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Chapter notes: I'm doing this in two parts.
I apologize if it is terribly confusing or convoluted... I am far more a poet than a writer of narrative. :)
I do not own anything Naruto.
I am not something that can be fixed. Broken beyond repair. I’ve leaked all over the place—and when I look back to see where I have walked I see that trail of self-pity— that black Sasuke who follows me around.
“You are trash,” he says. I shake my head and curl my soul into a fist.
Wind trips and stumbles against me as I walk home. It pushes and pulls my hair and says things in a language I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand! My heart seems to coil in my stomach as emotion builds under my skin.
I need to go to bed. I make my fists little balls. I need to go to bed.
My pace quickens and I scale the steps to my door. I pass inside, a ghost of brooding thought. The rooms are dark. I go straight to bed.
Body feels heavy. So tired. With limbs as tired as mine, pain is dulled. There’s a bruise on my knee. I press it and feel the raw ache. This pain I can handle. In my mind I sink through thick warm liquid, sensation going fuzzy in my exhaustion. My eyes are heavy and I bask in the thoughtless comfort of being wrapped in something soft and warm. Slowly, I cease to think and fall into sleep.
The dream comes first in blue and with a feeling. It is something hard and cold sliding down my spine and pooling at its base. I recognize the emotion. This is fear. I’m running. Being chased. The wind in my face is cold— very cold, and it makes my lungs ache. Breath, breath, breath, in and out I feel my heart push liquid through me.
There are flashes of yellow and pink in my peripheral vision. The colors carry good connotations— sunshine and spring, but my heart cannot carry those things anymore. Good things that make one feel warm and happy are the rich soil from which springs sorrow.
My teammates— my friends— those bearers of the pink and yellow cannot run with me any further. We are trapped inside an arc of mirrors. I remember these mirrors. Haku’s mirrors reflect the light and I see a billion versions of my face. I see the red in my irises and I see my friends— people who love me. We are made of a billion reflections.
Do I rely on the reflection of myself in others, I wonder? I look to my right and see Naruto, the yellow sunshine. He is made of what others make him. I think he has no identity more finite than the public opinion. I pity him and resent his weakness. Then there is the girl to my left. Sakura, depending on my love— you are weak too, and I pity you.
I look at our reflections and see that they’re watching me.
“You do not make me!” I say to my friends, but I stand in the way of Haku’s needles anyway, letting my flesh be pierced in place of theirs. Self-sacrifice and pain.
“Love leads to suffering, you know that,” says my shadow. “You must cut away love."
Haku’s mirrors shatter with our reflections and my friends crack and splinter— because they were just reflections too, leaving me alone and bleeding.
I’m laying on the floor, it’s nighttime and I feel like I’m dying but not because my skin is broken and my insides are leaking out, but because I loved and lost. My brother, he— I loved him. I loved my family too. My stomach squirms and I feel hate flickering in my blood. I will avenge my love.
“Love leads to suffering,” says my shadow again.
I stand and run. I run because it is what I always seem to do. I run because I am weak. I run because I am frightened and hurt.
I run and find myself on a rooftop. The sky is grey and the wind is still cold but the panic has left me. I stand there and wait, because I see him coming. My best friend—
My heart recoils at the thought. “You must kill your best friend”, says my shadow.
He’s still blond and wearing orange— my best friend. He smiles at me, shows me his teeth and gets ready to fight. I smile because I’m better. I’m always better and I won’t kill him. I will not listen to that shadow.
“Chidori!”
“Rasengan!”
Somehow we miss one another and hit a building. I’m shaking and sweating now, because he has defeated me. There are two jagged holes in the wall but his is bigger.
“You are trash,” says my shadow. I feel fire in my bones. It licks at me and makes me crazy.
“I am not weak!” I shout. “I am—“
I cannot finish for my friend has turned into my brother. There he stands—
Brother, betrayer. The fire in me turns to electricity. I love him— love him— hate him! The love is like a chemical burn in the hate and that electricity makes the hair on my arms stand on end. I start to glow because I can’t hold all the jumping, spiking light under my skin.
“I can’t hate you— but I love you— hate you and I will destroy you!” I say to my brother. I feel that hot sting of tears in my eyes and the prickle of pressure in the back of my head. Electricity bursts from my chest, ripping me apart.
Again I am running. It seems I am always running.
“Coward.” Says my shadow. “Your life is unimportant.”
“I know! I know!” I reply, desperate and shaking with the overwhelming weight of my weakness.
The dream passes into darkness and when the light passes through the membrane of my eyelids in the morning I only wake to wallow in self-pity and drown in my hate. I should be better, must be better. I am not weak. I am not a coward. I am better, and will prove it.
“You are trash,” says my shadow. I lash out from the warmth of my bed punching a hold in the wall.
“I am power. I am vengeance. I am pain. What are you made of?” I hear my shadow and he speaks using my voice. “I am made of a billion windows,” he says, “You pass through me and meet the night.”