Shakespeare Challenge Response: Titus Andronicus

This is the chapter I wrote the closest to the original play. I sat with the play open next to me and I think it came out well. Hope you agree.

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Sasuke walked backwards in front of the village elders and Jounin as they led TenTen and Choji to their execution. “Elders, Jounin, hear me! Stay! For any pity you have for me who threw everything away to avenge a clan of Konoha and rid her of her greatest enemies, hear me!” Sasuke fell to his knees. “For these tears I shed, be pitiful to my condemned friends and followers!”

The procession filed passed him, but he continued to plead with his palms flat in the dirt, looking down at the ground in supplication.

“Let the earth drink their fill of my tears so it cannot drink the blood of my friends! Their blood will make it blush in shame!”

The procession was gone and Sasuke knelt on the ground alone.

“O earth, I will be more of a friend than the clouds have ever been. From these eyes which only twice before shed tears before will give you more water than April showers and will still nutritious you in the dry summer. And in winter I will melt the snow with my hot tears and support the grasses of the spring all year long if it will glut you so that you cannot hold a drop of my friend’s innocent blood.”

Shikamaru walks up behind Sasuke, but Sasuke does not notice him, but continues to plead.

“Elders, peers, friends! Unbind my friends and reverse their sentence, or give it to me! And let it be said by one who never shed a tear in public that they are now prevailing orators!”

Shikamaru knelt next to him. “Sasuke-kun, you beg in vain. No one is here but you and I. You plead to a stone.”

“Shikamaru, for our comrades, let me plead. My friends, once more hear me plead!”

“Love, no one hears you.”

“It doesn’t matter. If they heard me, they would not acknowledge me, and if they did, they would not take pity on me. But I must plead even to the stones. Stones cannot answer me, but they are better than the elders since they will stay and listen. They accept my tears and seem to weep with me. The stones become my comfort and will not offend me of their own accord while the elders and their sycophants do men to death with words.” Sasuke sits back and looks at him as Shikamaru stands.

“Why are you armed?”

“I tried to save TenTen and Choji. For my attempt, the elders have pronounced my banishment.”

Sasuke stood and took Shikamaru’s face in his hands. “O happy man! They have taken pity on you! Haven’t you noticed, that in the time we were gone from Konoha it had become a wilderness? A wilderness of tigers. Tigers must hunt and there is no prey but me and mine. Be happy to escape them.” Sasuke kissed him briefly on the lips and embraced him.

His head being against Shikamaru’s shoulder, he saw Kakashi approach. He had his rain cape wrapped securely around someone walking slowly next to him and he kept a protective arm around his companion.

“Who is this with Kakashi?” Sasuke and Shikamaru parted and stood abreast.

“Sasuke-kun.” Kakashi said as he stopped a few paces away. “Brace yourself for heartbreak. Here is a grief that will utterly consume you.”

“Will it consume me? Then let me see it.”

Kakashi slowly opened the cape to show Sakura, handless, her clothes stained with blood. “This was your sister.”

“So she is, sensei.”

“Sakura!” Shikamaru could not contain his grief and horror. He collapsed to his knees. Sakura started to weep again.

“My fainthearted friend. Get up.” Sasuke’s voice was even but trembled slightly with grief and growing anger. “Sakura, tell us who did this. Who decided to pour more water into the sea or fan the hurricane to make it howl the stronger? I thought my grief could not get any worse and now you break the bounds of my grief. Shikamaru, fetch my sword and I’ll cut off my hands too. I fought to free Konoha of all threats and avenge it as well as myself and it was all in vain. I protected the leaders of this village only so they could feed on my life and everything I have ever loved. These hands have served me to no profitable end. The last thing I ask of them is that one will cut off the other and that one I will gnaw off if I cannot hold a kunai in my teeth because of pain! It’s just as well Sakura that you have no hands, they only work against our own lives.”

“Sakura, who did this?” Shikamaru asked.

“Whoever took her hands, cut out her tongue as well,” Kakashi said.

“Then you tell me, who did this?!”

“This is how I found her, as timid as a wounded deer.”

“My deer. And he that hurt mutilated her has hurt me more than if he stuck a burning kunai into my chest. Huh. I’m waiting for these waves of grief to pull me into the undertow and drown me. My dear friends and schoolmates have just now been taken to their deaths, my lover here is banished, my sensei stands here weeping for my sake. But my dear Sakura . . . A child’s drawing of this sight would have driven me mad. What can I do when I see the real thing? No hands to wipe your tears, no tongue to direct our revenge, your husband murdered, and our friends, TenTen and Choji, are condemned to death for his murder.”

Sakura’s eyes widened and fell to her knees with new tears inspired by her friends’ fate.

Kakashi knelt down next to her. “Do you cry because you feel betrayed by them? Or because you know they are innocent?”

“If they did it, rejoice: you are revenged. But they would never do such a thing.” Sasuke knelt in front of Sakura, tilted her face up gently, and kissed her chastely on the lips. “Give me some sign of how I can help you.” Sakura looked back down to the ground where her tears collected into a puddle smaller than the whole in the middle of a shuriken. Sasuke leaned his forehead on hers. “Should we all find a fountain and stare into it, filling it with our tears. Shall we cut off our hands and bite out our tongues and wail in the streets and mime our sorrows to the rest of the village as they pass us by? What should we do?” Sasuke wept with her for a minute. Sasuke leaned back and put a hand to her moist cheek. “No. We who have tongues will plot our revenge. We will show the meaning of revenge to everyone who survives and to history.”

“Sasuke, stop. You’re not helping.”

Shikamaru took out a handkerchief and knelt with them and wiped Sakura’s cheeks.

As they crouched together, Hidan approached. Kakashi noticed him first and stood. Sasuke and Shikamaru also stood and turned to face Hidan, standing in front of Sakura as if they were protecting her.

“Uchiha Sasuke, the Hokage has been told of your petitioning and has said that if any of you three chop off your hand and send it to him, he’ll return your followers to you.”

“O Naruto, you can be benevolent.” Kakashi and Shikamaru looked at Sasuke as if he had lost his mind. “I’ll send him my hand. Hidan let me use your weapon!”

“Love, no. I’m more adapt at strategy, I can spare my hand.”

“Sasuke-kun, it’s my fault that Naruto turned out this way, let my hand pay my fault.”

“Come on, decided whose hand will go,” Hidan said. “Your followers will be dead if you wait too long.”

Kakashi took out a kunai and prepared to cut off his left hand, but Shikamaru caught his hand and tried to take the kunai. Seeing the two of them struggle might have actually brought a smile to Sasuke’s face, out their love for him and the ridiculousness of the situation, if it weren’t for his grief and resolve. He walked up to Hidan, knelt before him, and nodded for Hidan to use his three-bladed scythe. Hidan brought the blade down on Sasuke’s wrist and Sasuke did not make a sound, merely wincing.

The sound of the blade biting earth brought Kakashi and Shikamaru back to their senses.

“Take my hand to Naruto,” Sasuke said, his voice weak with pain. “Remind him of the dangers it spared him from. And tell him it’s a low price to buy my friend’s lives.” Sasuke picked up his own white hand offered it to Hidan.

“I’ll do so.” Hidan took the kunai-calloused, but still delicate looking hand. “Your followers will be returned to you soon.” He turned and left thinking, At least their heads will be returned to you. He laughed silently.

Sasuke ripped his shirt and held it to his bleeding stump to stanch the blood. No one said a word.

Sakura stood carefully and came to Sasuke’s side to kneel with him. Sasuke looked at her with a pained smile. He put his whole arm around her shoulders and pressed his bleeding limb to his chest, trying to will his blood to stop flowing. She sighed, trying to force her sobs away. “Let it out. You and I can create a hurricane of sighs when the winds die and water lilies to place on Neji’s grave.”

“Sasuke,” Kakashi pleaded. “Stop it, don’t make yourself cry more.”

“If I had hurt Naruto or committed some crime that warranted these punishments, then I could stop my grief; I would accept my punishment in silence. When the wind blows on the sea, doesn’t it rage, destroying any ships fool enough to cross it? I am the sea and Sakura’s sobs are the wind! I’m the earth and if it could drown me I’ll ask Sakura to weep like the clouds and drown me! If I could die here, I would die gladly!”

Izumo and Kotetsu approached them carrying cloth-wrapped objects in their arms. They looked sick and grieved. “Sasuke-sama,” Izumo said, “the Ho—Naruto dishonors your friendship and send back your hand with scorn.” They both pulled the cloth wrappings from what they carried. One held TenTen’s head and the other Choji’s, Sasuke’s hand next to it.

Shikamaru turned, fell to his knees and began weeping at his best friend’s death, the grief and horror mixing until it made him vomit.

“What Naruto has done kills me more than when my parents died,” Izumo said.

“He may be Hokage, but the village’s hearts are with you,” Kotetsu added.

Shikamaru raised himself up, but would not turn to see the severed extremities. “What sin did we commit and when did we die and enter Hell?!”

Sakura kissed Sasuke’s cheek.

“I’m sorry Sakura,” Kakashi said, “but that kiss can give no comfort to him.”

“When will this nightmare end?” Sasuke whispered just loud enough for them all to hear.

Kakashi lost all patience. “You are not sleeping, Sasuke! You’ve lost everything! I won’t try to comfort you now; rage! Don’t keep it in! If any man had a right to rave it’s you, Sasuke! First your family slaughtered, your brother’s betrayal, then the years held prisoner by a snake, the years of training and fighting! Only to come home and have four friends killed, your lover banished, your sister mangled, and your closest friend betray and hold you in such contempt! Why are you so quiet?!”

Sasuke might have been sobbing quietly, but it grew into a hearty laugh.

“Why do you laugh?”

Sasuke laughed a little more before he stopped, his expression sober. “Because, sensei, I don’t have any more tears to shed. Anyway, tears are my enemy, they blur my vision. If I can’t see clearly, then how do I find the path to revenge? The heads of my friends stare at me and seem to promise me that I will never know comfort again until I cram these deeds down the throats of those who committed them: Naruto, Itachi, and Hidan.”

“And I doubt Kabuto and Deidara are innocent in all this either,” Shikamaru said. He turned just enough to keep the heads out of his line of sight.

Sasuke nodded. He stood and helped Sakura up. Sasuke put a hand out. Shikamaru stood and came up to take that hand. Kakashi took the hint and approached as well.

“I swear to you three here that I will right these wrongs. Kakashi, take a head, I’ll take the other.” Izumo and Kotetsu handed the heads to him. “Sakura, you can carry my hand in your arms.” Kotetsu put the hand against her chest and she used her arms to hold it there.

“Shikamaru, my love, get out of here, you’re a banished man. Go to Suna, to your friend Tamari and to Gaara. Gaara may respect Naruto, but he and I also shared mutual respect and understanding. Explain Naruto’s ingratitude and the situation; I think they’ll side with us and help us.” Sasuke stepped up to Shikamaru and kissed him despite the remnants of vomit on his lips. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I love you.”

“I love you, Sasuke.”

“Go.”

Shikamaru ran out of the gates for the three day run to Suna. Izumo and Kotetsu left the three remaining in peace.

“Come, let’s give these two a proper burial.”