"There... now it's over forever."
Naruto sat down on the cold ground, his body covered in the blood of his fallen enemy. The battle had taken more out of him than any other fight in his life. When he had finally inflicted the ultimate, life-taking wound on his enemy, his body seemed to completely give up on him. Sasuke's sword slipped from his blood stained hands. It landed on the ground next to him softly, barely making a sound.
For the longest time, he just sat there, staring at nothing in particular, his thoughts empty and cold.
He took the Uchiha's blade, and wiped it completely clean of blood with the inside of his elbow. Then he sheathed it slowly, careful not to touch the blade to the inside of the saya. He placed the sheathed weapon on the ground, and stood up. He shed his blood-soiled orange jacket like a worn out skin, and laid it over the face of his opponent.
Then he performed the hand-signs necessary to form a basic fire jutsu, and incinerated the corpse of his fallen enemy.
And just like that, the Fourth Shinobi War came to an end.
Picking back up his former comrade's war-hardened weapon, he began the ascent out of the large crater that had been his battle-ground. The crater seemed to climb up toward the sky for at least a mile. Naruto took his time reaching the top, his heart weighing him down with world-weariness. When he finally ascended from the abyss like some winged angel from the depths of hell, he was greeted only by the horrors of war.
While he was fighting for his life in the hell below, his allies had been losing theirs in the hell above. The dead seemed to stretch on for miles, and the wounded seemed to stretch on even farther. Never before had Naruto's heart felt so great a strain, so heavy a loss. He was tempted to collapse right here, to fall to his knees, to give in to the soul sucking sadness.
But he knew he had to be strong, for all the wounded and all the dying he had to remain firm. He had to be a beacon of hope, a symbol of indestructible inspiration. He had to be the pariah, and bottle up all the sadness inside him until he thought for sure it would kill him.
He walked toward the main part of camp with his head held high, Sasuke's sword held proudly in his left hand. Every person he passed stared at him enthralled with his splendor, his utterly impenetrable resilience to pain. When Naruto finally made it into the Hokage's tent, he quickly closed the tent's entrance-flap behind him, and fell onto his rear.
The tear's burst forth quicker than he could control, and his face quickly became soaked in the salt water. It smeared the blood that had landed on his cheeks, painting lines of flesh in between the splotches of red. He sat there for several minutes, his body buckling with sobs, blissfully ignorant of all those who were staring at him. Slowly tears filled their eyes as well.
Soft arms wrapped around Naruto. Sakura said nothing, but held on to him as he cried.