Post-Revenge Blues

Chapter
Four: Are you happy?

In
spite of his exhaustion Sasuke stayed up late that night. I have to
enjoy it, he told himself. The first evening after I killed Itachi.
The first evening of my new life. The first evening... No one else
seemed to care. He tried to enjoy his victory all by himself, but it
was not easy.

The
third fight of the evening was between Yamato and Kakashi, though
being Jounin and grown-ups and all, they did not fight physically.

“We
should bind him”, Yamato had said. “So that he won't run
away.”

“I
dont think he'll try”, Kakashi had answered.

“He's
a missing-nin, and it's our mission to bring him back safely to
Konoha.”

“He's
a friend, and we came to save him”, Kakashi had replied.

How
do they think that they should be able to bind me, Sasuke had
thought. Have I not just proved that I was strong enough to defeat
Itachi? Am I not one of the strongest shinobi of the world?

Maybe
it was for this reason that Kakashi won the argument.

When
it got late and most of them had gone to sleep, Kakashi sat down next
to Sasuke.

“Are
you happy, now that Itachi is dead?” he asked.

“I
am not sure”, Sasuke answered after a minute of thinking.
“Maybe I expected to be happier.”

“Your
life is still the same”, Kakashi continued. “Maybe worse
than before you left Konoha.”

“No,
it's not”, Sasuke replied automatically. He said it mainly to
silence Kakashi, because he did not want another lecture about
revenge being useless and damaging to the soul, and still he knew it
to be true: Even if he did not feel jubilant as he had expected, he
still felt better than he had when he had been in Konoha. He felt
free now.

“A
weight is lifted from my shoulders”, he said. “I have
fulfilled my duty.”

“Your
duty towards your clan...” Kakashi replied.

“Yes”,
Sasuke answered, trying to hide his feelings. Kakashi's words had
touched the worst wound he had received from Itachi. Maybe his
revenge had been pointless after all. Maybe his clan had not been
worth being avenged. Maybe he had sacrificed three years of his life
for nothing.

I
don't want to discuss this with Kakashi, or Sakura, he thought. They
will just say: “You should have better listened.”

It
was worth it, he suddenly realized. Even if my clan has not been
worth it. I have learnt what I would not have learnt by staying in
Konoha.

And
yet he was not able to name what he had learnt.

“Killing
Itachi won't bring them back to life, you know”, Kakashi
continued.

“Of
course. I never expected it.”

“And
the pain about their loss does not get better either.”

It's
got worse, Sasuke thought, because Itachi has now even destroyed my
memories of former happiness.

“When
my best friend got killed in the war against Earth Country, I was all
anger and pain, except for a bit of a bad conscience, because I had
not protected him, and I went on a rampage avenging him. I could not
think any more, I just wanted to kill as many rock nins as possible.
They should suffer as much as I did.

“When
I was able to think again, my pain had not become less, but had grown
worse. I knew now that whatever I did I could not make him come back
again to life, and that there was no way to escape the pain of his
loss. Also now I felt the horror about what I had done: Killing so
many people who had done nothing wrong, they just were soldiers and
happened to be our opponents. I hated myself for the pain I had
caused them and their families.”

“I
did not know about your friend”, Sasuke answered. “Maybe
I would have reacted differently to your warning back in Konoha if I
had known. Though maybe not: I was not able to care about anyone but
myself then.”

Kakashi
did not answer: He was lost in his own thoughts.

“But
it is not the same for me as for you”, Sasuke continued.
“Immediately after the massacre I was all anger and pain and
attacked my brother, but I did not succeed at killing him, as I was
still a little child. Later however my pain and anger transformed
into hatred, and into planning my revenge.”

“Then
if it was not to make your pain go away, why was killing Itachi so
important to you?”

“I
had to avenge my clan, didn't I? One has to. It was my duty if I
wanted to restore my and my clan's honour.”

Though
maybe there hasn't been any honour to start with, Sasuke thought.

“I
don't know what it feels like to come from an honourable family”,
Kakashi answered as if in resonance to Sasuke's thoughts. “My
family never had any honour. My father killed himself out of shame
when I was six.”

Sasuke
listened intently while Kakashi told his story.

“Thanks
for sharing”, he said when Kakashi had finished. He had always
thought it a stupid sentence – why should he be thankful that
anyone told him the crappy stories of his life? They should thank him
that he cared to listen! - and he hated it when he had been forced to
use it in the therapy group he had been put into after the massacre.
This time however he meant it.

“I
wish I had known that before”, he added. I wish I had
understood before why Kakashi was who he was and acted as he acted.
“Though maybe I was too young then.” And focused only on
myself and my revenge.

“Maybe
I just did not want that Itachi should have the last word”, he
said.