Hey.
I've been reading a bunch of one shots and had the urge to do one myself. So here it is!
As stated in the summary, this is one 'potential' (read: not gonna happen) ending to Naruto's Greatest Heresy. I got the idea from lordofthelandoffire (guy who did A Mother's Love), who wrote a bunch of 'alternate' endings to his stories, but made the error of putting them in as actual chapters rather than a one shot.
This is an alternate ending to my dark Naruto fic that won't actually happen (the ending is already decided), and all the characters below come from that story.
If you haven't read "Naruto's Greatest Heresy", you won't understand this one. I boldened, italicized, and underlined that so skimmers will see the warning.
Now, enjoy.
The years came and went, the world changing with the seasons. Wars were fought, battles won and lost, people enslaved and killed, and victors growing old and dying with old age. Time stood still yet continued forward, steadily as it always did. Centuries came and went, with more war and peace like the hundreds of years before them.
The centuries dragged on, and on, and on, and on, and on, turning their numbers into millennia. The world changed, the landmasses shifting and erupting and settling like they had for millennia before. But as the face of the earth changed, its people did not. More war, more peace, more living, and more dying, just like before. There was never an 'enlightenment'- people never united as one, try as they might. They remained fractured and stewing in hate and spite and conditional love. Unity was something never achieved, merely dreamt of and forgotten.
Overall, Naruto saw no difference between the years or centuries or millennia. It never changed, and he had forgotten his age with the winds of time long since passed. Everyone he knew, the people he befriended, the women he loved- from the first to the last- all had perished so long ago he couldn't even remember their faces anymore.
Well, except for one. He looked back from the airplane window to the woman seated next to him. She was the only one who lived alongside him all this time, through the passing centuries. He knew her since his childhood- hated her, as a matter of fact. But time changed that with the seasons; she was the first eternal connection he shared, and now she was the last.
Long after lord Jashin had faded from memory, Asha was still by Naruto's side, still as young and vibrant as the day he met her.
She looked back at him with brilliant turquoise eyes. She might have been less than a century his senior, but to two beings approaching seven or eight millennia of age, a century was a whisper in the wind. She gazed at him, words they may have spoken long since said. There was nothing they could tell each other that they hadn't a million times already. All the memories, the good times and the bad, the wars, the peace, the lovers, and the enemies- they shared that long life in memory.
Asha leaned her head on Naruto's shoulder- her most recent show of affection. The last time she did this was a hundred years ago, and she was picking it up again after all the hand holding and kissing and cuddling.
"Hey," Naruto whispered, "What's this?"
Asha perked up and heard the noise- people screaming and shouting in fear. "We're not crashing again, are we?" She remembered the dozen other times that happened. "It doesn't feel like we're falling…"
Some men with bandannas tied to their faces and wielding tiny box cutters were running up and down the aisle, slashing at random people and shouting and screaming.
"Ah," Naruto realized, "It's a hijacking."
"Ugh," she rolled her eyes, "Again? They're trying to hijack a plane in America. How long do they think they'll get until a sniper blows their head off?"
He shrugged, yawning a little. "Who knows? I give 'em ten minutes after we land."
She giggled. These little games and bets were the only thing they could do to endure the painful passage of time. "I'll give 'em twenty. Now," she snuggled against his arm again, oblivious to the panic sweeping through the cabin, "I'll just sleep this off."
Naruto smiled at Asha and stroked her hair a bit. She smiled but didn't open her eyes- he'd picked up this habit again when she reverted to leaning on him again. Sometimes he couldn't even remember how long they'd been doing this- time meant nothing to either of them. It was agonizing, really, to have to live with the knowledge of things that couldn't be remembered because so much time had passed. He looked back out the window to watch the landscape streak by and wait out the hijacking.
Slowly but surely, civilization came back into view. Buildings got taller and taller, and Naruto frowned. We're not headed for some remote strip? How odd. Sensing the chance to talk to Asha about something, anything, he nudged her awake. "Asha, what does that look like to you?"
She yawned, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and leaned across her immortal lover to peek outside. "A city." She frowned. "Isn't that New York?"
"I think so. Why're we headed to a major city?"
She looked at him, saw a grin on his face, and smirked in return. Asha knew what Naruto was thinking- a way to burn a few minutes before having to wait out the rest of eternity. "Well," she undid her seatbelt, "Let's find out!"
Asha leapt out into the aisle, attracting the first hijacker's attention. The man threatened to push a button attached to some explosives, but Asha grabbed the man's thumb and ripped it off in a flash.
Naruto maneuvered around her with disciplined practice and confronted the next hijacker who rushed to assist his ailing comrade. This one had a box cutter, and the blonde immortal merely stepped under the wild slash and put a knee in the man's groin so hard it drew blood. The last hijacker was close behind the second, also with a pathetic excuse for a knife. He stabbed Naruto right in the chest, driving the tiny blade deep into his heart.
Imagine his horror when the blonde merely smiled and choked him to death in response.
Naruto walked to the cockpit unimpeded, casually yanking the box knife from his flesh and twirling it for effect. Whistling, for this was the first fun he'd had in a long time, he kicked the door in to find two men not in uniform flying the plane. The moment they turned to see him, the knife was through one throat then promptly buried to the tip in the other's eye socket. "Well that was exciting," he grumbled, "Took all of five seconds."
Now that there was no more fun to be had, he looked out the cockpit window to find it was indeed New York. But what filled the window directly ahead surprised him the most.
Asha came up behind him amidst the passengers' screams. She saw around him, and her eyes also widened in surprise. "They were never going to land, were they?"
"No… I guess not."
A small silence passed over the two immortals before Asha asked the obvious. "You think jet fuel can incinerate a body?"
He looked at her with a tired smile. "I think it can."
Asha smiled back and wrapped her arms around him. Tears found her eyes, and she looked to find them in Naruto's eyes as well. "This is the end. This is it. Finally."
Naruto drew closer so his voice was a whisper. "Asha…"
Asha returned the gesture. "Naruto…"
"I love you."
"I love you too."
With that, the two immortals kissed.
Then all that remained of lord Jashin remained no more.
Figured out this event yet? It should be familiar, especially if you're American.
And if you take offense to it, don't. I remember it every bit as much, and I still shed a tear (man enough to admit it) every time I think about it.