Author's Notes: The Uchiha Family gets an uninvited and unwelcome passenger during one of their trips. :D

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

An Unwelcome Passenger

He knew this man.

The moment he had seen the name 'Uchiha' on his list earlier today, he had felt a twinge of familiarity, a stirring of musty twenty-year old memories.

Twenty years – normally, he would have forgotten incidents that had transpired so long ago. But the nature of that particular event had prevented it, made it impossible for him to forget. The memory of a dull-eyed eight-year old boy standing in a sea of corpses, all of them his own kin, stubbornly engraved itself onto his mind, a reminder of the sometimes gruesome, cruel character of his line of work.

He had wondered, then, if the boy would ever recover, find a life for himself, or if the boy would be one of those who jumped ahead, refusing to wait for his predestined time. At first, he was pretty sure that it would be the latter. But then, when he saw the two names on his list: Uchiha Sakura and Uchiha Takumi, he was pretty glad to know that the boy had moved on, forged a life for himself despite all the odds. And then realization sunk in, and he wished that the boy had not bothered in the first place. Looking at Uchiha Sasuke now, through the closed, tinted window of a practical Toyota, made him wish that the world had just a little bit more justice. It was unfair that one man lose so much at such a young age, whereas others have yet to experience a single tragedy, spared from it until such a time when they would be mature enough to handle it.

But life was cruel, and nobody knew it more than he did. Things like justice and fairness were merely myths.

Humans, however, were resilient; they just kept on going, fighting for survival, happiness, even though they had a pretty certain notion of what awaited them at the very end. Uchiha Sasuke was a perfect example of that, building a family despite the fact that he already knew firsthand how fragile families were, how breakable, how destroyable.

He would never understand them. Then again, he never had to.

This was just his job, his duty, and he had long since abandoned any attempts to rationalize and moralize it.

But cases like this— cases like Uchiha Sasuke, well, they just tested his limits, made him want to run the other way, escape. But he knew that wishing so was as futile as it was foolish. He was trapped in his fate, and so was Uchiha Sasuke. There was nothing that they could do about that.

With a tired sigh, he adjusted his glasses, wiped his sweaty palms on his black suit, and perched atop Uchiha Sasuke's car. He could hear some light-hearted conversation from below him, a cheery banter between husband and wife. It warmed him to know that the boy had really found happiness despite everything, but the warmth was immediately replaced by the tell-tale chill that came with the job on hand.

'Oh well, best get it over with', he thought as he pressed his palm on the heated roof.

The car swerved, once, twice, but it could not shake the uninvited passenger off. Stubbornly, he clung to it until all he heard was the clash of metal against metal and all he could smell was the acrid stench of burning tires. Black, billowing smoke engulfed him as he descended from his perch to peek inside the car. The child, he knew, was dead, his head bent at an odd angle. But the woman – pink hair now matted with blood – was just unconscious, still alive but barely. He noted with distaste how she was not wearing a seatbelt, a simple but grave matter that was very easy to overlook. She still had a few hours left, according to his record. Perhaps she might even reach the hospital, injecting her husband with such futile, painful, cruel hope, but ultimately, she too would have to go.

Dread pitting in his nonexistent stomach, he turned his attention to Uchiha Sasuke. The boy – technically a man by human standards, but still a child to his – was coughing and sputtering as he rolled down the windows, letting more smoke out. Then, almost immediately, the boy turned to his wife and child, checking to make sure if they were okay. He saw panic rise in the boy's face as he saw the state of his family, his breathing becoming more frantic.

Still, he was impressed by how efficient the boy's movements were despite the recent events. Within seconds, the boy was out of the car and on the other side, ripping open the crushed door and pulling his family out into safety. The boy's actions were in vain, he knew, and marked by hysterics. Still, they were well-organized and economical – the marks of a man who would have gone far had life not deemed it proper to pull the rug from out under him at each turn.

He watched as the boy flipped his phone open with shaking hands, frantically dialing the emergency number. That done, the boy rocked back and forth, clutching his family in his hands, shuddering sobs wracking his body.

Death turned away then, unable to take another minute of watching the boy break, wishing more than anything else that he could retire, that this responsibility wasn't his. He then floated to the other car which, he saw, was driven by a boy who looked as if he was barely out of his teens. The boy was unconscious as well, but he would survive, maybe even learn a vital lesson from this. Uchiha Sasuke, however, would walk away with nothing. Life had dealt him too many blows, too many tragedies for them to still be called 'lessons'.

The sound of sirens broke into his reverie, and he watched dispassionately as the woman and child were wrenched from Uchiha Sasuke's grasp and lifted into the ambulance. The boy, as soon as he was calmed by the paramedics, followed his family into the vehicle, heedless of anything important he might leave in his car.

That simple display showed where the boy's priorities lay, and Death could not help but pity him more.

Because, really, how often can a man say that he lost everything twice?

tbc.