A/N: I Do not own any part of the Naruto realm.
"I love you too," he whispered to the earth beneath him. Down on that ground he lay, defeated, destroyed, by his parents sides.
She drew in a breath and held it tight in her chest- too tight - until it flared with pain, a mere glimpse of what he must've felt. But she had somewhere to be. Someone to take there and protect. Someone with one final act to commit before passing. So they left, no one the wiser to the slow trail of tears wisped away by the speed of her movement, or the darkness that fed upon her heart.
Except the boy that kissed the earth, all alone. The boy that would lay there till long after the days end, in a never-decaying corpse of his own design. The wetness threatened to surface again as she remembered their fight. She' never be allowed to return for him, to tend to him, to love him. But she could hold him in her heart, where no one could ever take him away again. And she could keep her secret. His secret. Their secret. Forever.
As the sun set on the second day, a shudder fled through a beloved man as he stood unsteadily in an abandoned battlefield by the sides of a man and his bride. If the girl hadn't damaged the seal last second - hadn' done it so swiftly... The man stumbled, raising a pale hand to his head and running it through his crimson locks. If she hadn't saved him, hadn't freed him from his once-life...
Sasori grimaced, "I love you too... Sakura."