Wine-Red Sun

Summary: Itachi's ruin is like the sun.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything to do with Naruto...

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"You see that star, Sasuke?"

"Which one?"

"The red one."

Sasuke looked, and looked, and finally saw what it had taken his brother a moment's glance to notice. It shone faintly in the distance, fading in and out, a big, dark, orange-and-red glow set among the brightly sparkling white stars.

"That's a star?" It seemed so different from the other ones; dark and hidden and ominous instead of bright and hopeful and pretty.

"Astronomically speaking, that's a red giant. It's a start that's using up the last of it's energy to keep alight- the burst of lesser energy makes it so big and red."

Sasuke tried to follow this, he really ddi, but Itachi never bothered to speak down to him (this was part of what Sasuke loved about his brother, though- never a complaint) and this was a subject he knew nothing about.

"Why is it red?" he asked.

"Because red is the wavelength with the least energy."

Oh. Sasuke wondered where Itachi found time to learn that. Was it something you learned at the Academy?

"A red giant is the last step before the star explodes and creates a black hole."

"Black hole?"

Th world around them was black, the grass dewy and soft and the skies midnight studded with stars, the moon hidden, the trees a darker shadow on the landscape.

"The absence of all matter."

Sasuke looked up at his brother's face, lit pale blue-silver by the starlight, framed by the darkness of his hair and the absolute black of his eyes. Itachi met his stare and for an innumerable second Sasuke understood. Then Itachi looked back up at the sky and it was a mystery again, how something could completely lack light and energy and whatever 'matter' was.

"Someday our sun will die. But it will try to save itself, it will expand into that red giant, and we will never see it die because we will be swallowed up in its ruin first."

They were silent after that, for a while, and then Itachi herded Sasuke back inside. Sasuke lay awake for a while thinking about red suns and black holes and how could everything be gone? There was so much of it. Something would have to be left.

Three years later he finds out how everything could be gone, lost in the wake of wine-red sunspots of mangekyo left in his eyes. And just like Itachi said, they wouldn't see death; nobody except Sasuke would; because they had all been swallowed up in Itachi's ruin.