Edited, for typos and style. This is now almost certainly AU, but not wildly so, and it was written long before it became that anyway. So enjoy.

Nothing And More

It doesn't make sense, but Sasuke isn't confused, because it's logical, in a way. At least it's true. If it did make sense, he thinks sometimes, he'd probably be confused.

It doesn't have to make sense to be true. Less is more, isn't that right? He doesn't remember where the words are from. Iruka or Mizuki maybe, teaching the class to throw kunai—-just a little flick of the wrist, not the huge swinging arms that so many kids used to like to use—or it could even have been his father, or his brother, who's lying in front of him dying or dead and less life is more blood and that's exactly what Sasuke wants.

He had everything. He had respect and fame and power—more power, with his popularity, where a look could make anyone do anything for him, than he has now, with the ability to kill. He had a team and friends and maybe even a brother again. He had everything, and it only made him angry, because it always felt like nothing.

He has nothing. He's lost respect for himself, even, and his fame is fear, and there's not even much of that—the fame he has, now, is mostly a background role in the stories the Wave citizens tell about Naruto, the ninja who inspired the bridge. He can kill, but no one obeys him anymore unless he's holding a kunai to their throat at that moment—which really isn't very effective in the long run, and he can't often be bothered with it anymore anyway. His teams are gone—he threw his Konoha team away and killed everyone from Oto that was supposed to be his team until Orochimaru stopped assigning them to him, unless he wanted someone killed. And there's no such thing as friends or family in Oto, or as a complete missing-nin, run away from it.

So he's got nothing, and it's all he wants.

Because sometimes less is more, and nothing is everything, and that's just what Sasuke has.

So he stands up and he shakes his hand to get Itachi's blood off of it, and he walks away until he sits down against a tree, and he stares at Itachi's body until he laughs, and laughs until he cries, and cries until he sleeps, and doesn't know—doesn't want to know—if he'll ever wake up again.

Because nothing is everything, but it's still nothing, and now that Sasuke has nothing, he has everything he wants, and there's nothing left to do because there's nothing left to throw away.