Chapter Text
(The day of the break-up.)
Sasuke stumbled through the door of his apartment, falling back against it heavily. The slam echoed through the empty room, rattling down his spine.
He was shaking, tremoring hard enough that he struggled to stay upright and his hands slid down the wood behind him.
Gasping for breath, he pushed away from the door and walked to his counter and fell forward against it. The hard granite pushed against his hips and he curled over it, pressing his head down into the cool surface.
He breathed heavily there, struggling to regain control, but feeling it slip further and further out of his grasp with every second. His vision was blurring and blackening around the edges, just like it had been for weeks, this unavoidable sickness that had been creeping up on him, eating away at his brain.
“Fuck.” Sasuke swore, condensation gathering under his mouth against the granite. “FUCK.”
He was still bleeding, he could feel it slicking his palms on the countertop and on the bottoms of his feet. But he couldn’t feel the pain, just the dull roaring of adrenaline through his system, rising quickly and then being depleted as his seals thickened.
They were heavy, heavier than they had been in over a month, and he had seen the way Naruto’s eyes had widened with fear as he looked at them, gaze lingering on Sasuke’s skin.
He turned his head to the side slightly, staring down at his own arm to watch the seals. They were black and menacing, twisting tightly around his skin, rippling across his muscles with every inhale. They looked monstrous.
He felt like a monster.
“FUCK.” He swore again, ripping himself away from the counter to begin pacing the kitchen. With every step he took, the glass dug deeper into the soles of his feet, and the longer he walked, the more the pain started to make itself known.
But he wanted it. He deserved it. The images of Naruto’s kitchen were flashing through his mind, the shattered glass, the thrown stool. He didn’t remember doing any of it. One moment he had been watching the door shut behind Naruto, the apartment suddenly ringing with silence, and the next moment he was standing under a spray of glass as the light above him exploded.
He didn’t know where he had gotten the kunai. He hadn’t realized he had even thrown it until he looked up and saw it quivering out of the ceiling.
The destruction, it followed him everywhere. And he couldn’t stop it.
He had been trying his best, keeping it locked down for weeks, even as the restlessness grew and grew in his stomach. Even as he slept less and blacked out more, losing minutes of time to delusions or just pure dissociation. Sasuke had wanted to keep it together for Naruto, wanted to keep that worried look off Naruto’s face and wanted to be fine and normal.
But he had fucking failed.
The energy built up under his skin, pressure growing until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Screaming, Sasuke turned suddenly, fist lashing out into the wall beside him. The plaster cracked and split, dust falling around him. Lancing pain exploded from his fist and shot up his arm, sending a shock through his system so intense that for a moment, his vision went completely white.
And it felt fucking good.
Images of Naruto began to flash through his mind as he yanked his fist out of the wall.
Naruto staring at him in the middle of the night, catching Sasuke awake and hallucinating at 4 A.M. Worry creased between his eyebrows, barely visible as Sasuke’s vision bled and swam.
Another scream ripped out of his throat, echoing around the apartment as he punched forward again. Another wall cracked, more dust filling the air, and another explosion of pain. Distraction.
Naruto’s body pressed against the hot stove.
Sasuke’s fist through the wall, directly in the middle of his painting, red and black flaking against his skin.
Naruto’s eyes watering, the smell of skin burning.
Sasuke was suddenly in his kitchen, plates in his hand. He didn’t know how he got there, didn’t remember moving, but the plates were shattering against the ground. A piece of ceramic bounced upwards and sliced against Sasuke’s arm, drawing blood. He needed something to break. Needed more.
Naruto sighing against Sasuke’s lips, pulling him closer in bed.
Another plate shattered, the sound of cracking filling the room, deafening against Sasuke’s screams. He hadn’t realized that he was screaming, but his throat was bloody and the sound was everywhere.
Naruto’s voice in his ear. I love you too much. I love you too much. It’s because I love you.
Sasuke grabbed the rest of the plates, pitching them downwards as hard as he could. Stray shards were flying into the air, cutting him all over, and he could feel the heat of his blood sliding down his wrists. It felt good.
When he reached for another plate, he came up empty, and he whipped around, searching for something else. His heart was pounding, vision spinning as he walked across the broken ceramic. Blood was steadily seeping from his feet, sliding across the floor. Just like it had at Naruto’s apartment.
Stumbling forward, Sasuke fell down, knees slamming against the tiles with an impact that rattled his skull. A sob tore out of his raw throat, and he could feel that he was crying.
And then suddenly, he was talking, whispering to the floor, staring down at it like it would open up and swallow him whole.
“You can’t leave me, you can’t leave me. I can’t be alone, you’re all I have left.”
He sobbed again, fists slamming into the floor, tears falling from his eyelashes. His vision blacked with pain, and he wished that he would just pass out. The crying wouldn’t stop. With every breath he took he was reminded of the empty apartment around him. He wished he could go back, he wished he could say more. One more plea and maybe it would have all been okay.
“I can’t do this, I love you, I love you, I love you, I’m sorry. C-come back.”
He lifted his head up, slamming the heels of his palms into his eyes, screaming as tears slipped around his bloodied knuckles. “COME BACK.”
But there was no one there to hear him, and his own voice echoed around the desolate room, taunting him. He gasped, hands dropping as he sat up.
He couldn’t think. Every thought that crossed his brain was scrambled and half-formed, fleeting and slipping away from him before he could latch onto it. He wished for his chakra, wished for his sharingan so he could disappear into it, so he could take himself apart over and over until he passed out.
He slumped against the floor, weighed down by a surge from his seals. He could feel them working against him, pulling him through the floor, leeching him of his life.
He fell onto his side, head smacking against the tiles hard. Gasping, his vision swirled and swam with tears. He choked on his own spit as he stared up at the ceiling. Very faintly, he could hear a voice in the back of his head whispering to him, telling him that he was having a panic attack, that he was having an episode, that he needed to take care of the bleeding. But he couldn’t make out whose voice it was and the urgency of his rattling breaths drowned it out.
The gory painting he had finished there seemed to press down upon him. The depiction of himself, young and naive, the kunai digging into his forehead. Naruto had found him then, at the end of this painting, falling from the height of his mania. He remembered the feeling of turning to see Naruto there, real live flesh and blood. Naruto’s strong hands pulling him from the counter, washing the paint off his skin. These things Sasuke had.
Tears slipped across his temples and into his hair as he laid there, staring up at the ceiling until his vision began to warp, the ceiling began to lower and the walls in his peripheral vision shimmered, coming alive.
This is how it started last time, the things he had been seeing for weeks, now in full throttle, taking over his brain. The walls melted and ghosts poured out of them, and they all wanted something from him.
He was barely aware of his body, sinking into the cold floor, when Itachi appeared above him.
This is how it started. Itachi was always first and never went away. He was the witness to Sasuke’s insanity, of course.
Itachi stared down at him, shockingly realistic, unmarred and clear-eyed. Just like he had looked when he committed the massacre.
“No rest for the wicked.” Sasuke breathed out, fighting back a gag at the taste of blood in his mouth. He had torn his throat apart with the screaming.
Itachi blinked at him before answering. “I’m only here because you brought me here.”
Sasuke didn’t know how it worked, didn’t know how Itachi could talk to him as if he was really there, as if he was real. He succumbed to his mind, melting under the weight of his life. Once Itachi was there, fleshed out and speaking, there was no escape.
“I don’t want you here.”
“I can’t leave.”
“I hate you.”
It was a lie, cruel and sharp out of his mouth. Itachi didn’t answer this, but his stare was just as unnerving as his voice. The first time Itachi had appeared and lingered, Sasuke had tried to access his sharingan, tried to get his dead brother to somehow wrap him into a genjutsu and take him away. It didn’t work.
Sasuke slammed his head back against the floor, trying to snap himself away from the hallucination. Pain exploded around his skull, flickering behind his eyelids. Itachi clicked his tongue against his teeth.
“Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Sasuke could have laughed. He slammed his head back again, hissing through the pain. It didn’t work.
“What happened, Sasuke? Why am I here?”
Sasuke screamed, trying every last thing he could to wake himself up. To scatter the ghosts and make the walls stop melting into the ground. He wasn’t real, he was dying, the world was ending around him and he would be stuck here with Itachi’s ghost forever. Nothing changed, his mouth still tasted of blood. When he opened his eyes, Itachi was still staring down at him.
He was here, there was no escape.
“I’ve gone crazy.”
“Perhaps.”
“Naruto kicked me out.” Another tear slipped down his face as he said it, but he felt too far away from reality to truly feel the sadness anymore. It was melting down into something else. Naruto’s words jumbled in his memory into an insistent ringing sound. He could feel the pain coagulate in his body and then stick there, bundled up into something he couldn’t access. It was less raw this way, less visible when it was compressed and pushed down. His head was buzzing, blood rushing. “Naruto kicked me out because he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. Because I’ve gone crazy.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Am I?” He laughed, crackling up from his chest with a wicked sound. His fingers were numb, the rest of his arms were slowly following.
“Yes.”
“I would rather die than be here, talking to you.”
Itachi sighed.
“Why does it have to be you? Why can’t I hallucinate mother? Or Shisui?”
“It couldn’t be anyone else, you know that.”
Sasuke was crying. He was crying because he was helpless and falling through the floor behind him, years of misery pressing down on his chest. He could feel the weight of it push against him and then through him. He was crying because everyone he had ever loved, he had lost. And instead of being with the only alive human who cared about him in the world, he was laying on the floor, talking to his dead brother.
Sasuke stood up suddenly, fighting through the waves of agony and nausea that rippled through him. He passed directly through Itachi, who looked solid until he wasn’t. Sasuke learned that the hard way when he tried to punch Itachi the first time he had appeared and ended up punching a hole through the cupboard. Naruto had seen it all.
“I am going to die.”
Itachi reappeared next to him as Sasuke stopped at the edge of the counter, staring down at the granite.
“No, you aren’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Naruto would never let you.”
He wanted to laugh at the words, but he barely had the energy. With that realization, Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut and pitched his head forward as hard as he could, slamming his temple against the corner of the counter at the exact right spot that he knew would be effective. And the world went black.
Sasuke’s body slumped forward and then slid to the side, hitting the ground hard. Itachi watched him as he fell, and then sat down next to his limp form. As Sasuke’s breath evened out, unconsciousness claiming him, Itachi closed his eyes and flickered out of existence, leaving Sasuke alone once again.