AFTER DARK | naruto

52 | brink of insanity

The sky was bright, it almost felt as if it were mocking you with the way it glared into your eyes. Though, not even the bright sun seemed to bother you right now. Your eyes hardly seemed to register the bright light as you looked ahead to the horizon.

The world was quiet. Not a single chirp of a bird, not the sound of wind in your ears, not even the rustling of leaves. There was nothing.

Nothing but brown noise and the flashing of images in your head. They repeated over and over again, the sight of your sisters dead body that you killed with your own hand, the sight of the Leaf village having been destroyed, and the sight of that masked man making you a deal. They were a constant spiral, a spiral you fell deeper and deeper into.

You couldn't help but think to yourself; 'Am I going insane?'

You had never thought about this before, about being so far gone that all you could think about is what happened to the village, about your sister. The sister you killed with your own bare hands. Maybe you should have let her live, and she probably would have been had you not lost your own mind in the middle of that battle.

But now, there was no time for self-pity. You had other priorities than your own sorry ass.

Your sister was still dead. You didn't think that you were supposed to feel some sort of grief, especially when she was just an enemy you needed to kill or at least be rid of. But when you thought of it that way, it dragged you further into your thoughts.

Did she deserve to be killed? She had done bad things, she had done you wrong, but does that warrant death?

Does that deserve to be avenged, punished for what she did? Does that make up for it? Did she deserve to die?

It's like everything in your head is spinning out of control. It's dizzying, disorientating. Your body feels weightless and cold despite the heat and the sun. The thought of 'Madara' flashes through your mind again—you couldn't help but want to tear him apart too. You knew he'd taken advantage of your deteriorating mind and used it to get you on his side... Yet what could you do about it now? Madara was strong, more than capable of doing whatever he wanted to. You had nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was hard, sometimes, to keep yourself from going insane.

Madara made you wear an Akatsuki robe, though it didn't make you feel evil or vile or anything of the sort. But it did make you feel gross. Gross because you knew that your sister and father wore something like this before. It was gross and wrong because this is what a group of terrorists wore—and you were sure of it in that moment, you were a traitor. A traitor to the village you had grown up in, and now there was no way for you to return without punishment or scorn.

That thought alone nearly had you throwing up.

So you swallowed down the bile burning your throat as best you could, and tried to pretend it wasn't even there for your sake. You tried not to think about how the others would feel if they saw you here now, they would probably be disgusted. The look of betrayal and hurt—and none of them would understand that you did it for their sakes.

It was stupid. You couldn't save them from war, you couldn't save anyone you cared for.

And they certainly would never forgive you for this, even if you did survive. They'd leave. That's the lie you convinced yourself with in attempts to ease the drowning feeling of guilt.

You wanted to go home again so badly. Madara had trapped you in a moment of weakness, and you made the worse decision or your life. There was no going back from this, you ruined your own life and there was no fixing it. No matter what happened to you after this, whether you lived or died you would always have this regret. And nothing would change. No matter how much you wished you were in the Leaf village now.