"NARUTO!" Sasuke screamed until he felt that he should be blue in the face. He was starting to feel dizzy from all the shouting, dark spots were swimming in and out of his vision. He turned this way and that, glancing at each face or hair colour of the fallen that lay around him. The fallen that lay because of him. He tried to ignore that thought; he loved and loathed what he had become. What he had done.

Something brushed at his ankle. Instinctively, with his ever-growing fear of snakes, he flinched bringing his knee up so his ankle was raised off the ground; amazingly he also managed to turn on the spot in a not so graceful balletic pirouette. Glancing down he saw a tuft of yellow hair from which a pair hybrid blue and red eyes could just gaze out at him. The only eyes that could touch his soul and make him remember who he could have been.

"Naruto?" he whispered now, fearing that each beast inside both of them was not as fast asleep as he hoped.

"Heh," Naruto rolled over, one side of his face more or less untouched the other looked as though a rake had been dragged across it too many times to count. Sasuke looked at his hands, now simply human, unbelieving what had happened. Naruto watched him whilst he slowly sat up. He breathed sharply as he found a kunai wedged inbetween two of his ribs, "damn you," he breathed. Whether it was to the kunai or to Sasuke even he didn't know. Everything felt weird now, or possibly it was right and everything had felt weird before.

"Hey, why am I staring at the clouds?" Naruto blinked.

"You blacked out for a while, you're lying down again. Please don't move," Sasuke sounded concerned, Naruto reckoned. But none of this made any sense, they were fighting and everyone else was fighting and then… he couldn't remember.

"Sasuke?" He felt warm, maybe it was the arms around him that kept him still that felt made it so, or maybe it was the blood that was spreading underneath his already saturated top.

"Mmm?"

"Did I go all Kyubi on your ass back there?" he looked away knowing the truth but not wanting to hear it.

"You saw what I became, you needed to," Sasuke felt the sting of tears forming in his eyes, the gradual swell of salt water at the edge of the eyelashes before pushing slightly too far to cascade down onto Naruto's cheek. Sasuke shut his eyes, forcing more of the dreaded rain out from his soul but blacking out the sight of devastation around him and the sweet blond lying in his arms. The sweet blond who was now catching his tears on his finger and letting them run off his face and down his fingers. He heard the gasp of a breath as arms extended and fingers laced around the back of his neck, pulling him down towards the earth, down towards the one thing he had always wanted and taken away from himself.

"Just this once we shall have that which we could never have," Naruto felt the whisper bounce back from the dampened face above him back onto his own, he laughed internally at the bitter sweetness of it all and the cheesy lines he was using. He felt a soft coldness touch his lip as Sasuke bent down further to kiss him.

He leant back on one arm, trying to work out what had happened. Naruto look like he was asleep, although he knew that he wasn't. Fast asleep on his knee just about to wake up and cry out for more ramen or that he was going to be better than any other hokage ever. He brushed the blood stained hair from over his closed eyes, and moving slowly he curled around Naruto's head so he could face the lying blond just for a little while, entwining his cold fingers with Naruto's. And gaze at his hokage just for a little while, just until he too fell asleep, no longer fearing for the dreams that he would be sent to kill the one he loved. No longer dreaming at all.