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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
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A/N
and thanks at the end of the chapter...

Prologue
– Part Three

Sasuke
and his team Taka had been resting in some forgotten industrial ruin
for more than a fortnight after their fight against the Hachibi's
jinchuuriki, but their wounds had not gotten better. Suigetsu
remained half liquid, collapsing into a puddle after a few steps on
his legs, Juugo was still a child, and Karin's wounds from Sasuke's
Amaterasu, after initially seeming to improve, had been inflamed and
were torturing her. She kept them hidden beneath her clothes, not
allowing any of the men to see them, she only told them how they
looked: blue and yellow from the hematomas, black from the burns,
dark red and a yellowish white from the blood and pus. She talked
whenever they were ready to listen: Suigetsu took a perverted
pleasure in listening, just as she seemed to enjoy invoking the worst
horror fantasies possible with her tales, and Juugo was too
good-natured to tell her to keep her stories to herself. Only Sasuke
withdrew whenever the conversation touched the subject of Karin's
wounds. He was tempted to tell her to finally stop talking and show
them her wounds and prove that they were as bad as she said they
were, which he doubted, but he feared the consequences of such a
demand.

He
was impatient for their wounds to heal because they were slowing him
down in his revenge against Konoha, yet on the other hand he was glad
that it took them so long because he did not have a plan yet. He had
not even made up his mind whether he wanted to destroy Konaha as a
whole or to focus on those who were truly responsible for the
massacre of his clan... But they were all responsible, weren't they,
making the clan move to a ghetto, avoiding them, excluding them from
wealth, power and honour of the village, treating them like some
dangerous illness and being rather glad when they had all been
killed. Anger overcame him, and hatred, and then all the pain of his
loss that was so difficult to describe – like a black hole
swallowing him, his heart literally aching, his chest pressed
together so that he could not breathe – he knew this feeling by
now, he knew how to get rid of it: feel for the ground beneath his
feet, for the table under his hands, and then concentrate on his
revenge: How they would run, trying to escape the flames of his
Amaterasu, but in vain, as the flames were faster, how they would
fling themselves to the ground when they were caught, trying to
extinguish the flames, but without success, as the flames of
Amaterasu were inextinguishable, except by himself, and he would not
save them, but just watch, as they had watched when his clan was
murdered.

It
was no good to daydream; he had to think about his plan – a
plan to take out the counsellors without destroying the whole
village. He knew rationally that this was the wiser and more
responsible decision, even though it did not give him the
satisfaction that his daydreams about burning all the inhabitants of
Konoha to ashes gave him. He did not have any fantasies about killing
the Elders and that Danzou Madara had talked about, maybe because he
could not give them a face when dreaming about killing them in a slow
and painful way. Though on the other hand he never dreamt of killing
any villagers he knew personally so that they would have had a face
in his daydreams. Dreaming about the destruction of Konoha was simply
more satisfying, he thought, because it was more adquate to what he
felt when he thought of the murder of his family.

It
would not do. He should stop daydreaming and focus on his plans.
Whatever his final decision would be he certainly did not want to
destroy Konoha for no other reason than not having been able to come
up with a plan how to kill the Elders and Danzou and no one else.

He
looked at his teammates who were sitting at the other end of the
hall. Karin and Suigetsu were fighting about whose turn it was to do
the dishes, and Juugo was preparing the meal. (It had turned out that
he was the best cook of the members of team Taka.) He had not freaked
out for some time now, not even when Karin and Suigetsu were
fighting: He would just beg them to stop, meakly and whining like a
child, but he would not transform into a monster: It worked however;
they stopped bickering immediately when he began complaining as they
were still scared of him.

Sasuke
was glad that Juugo had gotten better at least in this respect, even
if he had not returned to his grown-up form. It was one of the few
emotions left to him that had nothing to do with the murder of his
family and his plans for revenge, and Sasuke was well aware of it. He
was aware that his dreams of revenge always ended when the revenge
was completed, and that he had no idea how his life might continue
after this. Sometimes he wondered what his life might have become if
he had resigned from taking revenge on Itachi, if he had stayed in
Konoha and become a loyal shinobi of the Leaf, never asking about his
family's unatoned for murder, holding his service for the village in
higher esteem than his family. Having listened to Kakashi's advice,
and never learnt about who was truly responsible for the massacre.
Life might have been easier, but the person he would have been seemed
a complete idiot to him.

Karin
and Suigetsu seemed to have come to a compromise: Suigetsu did the
dishes while Karin was cutting vegetables for Juugo.

“Cabbages
again”, she said. “Yesterday we had cucumber. Anything
else?”

“Rice.
We have run out of cucumber now, too. And flour. We still have some
oil and salt left.”

Sasuke
knew that the discussion was meant for him, even though they
pretended to only talk among themselves. They should leave this ruin
before his team was openly complaining, maybe even carrying Suigetsu
if he still was not able to walk on his own legs. Go to some town, do
some grocery shopping, and find out how much money he had still left.
He did not want to turn to Madara, who had given them provisions
before they had set out to capture the Eight-Tails. He was still
reluctant about entering towns and avoided them as well as he could,
but if he had to choose between Madara and a town, he would choose
the town.

They
called for him to have dinner – Juugo dealt out portions that
were accurately measured – still sufficient, but not more. They
began to eat, silently at first, but when they had stilled their most
immediate hunger Karin turned to Juugo, as she did every evening:

“Tell
us about the Blessed Realm you talked about yesterday! That place
where all wounds will healed...”

And
Juugo began to talk: “Far away, in the West, there is a Blessed
Realm where all wounds will be healed, where there is singing and
laughter all day, where sorrow and tears are overcome, where parents
are never separated from their children and lovers never from each
other, and where death himself has lost his power.”

“I
don't believe this last one”, Suigetsu replied. “People
die everywhere, don't they? Humans are no gods, they don't live
forever, and if they try they end up as maniacs, as did Orochimaru.”

“Maybe
they don't live forever”, Juugo admitted. “But they don't
die of war or crimes, and their doctors can concentrate on illnesses
instead of wounds of war, so that they live up to an age of ninety or
a hundred years.”

It
had become a ritual among the three of them, with every line of the
conversation being repeated almost word for word night after night.
Sasuke was the only one who was not moved - his family would not be
brought back to life, no matter how perfect that place might be. Also
he was afraid of what this story might lead to – and there it
was indeed, the question he had dreaded from the moment Juugo had
first talked of that Blessed Realm, asked by Karin:

“Can't
we go and find that place, Sasuke? We are not getting any better, are
we, and we cannot stay in this wilderness. We need to find that place
where we can all find healing...”

A/N:
This is the last part of the prologue. With the next chapter, the
story proper will begin.

ItaNaruLover:
Many thanks for your warm review! I am not too worried that I don't
have a lot of reviews – after all, the story has just begun,
and I can understand if people are waiting to see where this is
going. But all the more I am happy about getting such a friendly and
enthusiastic one as the one I got from you! I hope I can fulfill your
hopes!
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The Blessed Realm