The ground was blackened by fire and blood, charred and saturated. The blazingly orange sun glowered fiercely above the horizon.

He wouldn't live through the night. He was tired. Weariness sank into his heart and spread, like a slow-acting poison. In this last moment, whether he had won or lost faded away. The blood spilling out of so many wounds warmed and chilled him at the same time. He fought to keep his eyes open for a few seconds, out of instinct. But what was the point?

He slowly started to lose consciousness, teetering between a half-hearted fight to continue living and a tired acceptance of his fate.

He no longer had any reason left to live. He had achieved his goal. After their fight, there was no way his brother was alive. His thoughts moved at a snail's pace. When his mind turned to Konoha, he did not have the willpower to stop it.

Naruto would be angry.

What would happen to his body?

Would Sakura cry for his death?

He could almost hear Naruto now, yelling at him for giving up. For abandoning Konoha. For abandoning Sakura. For abandoning them all, again.

A small, pathetic whisper of a smirk fell over his face. This would be the last time he abandoned anyone. He could promise that much.


The sun, in its slow descent, finally sank below the horizon, the sky growing darker by the second. Four people were speaking in hurried voices, ghosts of the past.

"Thank God! I found a..."

"...akura, do as much as you can here..."

"...ill he be persecuted? As a missi..."

"...worry about that later. Naruto, Sakura, go now an..."

He thought he had already died. Faint recognition fluttered over his mind. It was only a matter of time; he was delusional from blood loss. He dropped back into darkness.


A sharp smell assaulted him, causing him to open his eyes immediately. They started to water, a light glaring down at him from the white ceiling. Or perhaps it was the smell.

The afterlife reeked of ammonia.

He was vaguely aware of a beeping to his right, distracted by the burning sensation of his eyes and nose. The world was blurry, yet also a stark contrast of blacks and whites. The clatter of a door being opened and closed, and there was a nurse by his side, appearing somewhat suddenly. So he wasn't dead. He was in a hospital. Where?

"He knows better than to clean with that stuff around patients..." The nurse muttered angrily to herself. In a significantly more pleasant tone, she spoke to him. "I asked the janitor to leave. Try to go back to sleep, Sasuke."

He was already halfway there, his vision going out of focus again. The nurse's headband glinted in the bright lights as she turned from him, walking toward a chair. A medic-nin?

Blackness again, as his thoughts trailed off.