For Aniki

When Sasuke was eight, he saw something that tore his world apart from the inside.

He saw his brother as something terrible, because he made him see him that way.

What Itachi never seemed to fully understand, and what his teammates definitely never learned to comprehend, was that it wasn't the revelation of what he'd done that finally broken Sasuke's resolve to love his brother. It was that Itachi had gone out of his way to make sure that his brother would not love him for what he had done. Some might not see the difference, but to Sasuke, the distinction, in that sharp moment of revelation, was so stark that there would never be a way to deny it.

Itachi showed him his pain after showing him his terrible deeds.

Itachi told him to follow after telling him to live and hate him.

Itachi had not wanted to be loved anymore, because Itachi, his Aniki, had done something terrible.

He wanted to die.

No matter how he looked at it, his Aniki wanted to die.

And he had, in twisted words and insults that burned deep into his heart, asked Sasuke to help him.

In the years that followed, the resolve forged in that broken night did not falter, but he forgot the details.

He forgot what had started him on the path of avenger.

He only remembered that he had to avenge, because it needed to happen before anything else.

At some point, it twisted inside him, and as the years slipped away that goal became a desperation, every tiny failure hollowed out his heart until he could do nothing but turn his back. He could do nothing but run towards things that were no good for him because he needed to get this done.

It needed to happen first and the whispering murmurs that drove him on and on, while no longer clear, all seemed to agree that Itachi came first. Itachi had to die before anything else could ever be considered.

So he fought, and kept his mind whole in that broken way he'd lived for so long. He turned blind eyes on the clues and momentary affections that seemed to always be there in their twisted way when he and Itachi crossed paths, back and forth like a demented board game of clues that never seemed to get him anywhere.

He learned and twisted and grew, and still it was never enough...

Not even the day he was finally faced with the end of everything, his brother there, in his face... and still Aniki.

Still the same Aniki he was, that he'd been, and he died.

Just like that.

And his world fell apart all over again because he'd failed.

He'd thrown away everything, fought and clawed and hunted for years, and there was no satisfaction on seeing his brother die. There was no happiness or relief. There was only a hollow feeling as the last of his heart was crushed under the sense that everything was ruined.

That was when the whisper of motivation was finally stilled enough that one thought became clear.

You never managed to help Aniki.

Just like that, victory was dust and ashes on the wind, dead and worthless.

But, even as exhaustion finally took his vision, he clung to the reasons that had led him to live his life the way he had.

Even if he'd failed horribly in his goal, it all still had to be worth it.

The world could never be right again if it wasn't, because now, there was no more Aniki to fill the void where everything else would go.

That large, vicious void that could only grow, because everything had been for Aniki.

Everything.