
"I thought you liked things that were sweet."
"Tell me what you needed to say and then get out."
"Won't you even let me finish my tea?"
"No."
"This place you live in here… it's very nice."
Sasuke rose from his seat, albeit slowly, and pointed to the door. "Out… now."
"I'm trying to make my point."
"You're teasing me!"
"I was serious... this apartment, this village, this country…"
Sasuke growled but kept his desire to kick something under control. "I heard this years ago… clans, tribes, villages: they're all containers that restrict imagination and shallow out the container of your own self. I get it."
"That's not even half of it," Itachi corrected. "No matter how deep the container of your self can only hold that much: yourself, and your imagination. Unlike your self your imagination relies on innovation and inspiration. And no matter how deep your own container is, it's mass and density is perfectly proportionate to your body. Humans are like lots of little containers in a big wide space. Like power, imagination and self-stability have limits which are also proportionate, not to freedom, to other limits such as your clan, your village, your country and even the limits of other people's containers. In your mind you can be caged by these limits but in your imagination the possibility of the limits your mind and body are contained within allows it to expand to its eventual completion. When all limits are taken out of place the imagination weakens and may even fall into anarchy – which might upset your mind. The Mangekyo relies on the strength of your imagination to function at its peak."
Sasuke remained silent. He sat back down and glared at his brother coldly. He'd worked so hard to keep his temper under control but now it flared and his Sharingan was activated on impulse while Itachi's remained deactivated. Sasuke threw his tea at Itachi and all over the table (managing to miss the nice tatami… somehow). Itachi winced slightly when the hot tea hit him in the chest and face.
"You bastard!" Sasuke yelled. "Are you telling me you made a mistake? You made a small miscalculation? Oh, if only you could see the expression on your face now! You don't even seem realise the gravity of what you've done! You made a mistake and killed the entire Uchiha Clan and left me all alone to get strong enough to beat the living party lights out of you – the very thought of which led me to desperation; I was so desperate to get rid of you that I even threw myself at Orochimaru's feet for power! Do you understand what could have happened if you had never done that? I could have been happy for the rest of my life. Our mother and father could have still been alive. Sakura could have had a chance with me. Naruto would have never gotten pregnant! This is all your fault!"
"I did kill the clan for a reason, Sasuke," Itachi snapped. "I hated it!"
Sasuke flinched at the unusual tone of Itachi's voice. His gaze travelled down to his big brother's hands, which were starting to shake. His eyes widened.
"I had a reason to kill the clan… it doesn't relate to the power I have. Hate… that's all it was really; blind hatred for everyone except you. I hated mom and dad… I hated the elders… I hated our grandparents and our aunts and uncles… I even hated Shisui to an extent. It hurt too much to live up to all of their expectations. I didn't want to be the pride of the clan.
"I remember when you were born and I held you for the first time. You looked more perfect than I ever thought I could be and I refused to give you back. I told mom: 'it's not your baby, it's mine'. I wanted to keep you to myself and spend the rest of my life loving you like you were my baby. It was the most immature thing I'd said that year and our father hit me for it. When you first got sick as a toddler I didn't want to go to school so that I could stay and look after you but father hit me, yelled at me and dragged me to school. When I wanted to stay home and play with you on Sunday morning father would slap me and lecture me about my training and the pride I brought to the Uchiha Clan for being a genius.
"You were too young to remember these things and as you grew older I got these ideas that there was something forbidden to me. Every time I wanted to prove that I loved you more than our parents did I was beaten. The more I trained under a teacher from the clan the ideas were reinforced. When I advanced in ninja rank the taboo was emphasised even more and one day I thought I could confess to my best friend… that was Uchiha Shisui. I told him that I had these feelings and he said that I was too smart to have feelings like those I felt for my baby brother. I… I started to break inside.
"I often wondered if that was possible. The ideas unravelled revealing new thoughts under the folds – ideas I found ludicrous: if, according to Shisui and the clan, it was so impossible for me to have any feelings then why did I feel that way about you? Since when was it impossible for an intelligent ninja to feel anything? The ideas were so contradictory; everything was falling into little cracks, which turned into little holes and then into bigger holes. From that point onwards everything just seemed to mean less and less. The clan… its meaning to me disappeared. I didn't even know what I was doing there anymore. Everything that I had grown accustomed to as a child didn't make sense to me. It was like I'd woken up into a completely new reality. It all drove me insane.
"Then it all started to happen. I killed Shisui. I couldn't stand everything he'd said about me. I hated it when he said he envied my genius. I hated father for putting you down. Mom just patronised you all the time. Everyone treated you like you were the angel who was wronged by the gods because I was the one who was expected to treat you like dirt! Since I was the most intelligent ninja the village has ever seen, I was supposed to look down my nose at a little brother who didn't know how to tie knots until he was six. So everyone could find a way to criticise me.
"No one wanted to love me the way they all loved you. I was the bad big brother because you were never meant to defeat me. I wasn't allowed to stand down or stop.
"Then I lost it… the broken pieces of my soul started to slip through my fingers and as I tried to save the pieces I was losing I lost even more. That's when I started the massacre. But then I felt so guilty because of you. I couldn't kill you too. I wanted to die for what I did. I wanted you to do it. That's why I wanted you to hate me."
Itachi chuckled and looked down at his shaky hands. "It turned out that that was my biggest weakness in the end. I would never kill you. And then that perverted old toad hermit used all of this to blackmail me into helping him and the rest of Konoha. You see, otouto, Akatsuki aren't ordinary missing-nin. Our hitai-atae don't only mean that we've cut ties with our village to be criminals, they mean that we couldn't let go of them. The shrapnel from our pasts are tearing us apart. Nobody sleeps. Yet we still dream and we're haunted by everything we've tried to leave behind. And in the end, we're all just crazy. We are psychopaths and we are completely insane."
Sasuke sighed, finally defeated. He knew Itachi wasn't right in the head. Even at a young age of seven he was above other children and his untrained eyes could easily see the obvious signs of mental instability in his brother. But he was overcome by the selfish desire to beat Itachi and an inferiority complex that pined for his father's love. All of a sudden he regretted throwing tea at him.
"I suppose you'll want me to leave now." Itachi started to get up.
"No… stay."
Itachi froze and stared at his brother. It was amazing enough that Sasuke hadn't tried to kill him since they left the Hokage's office and now Sasuke wanted him to stay?
"I can take care of you and maybe I can do something right this time." Sasuke righted his empty cup. "Go and clean up… I'll be at the hospital."
Naruto tried to rock Maboroshi to sleep that night but the baby boy just didn't seem to want to go to sleep. He wasn't crying, he wasn't hungry, he was changed only five minutes ago but he just didn't want to sleep. Naruto, on the other hand, was beginning to grow very tired. Maboroshi stared at him impassively. He hadn't mastered emotions yet but he was starting to get the hang of using his hands. He patted his father on the chest. Naruto was jerked from his half-sleeping state. Maboroshi may have been small and skinny and not very vocal or emotional but he was stronger than the other babies in the ward. He'd hit Tsunade in the face that morning when she tried to make him burp. Naruto couldn't be prouder of his little boy.
"Having trouble?"
Naruto couldn't say he'd ever been more relieved to hear Sasuke's voice. "Where were you three hours ago? I'm so tired my eyes feel like they're going to fall out."
Sasuke took Maboroshi from Naruto and cuddled him close to his chest. "So now his name is Maboroshi, huh?"
"Tsunade has the scroll… I don't know what she did with it but it's been eating away at me all day. That scroll was really precious to my dad, I'm pretty sure. And I'm also sure that it belongs to me!"
"It's your father's heirloom," Sasuke said factually. "Of course it belongs to you now."
Naruto's eyes widened in surprise that Sasuke knew about his father's heirloom like that. But he decided that it was a good thing. It looked like Sasuke would be on his side again.
"The Godaime made a decision," Sasuke announced. "She said that I'm allowed to go free on one condition… that I spend a period of probation stapled to your side all hours of the day."
"Oh… that's alright…" Naruto muttered… then the gravity of the situation hit him. "What! No, you can't be stapled to me all day and night! I live in an apartment! There's only one bed made for one person! My apartment is puny! I don't have room for a roommate!"
"You can live with me. I still have my apartment. Even though it turns out that Itachi is staying… I think we'll eventually work something out."
"I thought you hated Itachi."
"I said we'll eventually work something out."
Naruto smiled and fell back onto his pillow. He sighed with contentment when Sasuke sat on the edge of his bed and tipped the mattress slightly. In only mere seconds sleep had completely taken over him. Sasuke rocked Maboroshi and cooed in his ear to calm the infant down. Maboroshi's eyes began to droop and he yawned as widely as he could before falling asleep in seconds like Naruto. Sasuke turned to display his achievements to his re-established friend but found him fast asleep. Instead of waking him, Sasuke smiled and stroked Naruto's head.
The world was far from perfect. There would be adjustment pains in the following weeks and months. Naruto had to move in, Itachi would be hanging around and this baby – this beautiful, dangerous baby – was going to be given to a civilian couple, to grow up blithe and carefree. His world wasn't perfect, but…
"Finally, a chance to be at peace," he thought. "I'd have given anything…"
Yes people, that's right, this is the final chapter! Unfortunately, Naruto and Sasuke don't get to keep their baby, they'll have to piece their lives back together first. I've got a plan for a sequel that will definitely be written (it won't be accurate with the real storyline, but it will be written). It's sort of funny how you can write a fanfiction with some decent logic, and then your storyline goes out the window when the manga-ka develops his story more and you may find you were even contradicted. That is sometimes so annoying. But I wouldn't change it, because Naruto isn't my story, it's Masashi Kishimoto's. For now, the sequel is not going to be written because I want to move on to a different project, but if you're interested, it'll be uploaded under the title: "Maboroshi".
See you then!
=D