Fic Name- Butterfly's Mask
Category- Tragedy/Angst
Rating- T
Summary- "Since that chance meeting, I have always kept Naruto by my side. Never as a boyfriend, but as a prized person that I could not live without."
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This is not a love story. Don’t let your hopeless romantic side sway you into thinking, for even a second, that this is a love story. You will find no love here, only a story. I have known love, and have given up on it on many occasions. Love is not something you bestow on one person, and one person alone. It is something beautiful and pure that you bestow on the world, thanks to one person. This story has nothing of that sort in it. This story is a story of pain, the path to adulthood, and the falling of something that was supposed to be forever.
This is not a love story.
When you are young, it seems like love is some impossible feat that you will never accomplish. That, or it seems like some foolish notion adults came up with to have sex as much as they pleased. Love really is an odd word. It is a four letter word, comprised of the most boring letters. Of course, you don’t look at love like that. No, love is something wonderful and fulfilling, something that we think we need to get by every day. Love from family, friends, and a person you can spend your life with. Its a lie, because along with love comes a more complicated word, forever.
Forever is a word that is the killer of humanity. What is forever? Time extended, past the point of death and decay. Forever does not exist. There is no such thing as forever. Tomorrow will come, and it will end. Forever is a notion we come up with, to explain a rather boring chemical reaction inside of our bodies that tells us that the person we are with is the person we want to stay with.
Love and forever, the romantic part of it is taken out through chemistry. It seems silly, when viewed through the eyes of the truly apathetic. Yet, humanity clings to this notion of forever as if it were a drop of water in the desert. Cherish it, savor it, obsess over it.
The planet, as a whole, has become a desolate place of carnage and isolation. There is no world outside of the homestead. Everything is connected, via the Internet. We no longer have to go outdoors. Fears of wasted expenditures on gas and life keep us inside. We meet our destined ones in chat rooms, marry on the Internet, and the government builds you a house. You are transported, in armored trucks by the government, into your new house to start a family. If you want to see your core family, you arrange for an armored truck to pick you up and take you to their home. You never step outside unless the government has a firm grasp on your hand, and is leading you with every step.
This is the world we have created, in our infinite love of forever. A civilization that is so afraid of its own creations that it dares not go outside and look. We enjoy days inside houses, living life connected to other humans in the cold and unfeeling world of the Internet.
Its sickening, that humanity can be ok with this horrid display of self mutilation. We have cut our physical selves off from spirituality, and found God on the world wide web. How embarrassing this all is. I’m sure people in the twenty first century never dreamed that civilization would become this depraved. Of course, the twentieth century has been dead and gone for some time now, hundreds of years. We have killed off all memories, even abandoned the arts from the times. We do not want to look into the disappointed souls of the dead, we are afraid of the ghastly eyes and scorning words. How foolish it is, to fear what is dead and gone.
I am not one for indoors. My parents think something is wrong with me, to not enjoy this utopia of safeness in solitude. Who could enjoy a fake life like that? Its not life at all, but more akin to an artificial plant trying to pose as real greenery. Its childish, stupid, and disgusting. So, at the age of fifteen, I left home to find a world outside of the gates of imprisonment, and met fate and destiny head on.
It was in the winter, that I left my family’s warm house in Japan to try and find real civilization, it was three years ago, and I remember it well. The cold snow piling up on the cracked pavement, no life to be found on the streets. The poor had long since died off, there is no such thing as poverty, so there is no street trash to ask for spare change for a bottle of liquor. There is only the sound of my boots on the snow, the feeling of the snow melting against my black pants and falling onto my brown T-shirt and blue jacket.
My family calls me Sasuke, they say our family name is Uchiha. That would make me Uchiha Sasuke, age fifteen at the time I left home, with long bangs that curl under my chin with short hair that barely brushes the nape of my neck in the back and is spiked in the back. It is black, with blue hues in the sun, that makes my black eyes seem as if they aren’t there at all. I look just like everyone in my family, they’re all dark haired with dark eyes. However, in the looks department I tend to resemble the fairer sex. Though, my looks are still superior to everyone else’s. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m their child at all. Maybe I was genetically altered to be some supreme pretty boy. At least, that is what the people I know on the Internet have said. They say it is possible, and quite frequently done for families who want to produce beautiful children. I think it is sick, to engineer your own child like building your own computer. There is something inhuman about the entire process that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, much like a kiss from Naruto after he’s gone on a drinking and smoking binge.
Ah, Naruto, now there is an interesting conversation topic. Naruto is a handsome man that I met the first day I left home.
Walking in the winter wind, the snow falling and melting against my body’s heat, I found him crouching over what could have been a human at one point. I never expected to find a person just a few minutes from my sound proofed house. But there he was, a blond haired Angel of Death, standing beside blood stained snow and what could have been a person. A strange looking 45 hung limply in his left hand, which was covered in blood and other bodily fluids that I’m sure were meant to stay inside your guts.
His short, sun kissed hair was an unruly mess, touching his forehead in ghosting caresses that made every onlooker envious that his hair got to touch his tanned skin. It was perfectly straight, and in a mess under a black top hat. He wore black dress shoes, black dress pants, a white dress shirt, a black tie, and a long black trench coat. He looked like the Mad Hatter, borne right from Alice in Wonderland. A wicked grin was spread across his face, and I felt something pull at my heart.
It wasn’t love, mind you, as love does not exist in my world. It was more like the need to spend time with him, to find out about him and to cherish him. Since that chance meeting, I have always kept Naruto by my side. Never as a boyfriend, but as a prized person that I could not live without. I guess, looking back on it now, I shouldn’t have treated him like some fabulous prize I’d won from the fairs I’d heard about on the history channel at home. No, I should have bestowed some twisted form of love on him, and made him realize that he was indeed worth something. However, I did not. I treated him like I did everyone else I met in my travels, like a caged animal.
Naruto gave me a nick name, a nick name I carry even now. It is the name most people know me as, and they are usually not aware that it is actually a Japanese obscenity. When I met him, Uchiha Sasuke may as well have died. I was reborn, I was reborn as Teme, the keeper of a handsome man and the upholder of a twisted sense of justice and righteousness.
Poetic, I know. However, poetry is not the idea of this story. No, what you all want to know now is how I’ve come to the place I’m at right now. Wait, I haven’t even informed you of that yet, have I? Well, allow me to correct that horrible error and bring you up to speed on my current predicament.
It started with a woman, I was staring at a beautiful psychopath with half the mind to shoot my teeth out of the back of my head and into my well maintained haired. A beautiful psychopath with odd pink hair and striking green eyes, and a psychotic smile that rivals that of Naruto’s. A true beauty of sadistic charm. I have become quite the masochist over these past three years.
No, I was not staring death in the face by my own admission, mind you. They thought I’m a spy, or something, mainly because I got into a small fight with one of their own. As a matter of fact, that guy had the same wild look in his eyes as the deadly woman who across from me in that damp and filthy interrogation room. My, how three years will numb you to fear. If it had been the day I set off on my journey, I would have been shitting myself. But, no, this was three years after leaving home, in some land I’ve come to by chance. There was nothing there for me but civilization that thrives outdoors.
“So, you say you’re from Japan? That’s pathetic, haven’t all the Japanese locked themselves up in their homes, waiting for death?” There wass nothing but truth in her words, but I couldn’t help the glare that formed on my face. It is an instinct, you see, to glare at everything I do not know. Naruto once told me that my face would one day be permanently frozen into a glare and never be able to return to its perfect form. If it ever happens, I’ll make it a point that he is the last person to know.
“Your friend, the one whose nose I broke, touched something of mine. I mean you and your people no harm, I’m just passing through.” And it wasn’t a lie. Naruto and I were merely passing through when the short shirt wearing man had grabbed Naruto’s arm. He was lucky it was me who reacted first, really. If it had been Naruto this girl in front of me would be making burial arrangements instead of interrogating me. Really, these people didn’t realize how lucky they were that I was there.
“Some possession, let you get trapped like that. Obedient dogs never leave their master’s side.” For the first time in my life I wanted to hit a girl. I said he was mine, not my dog. On top of everything, a fox would be more akin to what Naruto was than a dog.
“And smart people never leave someone’s accomplice unaccounted for.” A smirk spread across my face as her eyes narrowed. I watched in smug satisfaction as she pulled on a pair of gloves and cracked her knuckles menacingly. I could only assume that this girl is a powerhouse. They left her to interrogate me, after all. You never let weaklings interrogate in the world we live in. You never know who is actually a monster in the guise of a human.
I remember one time Naruto and I ran across a lazy man who called himself Shikamaru. We became friends of sorts, and luck would have it that at the end of our short lived travels together we were granted the opportunity to see that he had never existed as a solid body at all. In fact, he was a shadow who had taken human form. Useful b*****d, that one.
“You want to talk to me a little more sweetly, kid.”
“And you want to step away from that wall.” I watched as her eyebrow raised just before the wall behind her exploded in a cloud of dust, brick, and mortar. Jumping to my feet, sprinted out the hole in the wall and into the warm air of an American summer. Naruto was by my side in mere moments, our feet carrying us through the busy streets of the obscure town that had survived the downfall the rest of the world fell victim to. His hand was tucked in mine, slick with sweat and covered in gun powder. I knew damn well he heard every word that was uttered between that green eyed girl and me, and that his ear had been ringing just as mine from the listening devices hidden in the studded earrings we were both wearing.
I let him pull me into a festive looking bar, filled with people who are drinking loudly and listening to the house band play badly. The bartender watched as he tiped his hat to him and proceeded to drag me up the stairs into the room he’d obviously reserved for the two of us that night. I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that he had taken it upon himself to gather up the shreds of sanity he had left to hold a conversation long enough to get us a room without having to brandish his trusty gun.
He told me once that he was only sane when he was by my side. I guess people who weren’t made of antisocial ice would be able to accept that as a form of love, but I never believed in love, so I only took it as he was now my responsibility. Like a pet, really. And as he forced me against the door as soon as it closed behind us, I couldn’t help but wonder who really was the pet in that so-called-relationship.
In the world outside it was always my show. I was the boss, he followed my orders. But behind closed doors, when the world couldn’t see me, I allowed him to rule me freely. His lips were pressing against mine in a hungry kiss, his hands pulling at my clothes in such a frenzy that I actually feared him ruining them. In that moment, as he was buried deep inside of me while I screamed his name at the top of my lungs, I wondered if I can actually allow this to be a love story. Could I actually break down all of the insane mechanics of me and allow myself an ounce of normality in order to show my appreciation for this creature that allowed me to be weak and never tried to kill what he easily could?
I mulled the possibilities over in my mind as we lay on the bed in the afterglow of sex. I felt him move beside me, off of the bed and to the door where our clothes still lay in piles on the floor. My eyes roamed over him as he dressed himself quickly and efficiently. My clothes were tossed to me in a blatant statement that said he has found our next job. I dressed myself, having exchange my clothes from when I left home for a pair of black dress pants and a white button down shirt, and watched as he reached into the inner pockets of his trench coat. The two masks in Naruto’s hands sent chills of anticipation down my spine that made me remember why we originally went to that town.
Rumor had it that there was a facility there that created test tube monsters. Creatures like Naruto, Shikamaru and myself that weren’t given the honor of a soul nor brain. We had made it our personal mission, since we teamed up and learned as much as we could about one another without diving into our emotional states, to eradicate all facilities such as those as we found them. Creatures like us, without the chance to choose their own lives, are better off dead.
My hands were shaking as I slipped the blue, silver and black mask on. It covered only the upper portion of my face, ending over my nose like a gala mask. It fanned out at either side, resembling a moody butterfly. Naruto’s was that of a fox. It covered his entire face and was white with red markings. We stared at each other for a mere moment before exiting out the window and making our way down back streets to the place where the city’s layout said the facility was.
Naruto unhooked my sword from inside his trench coat and handed it to me, our hands brushing against each other in more contact that was really necessary for handing over a sword. My gut instinct was to take Naruto by his precious hand and lead him away from that place, something felt so wrong about that mission. But, I pushed it to the back of my mind as we entered the building in haste. My sword cut down any who tried to stop our progress to the heart of the building. The sound of Naruto’s gun firing sent hopeful boosts of elation to my heart as we came closer and closer to the center. By this time, I was sure that we would make it out OK.
All of my hope and elation had been put to rest when we entered that room. The ungodly sights we were privy to in that moment were what changed everything. Those last shreds of sanity that I had been keeping alive in the blond snapped, twisted and burned away as he stared at multiples of himself, thousands of times over. My heart was racing as I tried to calm him down, tried to tell him he was real and alive and standing before me then and there. But my words never reached him.
I wish now that I had told him, just once, that maybe I did love him. I know I’ll never get the chance again, as Naruto died that day. Though he was still alive and breathing, he was dead. Dead and standing before me with the most haunting look that I ever saw. His eyes were no longer bluer than the sky, but redder than blood. My sword shook in my hand as I stared at him, just one short year after that fateful day, my mask on my face was the only way I could tell him that I was there for his life.
All monsters with no soul or mind of their own are better off dead.
I told myself that as we fought. His gun was nowhere to be seen, his hands doing so much damage to my body that I couldn’t believe that it is the same man who used to hold my hips gently as he moved inside me as if he were afraid of breaking me. I could feel the tears sting my eyes and cause my skin to stick to my mask as my sword drove through his flesh. He slumped against me, ran his hand down my cheek, and smiled at me like he used to when we were locked up in whatever room we were staying in.
My lips pressed to his in one last kiss as I muttered how much I might have loved him.
And now I stand, in front of Naruto’s grave, confused and lost as to what to do next. Do I try to build a life here in the town that took Naruto from my life? Or do I continue on with the work we’d set out to do together? I wish he were here to tell me what to do, but he isn’t. I stand here and try to sort it out, but I keep getting sidetracked by my thoughts on how much I might have loved Uzumaki Naruto.
-The End-
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