In the unforgiving red dawn of twilight, even the clouds were dyed crimson. Crimson like eyes in a Mangekyou Sharingan, a vortex of beautifully spinning red and black and the shades in between.
And as wind slowly lifts the covers lake-white snow, a brightly shining star drifts off into the horizon with only the little residue of light perched atop of crescent roses as evidence of its existence. Sometime sooner or later, that light is going to disappear, too.
To the war-torn world of shinobi, this is a day of celebration.
Uchiha Sasuke. What does that name make you think? Criminal, perhaps. Hero? Never. Traitor—ah, there we go.
The last criminal of the Fourth War, Uchiha Sasuke, is finally captured by Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto with little to no resistance whatsoever.
After disappearing for three years, the raven stood in the limelight of the five Kage. Sentence: death.
Although Sasuke was one of two key figures in dispelling the Infinite Tsukyomi, crime was still crime. Killing was still killing—an unjustifiable sin.
The funny thing is, Konoha massacred the whole of the Uchiha, lives slaughtered in cold blood more than Sasuke could ever hope to achieve.
And the murderer? Uchiha Itachi. What was Konoha to sentence Sasuke to death while they had made a mere thirteen-year-old kill his own family?
Their reason was "for peace." That reason and that reason alone instantly made civilians and shinobi alike to "understand."
Sasuke was young. So young, too young to be sentenced to death. Too young to witness memories of the massacre playing over and over again, and far too young to learn the dark truths of how Konoha worked.
Konoha voted for death. Sasuke's death. All was well. Children can rest safely in their beds and civilians can peacefully dwell in their meagre towns.
The curse was cast. Uchiha Sasuke will be dead by nightfall.
—
In the silver of the night, there came a flash of gold. It was Naruto.
Today, when he visited, he did not wear the black of Sasuke's upcoming funeral nor the white and red of the Hokage robes but instead his obnoxious orange jumpsuit from back when they were kids.
"Could I take Sasuke out for a walk?" Naruto asked the guard, grin on his face. To Sasuke, this was humiliation. Embarrassment. Was he a dog? A dog that needed to be taken out on silly little walks? "Just a casual stroll, nothing special."
"I apologise, Hokage-sama. It is prohibited from the fourty-seventh law of the third Appendix of Konoha Missing-Nin Laws from releasing this…" the guard sneered, "traitor out of the safe reaches of prison."
For just a moment, Naruto decided to be selfish. With a speed like his father, he knocked the guard out, stole his keys, and released the chains binding Sasuke's hands.
Sasuke knew that Naruto was going to come for him. He just sat there, patiently "waiting" for his arrival. He doesn't have time left anyway.
As Naruto looked at the white bindings on Sasuke's (oncesodeadlycrimsonredredblackonyxblack) eyes, his heart felt a strong tug, knowing that even if he did take them off, only white sclera would stare back.
—"You, you insolent fool!" Homura Mitokado had yelled before him in the Hokage summit, "Itachi only left you behind to inherit the Will of Fire! And look what you have done, in your selfish rampage."
It was with great ease that the Mitokado said this, as if she had rehearsed it in her mind for a long time:
"You do not deserve Itachi's eyes, return them to Konoha! Those eyes were meant for protecting Konoha!"
The ever-prideful Sasuke dug his eyes out in front of all the Kage, blood and ocular veins spilling on the ground. "Let Itachi say this to me himself!" he snarled, "if he says that I should, I'd do so in a heartbeat." He set flame to his Sharingan eyes.
Sharingan—more importantly, the Mangekyou, was lost forever, and with it the divine powers of the Shinto gods.
Hypocritical peace and long-forgotten promises were deemed dead with no chance of survival.—
It was then that Naruto hated himself for being a so-called "good guy." If he wasn't a good guy, he would slay everyone in the room but Sasuke. If he wasn't a good guy, he would avenge the deaths of the Uchiha family by killing all of Konoha.
But because he was a good guy, he had to stop Taka from the assassination of Homura. Because he was a good guy, he had to place the curse on Sasuke.
And because he was a good guy, he had to break his promise (his single-most important promise) with being best friends with Sasuke and staying with him until death.
—
The last remaining residue of light vanished from the Earth forever as Sasuke clutched his heart and choked on his blood, staining green grass with blood red.