Futility.
With him it had always been futility. The futility of his failure to erase the past and all its searing pain and scars from those eyes thrown in his face everyday with the knowledge that as the days pass, the chance of him ever seeing those eyes grows less. The futility of knowing that the one person that had ever truly been able to lodge himself in a place of importance in his heart showed no sign of anything but coldness toward him. The futility of the cracking of his smile little by little everyday as word failure resounds a little more loudly in his head ad the even worse futility of knowing that the only person who would have noticed the cracks as they appeared was not even there to notice because of his failure. And so the circle spirals into itself with its origin lost and unknown somewhere in the downfall of two great bloodlines who became victims to the very purpose for their existence. But then again, that's how it had always been between them. It seemed that their lives were no more than useless wars raged against decisions made by people unknown and known that had come before them; decisions that had built the very foundation of their dysfunctional friendship and decisions that seemed determined to make their friendship fail. Even when they had both given up their whole lives and their very souls to overcome the decisions of the past, it was all just so……….futile. Maybe it was this futility that finally caused them to reach each other, one through the blinding light and one through the smothering darkness, and then to inadvertently destroy each other……….
It had been three years. Three long futile years since Sasuke left. Three of the longest years he had ever experienced, including those years of failure at the academy. He had once thought that sitting there on that swing after yet another failure at the academy, watching the parents as they so flippantly lavished affection on their recently graduated genin without anything but a glare for the failure demon, was the worst pain he had ever felt. After that it was almost losing Iruka to that manipulative bastard of an academy teacher, and then he experienced a tiny sliver of real pain when the Sandaime died. He had his first real lesson in the futility of life then, and exactly how fragile it could be. He also saw for the first time exactly how little it took to take love and devotion and turn them into a twisted kind of hate. All of this he hid easily behind his smile, partly because he was still an airhead who had to really understand anything, not even the demon housed inside of him, but mostly because it's what he did. It was the only thing he knew how to do. But none of this even compared to the heart wrenching, soul destroying pain that he felt that day in the Valley of the End as Sasuke made his confession that yes, Naruto was indeed his best friend and because Naruto had achieved that oh so precious role in the Uchiha's life, it was his fate to die so that Sasuke could achieve the only thing he wanted in life, the death of his brother. As broken as Naruto was then, he still didn't understand. It would take years for that.
Maybe the empty feeling inside that at first seemed to destroy his strength of will was the reason he let the demon out to play. Or, maybe it was just simply that Sasuke had always had that effect on him, always made him react differently than he wanted to and differently than he knew he should. Regardless of the cause, he nearly beat Sasuke that day, and would have except for the snake bastard's curse, that ate at Sasuke's soul, even as it supplied him with inhuman strength. But in the end, even the demon turned out futile, as Sasuke beat him within an inch of his life and then left.
The period of time that followed was worse than a nightmare for Naruto. For the first time in his life, he actually didn't want to see Sakura. He didn't want to see the tears she tried so desperately to hide from him. He didn't want to hear about Chouji's nearly anorexic condition and Neiji's near death experience or how Kiba had almost lost Akamaru. It slowly ate at him, until he began to understand just a little bit. He, for the first time, understand what the quest for power truly did to a person and what being a ninja meant. He understood why Sasuke was so terrified of him that he actually wanted to kill him. It wasn't because of the Kyuubi as had once thought. It was as simple as the fact that he, Naruto, deadlast Naruto of all people, had actually seeped into the Uchiha's heart, soul, and mind to the extent that Sasuke's subconscious was so protective of Naruto that it caused him to almost die for the dobe before he killed his brother. He caught a glimpse of the power that he had over the Uchiha and he caught a glimpse of the power the Uchiha had over him.
It was in the midst of those realizations that Jiraiya walked in with an offer of a choice for Naruto and Naruto made the only choice he could to escape the tears of a pure hearted maiden and the reminders of his failure in his teammates' eyes.
He left.
A/N: This my first work of fanfiction, so if you like it please send me a review and let me know what you liked and whether or not you wish for a continuation. If you don't like, please send me a review and let me know why. Oh and by the way I do not own Naruto, Mashimoto-sama does and I do not begrudge him that because he is, simply put, a genius. This story will have extreme yaoi, or boy on boy content, if I continue this and what does not allow mw to post on here I will have links to where you can read it. Thanks and ja ne.