This is my December
This is my time of the year

I walked in the shadows of the empty streets, dragging my feet though every step kicked up tufts of feathery white snow. My hands hung loosely in my pockets to escape the frigid wind that lapped at my pale cheek and nose, which blew fragile snowflakes into my dark eyelashes and bangs. I pass frosted windows, orange glow from inside festivities bravely defying the cold winter that raged on outside.

I found myself hoping that he was enjoying warmth, too, on this evening of cold and loneliness. I mentally slapped myself for wishing I could be the one to give it to him.

This was my time of the year. This was the time when all of the heaven's sorrowful tears finally froze up and fell to litter earth's ground in cold, moist flakes. This was the time when I could look around and find only unwelcoming wind and frost in the shops and houses that seemed to flaunt their happy, glowing interiors before my empty eyes. This was the time when I could find solace in the numbness that came with my past and my memories. The time I could slip away into the sweet confinements of the less painful memories and stay there, unmoving, unfeeling, to my heart's content.

And nobody would even care.

This is my December
This is all so clear

I continued on, peripheral flashes of laughter and lights coming to me involuntarily. I tried to shun them by focusing on the white ground, knowing what I'd see already if I looked to the sky—grey clouds, grey light, grey limits, grey future. Only the blurry squares of yellow life radiating from the houses on my left and right stained my world in color. Everything else today was black, white, or grey.

On this December day, my only dream was completed and now I was left to face the reality that, while once was blurry, now was painfully clear. I was by myself. I no longer had my all-consuming goal as an avenger, I no longer held my quest for power to my heart with a life-ending grip, and now, at the end, I didn't even have a friend to return to.

I turned a corner. The plastic tape was dull and faded, but I saw it so clear in my eyes, as if it was only yesterday that the law enforcement had put it up to ban me forever from the life I once knew. Now I returned to it, melting through with the shadows to the place I had not dared go since it had first happened. I watched as the snow fell inside my little square of lonely reverie. It kept falling, each white flake a stab of white in my memory, as clear as his blue eyes in my mind.


This is my December
This is my snow covered home

I flinched as I heard a dog bark madly, breaking my perfect silence. Ignoring it, I walked onward, my destination clearly determined but not yet reached. I did not quicken my pace—I would reach my old home soon enough. It didn't need to be hurried. Perhaps I would find a shred of something there, something to point me in the direction I could go after today. Revisiting old steps in my life, I was told, was a good way to learn where to make new ones.

I stepped on an ancient Christmas ornament, heard it crack but didn't look down. I didn't need to see that today. I only wanted to forget, drown myself in old memories, happy memories. Finally I reached my house. A thin veil of snow covered it, as if to shield it from my Sharingan-bearing eyes, to keep me from shedding my sins just for this day. It didn't need to go through the trouble. I would be blood-drenched again come morning, anyway.

Even so, this was my home. It was forbidding, but I stepped up onto the porch and opened the door. My life. My home.


This is my December
This is me alone

I stretched my arm forward, fingers reaching for the wood of the screen door. I felt the roughness of the old wood, and gripped it, cold slicing my fingers as I opened it only to an even colder room.

Cold with death. Cold with tears.

I took a step in. A white, haunting wind rustled my stiff ebony hair and I closed my eyes to protect them. Opening them again, I retreated further into the house. The bare, empty walls glared at me with every step I took, flaunting their memories and pains before my eyes like some sick form of torture.

Finally, I found my old room. I opened the door, but I didn't go in. This wasn't my room anymore. This wasn't my life anymore.


And I
Just wish that
I didn't feel
Like there was
Something I missed

Somehow, it had been here. Somehow, my brother had told me. Through these blank walls and this thin, empty air, he had told me. I may have missed it. Missing things don't make them disappear.

This thought brought forth a set of shining sky-shaded orbs, and I felt a pang stab violently through my heart. He had always took me for what I was, and done with that image what he would. I felt as though I missed something, all the time I was around him. Now, I would never know.

And I
Take back all
The things I said
To make you
Feel like that

Missed something or no, had I not always made him feel inferior? My fist clenched and I punched the old door-frame. I had always made him feel like he was nothing—always frustrated him, acting like I was better than him. Always.

When, in reality, perhaps he was better than me.

Silently, I cursed the plaster which my fist still struck and took back every single cruel word that I'd ever said to him. Anything I'd done to try and show him I was better than him, every breath I'd used uncaringly to drive him down further.

There, in that moment, I took it all back.


And I
Just wish that
I didn't feel
Like there was
Something I missed

Perhaps I had missed nothing. Perhaps he really was that obnoxious, hard-working, loud ninja that everybody hated and everybody loved. Perhaps, then again, I was only taking him for the outside. I had never been good at seeing deeper than that. Perhaps that was why I missed so much.

I had missed Itachi's silent warnings of death, of pain and inevitable solitude. For the longest time, I had missed Sakura's true, pure feelings of love and tainted feelings of longing and loneliness. Above all, I had missed Naruto's gazes of admiration, of longing friendship, and of an ultimate sort of hopeless aloneness.

And I'd missed it.

And I
Take back all the
Things I said to you

I allowed a fragile, cold breeze to tug at my dark hair, and then stepped into it, into my room, into my past.

Another burst of wind came forth into the un-heated room, and with it a swarm of memories and sorrows and pain and innocence. I remembered chakra control training in the Country of Waves. I remembered the first time I saw Naruto use Rasengan. I remembered the first time Sakura came to school with her hair up in a red tie.

I remembered him, again and again and again, as if the only purpose of my other memories was to give permission for him to enter my mind—my heart. I walked into the cold wind and fell into a corner, my head leaning against the wall but certainly not seeing it. All I saw was blue.

His blue.


And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

Tears welled up in my eyes, stinging my cold orbs and acidly burning my cheek as they slid down with a 'plip' to land on the floor. I thought of my team—Team 7. I no longer had them. I didn't have their smiles and their training. All I had were memories, pain, and an empty goal finally accomplished.

Oh how I wished I could give that up, throw it back in fate's face in return for a place to go—someone to go home to. Especially if that someone were him, my favorite blonde ninja. I would spit on this completed revenge if I could turn around and hold him later, hold him and love him and kiss him until we were both dizzy and senseless.

Oh, what I would give.


This is my December
These are my snow-covered trees
This is me pretending
This is all I need

Slamming my hand down on my cold floor, my flesh touched something cold and dry. Lifting it up, I found the object to be a leaf—cold, withered and dying. I remembered the leaf sign on my old forehead protector.

I remembered the leaf sign on his forehead protector.

I stood and moved to the broken window. The wind was blowing the other way, now. Stretching out my pale, ungloved fingers, I let it go, watching the brown-green leaf flutter away to a new destination. Soon it was weighed down with snow, and I saw it fall to the ground.

Frustration overtook me. Why couldn't I ever fly like them? Why did I always have to borrow happiness from others? When I was so sure I could make it on my own by being an avenger, because I was equally sure that it would be worth it in the end.

And now I'm even surer that it isn't. And that it will never be.

I thought to myself that I don't need happiness—that I can still live without it. But as soon as it passed through my mind, I knew it to be a lie. False, empty like the plaster walls surrounding me. A relic of my past self.

This was not what I wanted. I needed more. I could pretend all day long, forever on out to eternity, because that was all I seem to be good at; but it would not change anything, and eventually, my heart would wither and I would surely die.

I need more.


And I
Just wish that
I didn't feel
Like there was
Something I missed
And I
Take back all
The things I said
To make you feel like that

I found myself wishing again that I could take back everything I did to him, everything I missed or forgot. I wished that I could redo it all, sketch in more happiness and love and passion. I painted in smiles and laughter and training and friendship. I wished myself out of my salty, painful tears and into a past that was, is, and forever will be a lie.

But what a beautiful lie it was.

I collapsed again to the floor, on my knees. Simply because wishing was best done when you're further away from Heaven, and closer to Hell, because wishing from a blackened heart doesn't deserve it. I knew that.

I think, deep down, so did he. So do they.

I felt my heart stop when footsteps could be heard on the other side of the house when the wind died down. My blood froze. This was not their house. Nor was it their life.

Then again, was it really mine, either?


And I
Just wish that
I didn't feel
Like there was
Something I missed
And I
Take back all the things
I said to you

I jumped out the window quickly, skillfully hiding my chakra presence as I waited for this intruder to come out. Nothing happened. I sighed, and stood up as snow began piling on my still-as-stone head. A lone leaf flew into my vision—it was frost-bitten and old, half-dead. The harsh winter wind blew it easily through the yard.

I felt this same cold wind sting my eyes, still wet from past-shed tears and now swimming with the sadness of the present. All this brought forth from a scarred leaf.

I wished I could have told him.


And I give it all away
Just to have
Somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

I turned around and jumped back through the window, back into my solitude and my tears and myself. Sluggishly, I made my way to the door. I didn't need any more of this room—of these walls. My walls.

Or were they?

I wound my way through the empty halls, thoughts of the earlier footsteps disappearing from my mind. Those footsteps were of the present. I did not want the present. I didn't want to live in the now.


This is my December
This is my time of the year
This is my December
This is all so clear

I found myself at the doorway of the room it had all happened in. I stood there, lingering, I didn't want to go any further. But somewhere in my heart—in what was left of something that once held so much inspiration and even love—I knew I had to. I had to revisit this place, even if just one last time.

I had to. I would be whole then. Whole enough to be empty.

I touched the handle on the door, and images flooded my mind. Blood. Pain. Aloneness.

I opened it. I saw again exactly what was in my mind. But there was something extra here—someone who did not belong.

"Naruto."

My voice was hoarse, pained. It took all my energy to say the name I had not dared utter since our last encounter, years ago. He was kneeling on the floor over the dried, faded blood that was my parents'. I saw his blonde head turn around to see me.

Yes….he saw me. For me.

But there was never a time I wanted him to see me as someone else as badly as I did now.


And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere
To go to
Give it all away
To have someone
To come home to

He stood up as soon as he registered who I was. Getting into a fighting stance, he seemed ready for an attack. An attack that I refused to give, because I might hurt him. That was something I never, ever wanted to do again.

"Sasuke." He said my name with such reluctant hatred. It was sweet; I didn't deserve it. I knew that. I only stood there sorrowfully and watched him as he tried to read my movements. I would make none.

When he seemed to realize this, he relaxed a bit. He actually took a step towards me. And another. And another, until he had rushed towards me and thrown his beautiful, toned arms around me.

"Sasuke…" Now he said my name tenderly, as if anything else might break this moment. I wasn't sure it wouldn't.

I had nothing to say to him right now. Nothing that came out of my lying mouth would mean anything to him, anyway. I brought my arms up to hold him, ran my pale, murderous hand through his silky, sunshine-colored hair. I held him gently; I didn't want him to break.

I felt tears on my shoulder. He was crying. I smelled salt now, and I knew it was true. He cried for me—me, who deserved nothing of the sort from someone like him. That did not seem to be stopping him any time soon, though.

"Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke…," he repeated, and I felt him healing old wounds with the desperate, loving tone with which he said my name. Little did he know that he was healing my wounds, too.

"I love you."

It wasn't something I said to everyone. Anyone, actually. Not anymore. Only him. And only for him was it true, because I could not conjure this feeling anymore for anybody else. Only him.

"I love you, Sasuke…." His voice was desperate, that of someone longing for something all his life and finally receiving it after much heartache and pain. I knew this feeling—all too well, I knew this feeling. But no more. Now, I felt his love. It radiated from him, steeping the air in a glow that warmed this empty, lifeless house in a way it hasn't been warmed in years and years.

This was my love.

This was my December.

:: End ::