The dead shall rest

‘I’m dead.’

And yet you can feel your heart thrumming in your chest, beating with panic that you can't quite connect your mind to yet.

You’re not sure who you are, and one of the few things that try to stay clear in your mind is that you just killed yourself. Or…it had been just a moment ago, right?

Breath you hadn't noticed laboring stutters for a second as your hands fly to your face. 

You have your eyes. You have both of your eyes. Fucking hell you can see. You’re not supposed to have eyes though, right?

The massive state of confusion you're in tempers slightly at this thought and you focus it on this point. Attention coming back to the world, you notice that you’ve been staring at the ground in front of you.

You had just killed yourself, but you had also. Spent all day training. ‘Okay.’

This is not okay, none of this fits. You look around at your surroundings, as nothing in your head contradicts that you should figure out where you are. The moon is bright tonight, and casts contrasting shadows against the homes around you.

Your eyes glide over everything briefly, passively taking it in, but then you freeze. Staring at nothing, you force yourself to look again, and see. 

Those are bodies littering the street you’re sitting in the middle of. A street you recognize like you dreamt it and then forgot.

Fuck. Those people are dead. Your lungs feel like you're inhaling lead and your hands start to shake as an odd wheezing sound comes from your throat. 

You know those people, not their names, but half of the thoughts swimming in your brain let you know that you’ve passed by them every day. They are. . .your family?

No.

Something makes you lurch unsteadily to your feet, and suddenly, for reasons unknown to the whole of your swirling mind, you’re running.

Feet pounding against the paving stones of this deja-vu riddled place, you desperately race towards somewhere. You’re truly not sure what kind of route is so imprinted into your brain that you can run it delirious and out of your mind, but you do know that you need to be there now. Death has seeped into this place, and…your family. ‘My parents, Aniki’

That thought rings out like a bell in your head, you have family–you have a family and they need you. 

Corpses are everywhere, their blood pools and covers the streets. What glimpses of their faces register to your mind show that they were terrified of death, and their bodies look like they tried to escape it.

Your footprints track the red as you go, trailing your hopeless flight and you pay no attention to the arcs of blood splattered on the walls around you.

It seems like it takes forever of the wind rushing past your face before you make it home.

 ‘Oh god, this is my home?’ You heave for breath from your dead sprint as the thought hangs heavy with despair. You haven't seen a single living soul so far, and if that’s your house, then what does that mean for the family whose faces elude your grasp?

Though your body is exhausted, you know you can’t stop yet, and so you force yourself to climb up the short steps to–to your house. 

‘This is where I grew up?’ Flashes of memory bring themselves to the forefront of your mind of this same house in the daylight; of sitting on these same steps with a dark haired woman holding you against her and a familiar but stern looking man standing to the side, looking out into the street.

Their faces aren't clear to your memory, and there’s an overlap of two other unregisterable faces who are just as familiar.

You shake them off and keep moving, you're so close. When you enter the home, you think you would’ve called out for someone if your brain was less scattered and in a panic. It’s probably for the best you don’t though, you don't know what killed the others.

Without your conscious input, your feet lead you through the house. You glance briefly in rooms without stopping, checking for who, you’re not sure. You seem to have forgotten for the moment, but you know they’re important to you.

In less than a minute you reach what you know to be your actual destination, and suddenly it comes to you again. This is your parents’ bedroom.

Dread slams into your chest and your throat constricts. Horror laces through your body and makes your limbs feel cold but electrified; everything feels so surreal, like it’s almost not even you in the world, yet still, you don't dare to waste a moment.

With the same frantic energy that fueled your rush to get here you rip open the door to a sight your eyes almost refuse to capture.

There are two people on the floor, and one standing above them. Blood drips from his katana. Any blind hope that may have flickered within you goes out in an instant.

You were too late. As always.

The figure standing lifts his head to meet your eyes, the moon illuminates his face, and somehow things just keep getting worse. 

“Aniki?” Your voice wobbles on the syllables, because that is your brother, your person, the one who carries you home every time you get too careless, and whose kind smiles flash in your mind now at the recognition–but how do you know any of this? 

“What–” You cut yourself off. 

Your eyes flick from your brother's dark red ones, red like the blood covering everywhere you know he must have gone tonight, to the bodies at his feet. You lock onto one of the corpses in front of him, and you knew you would recognize them, but still, hope is a sneaky thing. 

“Oka. . .san?” You don't feel your knees hit the floor, the only thing penetrating the shock in your mind being the sight of your mothers still face, turned slightly away from the floor and eyes barely parted open.

There is no life in them.

“Foolish otouto,” The sound of your brother’s voice draws your attention despite all the feeling in your body rapidly shutting down. 

“I nearly pity you.” Looking back up, his face, harshly contrasted in the low light, is committed to memory without your say so.

You gaze blankly at him for half a moment.

Life isn't worth this.

”Kill me too” your voice is distant to your ears, and it sounds numb, everything is numb. 

You think your heart is breaking but that’s impossible–you haven't had anything to lose for so long. ‘Why?’  Why did you wake up here?

Why were you forced to love these people you’ve never spoken to but at the same time have known your whole life, only for the first real sight to be them being ripped from you when they weren’t even yours? What was even the point of this?

Why did he do it?

You feel tears you hadn't known were building spill over from your wide eyes. You can see your parents–you can see their bodies so well. You wish you were still half blind so their motionlessness wasn't so clear, you wish the knife was still lodged so deep in your skull you could never see the death of someone you love ever again.

“How pathetic” The freezingly derisive voice of your brother (aniki, nii-san, he's all you have left) reaches your ears and you refocus to his cold stare.

His eyes change, and you barely catch the shape of whirling pinwheels before you’re locked into your own body, and the world loses color. All you can see are your parents. They die.

Blades stab through your mother’s back in a never ending loop, your fathers skin gapes open so deeply you can see his spine, and it happens again and again and again.

Each time they slump to the floor feels just as shocking as the first, while above them every time, for every fatal blow, is nii-san.

They’re your parents, but not? You don’t know, and in this endless cycle of their deaths on repeat it doesn't even matter if they weren't, because you love them and they're dead. You never knew them, and they’re dying, why can’t you move? Why can’t you help them? Why won’t he stop?

You don’t register if you screamed through it all or stayed dead silent, but all at once the visions cease, and you can feel a deep, sharp, and acidic pain within your skull.

It radiates down your neck and runs through your heart dealing the same sharp ache, making each beat seem a struggle.

Your arms try to catch you as you fall face first but they immediately buckle at the slightest weight, and splay by your sides. You manage to turn your head to the side just before you hit so the undertaking that is breathing might not be so hard. Just like your mother.

You wish you could see her one last time, even if it’s just the face of her corpse. Even from six feet away you can’t remember what she looks like.

You really do welcome the death that's about to come, but god, would it be too much to ask to not be alone for this one?

“No, my weak otouto, I will not kill you.” Your eyes, nearly closed in your acceptance, flash open, disbelieving. Your brother, Itachi, looks down on you with red eyes from where he stands above you and your parents. 

‘What.’ 

He killed . . . everyone. But he wont kill you?

“Do you want to know why I did this little brother?” Your devastation has even more confusion to it now. What in the world is he thinking? 

You’re quite positive your Aniki has most certainly lost it, is farther into insanity than even yourself, but what could be running through his head right now that would make him want to spare you of all people.

With your mishmash of memories, you can fully appreciate now that you’ve always been useless, you are a nuisance to everyone, especially him.

So is it just because you’re family? The image of your parents shoves itself to the front of your mind. ‘Nope.’  

It also reminds you that you were right in the middle of a spiral just a second ago, and thrusts you right back into it.

Itachi must not care that you're unresponsive, as he answers regardless.

“A test of my abilities. I wished to push myself to the limits; to see what I could really do.” He says it like that’s such airtight reasoning, like if you had a bit more will to live you wouldn't be pulling apart everything about that statement and demanding him to patch up the holes.

“It was…rather disappointing I must admit. Not a single member of the clan came even close to my strength.” You feel hysterical, airy giggles threatening to escape you from where you still lay on the floor. What the fuck is he even talking about?

What could he possibly have expected, when even you can pull out from your messed up head that only ten percent of your peoples’ population were jonins, and thirty percent were civilians. Were. Because he killed a bunch of people weaker than you! Hah. He really did kill…every. Single. one.

Whatever he might say next you tune out, fade out, and slip into a current of despair. It’s a fact that you knew them and feel their deaths keenly, but that’s as far as it goes.

From what you’ve seen tonight, it was a true genocide, and you’re having extreme difficulty trying to pick out any single person from the mass of that tragedy to remember and somehow that just makes it worse. 

It seems much easier to think of your parents, effortless to bring up fractured occasions with your brother. But the best you can drum up from the rest is that yes you knew them, yes they were related to you, and no, you have not a clue who any of them even are. 

Like with the parents you struggle to really remember, their deaths hurt so bad because of the love soundly attached that tries to drag you down even farther than you already are.

You just can’t do this anymore, you really wished you’d stayed dead the first(f̵̤̗̎͛̃́͛͒̓̈́͌͑͊̏̈́̋̾̑̂̾̿̕̕̕͜͝ͅi̸̛̤̗̟̗͈r̸̢̠̱̖̗̖̞͓͉͎͈̓̈́͐͗̆̄̐̿̏͋̈́̕͝͝s̸̭̺͚̹̀̓͑̈͋̂̆̃͋t̴̨̡̨̹͖͈̺̞̘̪̝̰̹̳͉̓̊̾̓͗̑̀͒̓̽̚͘ͅt?̴̱͉̠̫͉͓͋̈́͘)time.

With a bit of strength recovered from laying prone, you manage to get your arms underneath you and push yourself back to sit against the doorway.

You can’t spare the air to sigh, but you could really use one when you look up and see your nii-san still in the room, staring at you with a strange expression.

Even with your shattered adoration screaming at you to keep him close, to not let him leave you, you had still kinda hoped he’d be gone by now. Maybe it’s better this way though. At least you’re not alone.

You barely had the strength to sit up, much less stand up, so you don't bother trying. You know that what you’re looking for is on your person (and this is you, but it also isn't–how weird) so you barely spare a thought for the where and pull out a kunai.

The sight of the small knife seems to draw his attention, and he looks at it with something indecipherable, but what you in particular could maybe call solemn acceptance, like he had expected this. His expression hadn’t even shifted though, so you don't know why that emotion in particular, but it just seemed to fit.

You don’t spare it much thought and turn your gaze away from him. Maybe it’s stupid, but if he didn't want to kill you himself for whatever reason, then god forsake it you still love him enough to not lock eyes while the life bleeds out of you.

Or maybe you’re just a coward, and can’t bear to look the only family you have left in the eye while you abandon him.

With your (hopefully) very final burst of speed, the kunai in your hand hurdles to your throat as fast as you can make it, and it’s your last prayer that this time, this time it’ll stick.

The knife doesn't pierce skin.

                                                 There’s a hand clutching yours with bruising force.

You look up and lock eyes with black broken pupils in a sea of red spinning so fast they blur. Wide red eyes meet the brother’s same, and not a single thought passes through your head before you’re slamming yourself down onto the blade trachea first. 

It hurts less than the last one.