Solstice
(one heart beating)
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He had spent his birthday in Snow Country that year, lying wrapped in the warmest clothes he possessed, atop a rock mountain. The sky was clearer than he expected and he spent all night awake. No person would be fool enough to travel all that way up some mountain just to attack him.
It was before he had joined Akatsuki. He had gone up there to nab a bandit but didn't feel like going back down quite yet.
Unbeknownst to him, in a matter of weeks he would be forced to work with people who neither appreciated nor cared for his art, and would spend the rest of his largely unhappy life fighting for, and eventually dying for a cause he only supported to prove a point that went unproven even as he ripped open his chest-mouth, pulled out his masterpiece, and blew himself to bits. It was seen, of course, but the only person who would have known what he meant by it was already long gone.
And as he formed the seal time seemed to pause. He thought he felt a hand on his shoulder, a familiar, wooden hand…
"Just do it already, brat," he imagined that person saying, impatient but also amused. "I hate waiting."
Chakra rushed to his hands as he detonated the bomb.
He opened his eyes as all the stars in the universe came to greet him at once.