When Naruto was very young, he had found a bird that was hurt. He had found it on his way home from the playground, it had laid silently on the grass next to the road. Its brown and grey shades made it hard to see, so Naruto had almost walked right past it. He wouldn't have seen it if he wasn't walking with his head hanging low, staring at the ground.
It had been so tiny. Big, scared eyes watched Naruto tensely as he reached out his hand, but still it made no attempt to fly away. As his hand closed firmly around the warm, soft body, it began squeaking, trying to peck at him with its open beak. He just watched it curiously.
Back home he had put it on his living room table, and then he had went rummaging through his kitchen for anything a bird would eat. Bread crusts he'd cut off from his sliced bread, and raisins he spent hours cutting into tiny pieces were offered to the little bird.
After a few days, the bird had started moving about. Naruto had went from door to door and asked for a bird cage. Someone had found an old one hidden in their attic, rusty where parts of the white paint had fallen off. Naruto had accepted it thankfully and spent a lot of time on his living room floor trying to fix it up. Pieces of torn newspapers in the bottom. Twigs for the bird to sit on. Colourful paper tied to the thin bars. He had put the bird in it.
He had grown so fond of the little bird. It woke him up with song every day, made sure he wasn't late. It sang for him while he ate his meals and it sang when he came home after being out. When Naruto reached one of his little hands into the cage it would jump onto his finger and sit there.
Naruto didn't want to let the bird free, even now that it had recovered. He wanted to keep it with him as his friend.
After two months, the bird had stopped singing. It sat in its cage quietly, looking at Naruto with a blank gaze. One week later, it had stopped eating.
After three days and nights of Naruto trying to force-feed the bird, crying and begging for it to sing again, it laid dead in his hands. Its once shiny feathers were now ruffled and dull. Its wings placed tightly against it, the whole body cold and stiff. Its eyes were closed.
If anything, that experience should have taught Naruto that if you love someone you should let them go. But it hadn't. No one had been there to tell him the moral of his own sad story. He had just found things so much harder to let go of. Because life was so fragile, and he never knew when it would disappear right in front of him, irreversible, never coming back.
Maybe that was why he couldn't let go of Sasuke. He was selfish, he wanted to keep Sasuke close to him; he didn't want to miss a single moment, a single memory. Even if he was a cage that would choke Sasuke slowly. Because that's what it would've been like. Wouldn't it? No... That wasn't it:
Naruto felt as if he was the bird. Sasuke was his cage and if he couldn't be free of his worries and longing, he would die. He really would die. His heart ached so badly, more and more each day. He had stopped singing a long time ago.
In his living room stood a white bird cage, rusty where the paint had fallen off, covered in dust. Coloured paper was tied to the thin bars, but the colours had become dull. The little door was closed.