Lines of the Broken | Sasuhina

Chapter One

There were many things people said about the afterlife. Many claimed that a white light came to claim you and you were taken to the heavens. Many believed in reincarnation; the ability to live multiple lives on and on until the spirit was mature enough to become one with the heavens. Many believed that for a heaven, there was hell; the home of demons.

If one were to ask Uchiha Sasuke, he would claim that the afterlife felt like nothing. There was only darkness, emptiness. No up, no down, no left, no right. No air, simply the sensation of constant freefall and your own thoughts.

He thought a lot. He thought about his life, his actions and decisions. He thought about Itachi constantly, his brother who had given up so much for a village not even worth protecting. His entire clan had to die because the powers that be were too afraid of a civil war. How many of his clan could have been saved if they had simply allowed the Uchiha to revolt? It would have been a costly battle, many would have died, but in the end, even if his clan had lost, they would still be alive.

What about Madara? A voice would ask every now and then.

What about him? A senile old man that hadn't had the good sense to die when it had been his time. Fuck him. That bastard had, basically, killed his own clan with his asinine ideas of world domination.

What about Orochimaru? The power you gained from him.

Who knew? Better yet, who cared? Had things been different, had the clan been allowed to live, had Itachi not been branded a traitor, had Sasuke not have had to experience the brutal slaughter of his entire clan by his brother, he wouldn't have even needed Orochimaru in the first place. Itachi had been stronger, Itachi would have trained him and more than likely he would have come out more powerful than he ever could have under the dead sannin's tutelage. Fuck him. Fuck Kabuto too, that sick son of a bitch who had desecrated his brother's corpse for his own twisted gains. He had thoroughly enjoyed destroying that bastard, had taken great pleasure in the deed.

No one fucked with the Uchiha. Period.

Sometimes he would hear a voice in the darkness that was not his own. Itachi's, he assumed. Either that or he was insane even in death.

"This was not what I had wanted for you brother."

He knew that.

"You were the one strong enough to end the Uchiha curse, to make us something better."

He knew that…now. Death gave a person a much clearer head than in life. He understood what Itachi had wanted, he understood that Madara had used him. A part of it had known it from the beginning and hadn't cared. He had been angry, he had wanted blood, he had wanted someone to suffer the way he had suffered, he had wanted someone to blame for Itachi's death – for all of his family's deaths. Madara had made it easy for him. The enemy? Konoha. All of those happy bastards who led happy lives and took everything they had for granted. They had things he would never have, things that had been savagely removed from him at a young age and for what?

The Uchiha wished he could find Danzou in this void, he'd kill him all over again using slow torture and lots and lots of pain before sending him into oblivion.

So how did he feel now? Tired, perhaps. He had hoped that with death he would have been reunited with his clan yet all he had was darkness. Was this to be his hell, to float forever in a sea of nothing? Not that he wanted to look at Itachi, to see the disappointment there. He knew it would be there, because he had done the very thing Itachi had implored him not to do. It hadn't been his brother's fault; he hadn't known that Sasuke had been hanging on to sanity by a small thread, one that was severed upon his death. Madara had taken advantage of it and Sasuke had allowed it. It had been easier to simply give into madness, to lash out at the world for the completely fucked up hand it had dealt him. It was easier to hate than it was to love, it was easier to fight recklessly and risk death than to live a meaningless life.