Just Imagine Because I Can't

by Terminally Ambivalent

As Sasuke lays dying by his best friend, he tries to imagine what it would have been like had he not betrayed the village, but he can't. So, he asks his best friend to do the honors. After all, Naruto's always been the one with the better vision. R&R.

Takashi: Yeah, I killed another Naruto character…. What is this my second? Third?

Kakashi: Who knows… Your just gonna do it again… -.-

Takashi: Yeah, you're right. You might even be next… .

Kakashi: O.O

Takashi: Hahaha… On with the show!!

Just Imagine… Because I Can't

"Naruto?"

Silence licked at their ears like a hungry dog wanting attention.

"… Yeah?" Was the half-hearted reply of a young bleeding blonde next to him.

Sasuke and Naruto had been battling for what seemed like decades. In the process, Orochimaru had been killed by Naruto and many Leaf shinobi's lives were lost to Sasuke. They had fought long and hard, not only physically but emotionally as well.

"Naruto… Can… Can you do me a… a… favor?" The Uchiha said. He was dying and he knew it. But… He was strangely happy it was here… now… with him. Somehow, he knew he just couldn't have died at peace under any other circumstances. He coughed. Blood flew. Yeah, he was definitely dying and he definitely knew it.

A disgruntled, humorless laugh followed after a few moments of stone cold silence. The blonde laughed even though he lost so much. Honestly, he couldn't help it. The irony of how the years had all but written out their future like a stone set prophecy was to great to ignore. Every little detail seemed to fit together like a match made in heaven. It reminded him so much of those annoyingly hard 1,000 piece puzzles that when you have all the pieces scattered and lain before you the individual little pieces make no since compared to the big picture shown to you on the front of the box. And how when you've finally got it all figured out and everything fits where its supposed to you see the finer details that you couldn't see on the box's picture and then all of a sudden… The picture…. Just isn't so beautiful anymore. You get fed up with it and want to take it all apart again. Oh, how he wished he could do that now. How he wished it so. But alas, life, along with most true realities, does not now nor ever will work that way. So, in the final truth of the hour, in the pain stacking end of it all, or what was just the end of an invisible bond to something unknown, he figured, in his typical logic, the proper and most called for answer to this question he had been presented with was,

"Ah, what the hell? Sure." He shrugged.

Another laugh followed this, but from the dying raven-haired boy lying on the ground. He laughed inspite of all he had done. His friend always did have the perfect answer. No matter how people called him stupid or uneducated, he always had the proper answer for every situation. It was usually just so simple that people assumed it was stupid and was just the worthless ramblings of a village buffoon. And yet again, his friend had the perfect answer to his question. 'What the hell?' And truly, in the simplicity of it all, that answer by its self was pure gold. They truly had nothing really left to lose and nothing really left to gain so, 'What the hell?'.

"Just imagine… if I hadn't left and gone to Sound, and Sakura hadn't died, and you and I, along with everyone else stayed and-"

"Sasuke, just stop. It already hurts enough that its ended this way. Don't rub salt into my already aching wounds."

Sauke coughed up blood once more. His time was here, but he wouldn't go just yet without this final good bye to the only family he had left.

"No, no. Just… Just imagine it… for me… Just imagine… Because... Because I can't."

And with those final pleading words, the Uchiha clan was lost forever for its last sole surviver was no more.

"Teme." Was whispered into the cold chilling air as the wind carried it away as yet another whispered fairytale, never to come true.

FIN