-1Everything's been slowly broken down, into pieces, into nothing.

- Annabelle, Heavens

Breathe

She is looking at her hand, not the young gentleman who has come to see her - such a nice surprise in a routine as old as cynicism. He is handsome like her grandson who never comes to visit anymore. Never comes because he is dead and gone. 'Like leaves they sprout, grow, blow away from you never to return. They are only ever replaced.' Replacements - that was what he talked about - Naruto. No - the Kyuubi. No, no this was before when it'd been only a stupid boy no one had time for.

Her eyes are a watery, faded green less emerald then absinthe milky with excess sweetness. "You look like him - Naruto." Not that this boy will understand with his pretty indigo eyes all of seventeen. He does though he looks like him. The perfect golden boy and no one noticed him - or rather they dismissed him. No one wants happy, there's just something more attractive about darkness -unknown and forbidden. Mysterious Sasuke who turned out to be less then 2-dimensional. Totally literal, but try telling that to the girls her age at the time.

Compared to wunderkind Sasuke Naruto seemed less then dust under their feet. Yet they knew nothing about him, knew even less as time moved on and he wandered further and further away from them. She is looking at her hands again so insubstantial compared to the table beneath them cool and plastic. Her hand - it's nothing much - just a hand. An old hand covered in wrinkles, but spared the knobs and perversions of others it's elk. She looks at it and thinks of Naruto's ever golden and small, rough - a boy's.

It wasn't a boy who spoke to her that day in the forest. He finally stood taller then her hands in his pockets. 'People speak of time as sand running from an hour glass…' She can't remember what triggered the conversation, she had been thirty and he had been thirty looking fifteen. Something stupid she said, something stupid despite her being the supposed brain. She couldn't see his eyes, his face only the general silhouette against the sinking sun. A voice older then their years combined. "What about sands?"

She startles the age-old shame burning her again. She was never the best ninja, the best shinobi. Even worse then - no. Always worse then Naruto despite knowing all the rules. How could she have forgotten this boy was here with his lilac eyes and his marigold hair? His voice is warm if deep and slow. She suddenly wishes she were closer to the door. "The Sand?" Gaara still comes to see her disguised as a child or a cat or sometimes a puppet-doll. The nurses tell her she's mistaken, but she knows. How can a sand-demon die in a sandstorm?

Her mind wanders down paths best left forgotten. Time and strain taking their toll. 'Tire, drown, and rot…' She'd gotten angry because he - she'd gotten angry at him because it was getting dark and she was tired. 'What are you talking about?!' His eyes drilled into her despite the shadows between them. 'People think of time as sand-desert or craggy mountain or unending void - but they're wrong. It's an unending ocean as still as heaven and twice as deep. An ocean blurring into the horizon that you swim against, across frantic for safe shore until finally you tire, drown, and rot.' It's getting darker all the time her sweat drying into stiff salt trails as the evening breeze chills her. Her only thought was that Naruto didn't talk like this. 'You're not Naruto.'

Even now in the daylight she shivers despite this being so many years back. 'How would you know?' Voice like gravel and eyes a bright, hypnotic glow stilted like a cat, like a daemon. "He told me so many things." So many things she can't remember only the story of the unending sea. "Who?" His hands encircle hers rough and strong - he can't be more then twenty-five, twenty-four; no laughing lines yet, nor crow's feet. "Naruto - Kyuubi? Both. They spoke of a sea, an ocean."

It's twilight now though no insects speak, no animals stir as she stands not five feet from him feeling an uncrossable chasm between them. She has a son at home with black eyes like his father and a grin just as infectious. She has a husband who loves and needs her. She'll soon have a daughter if her readings are right and Ino is on schedule, happy to play surrogate mother. This isn't where she needs to be surrounded by watching trees. 'And if you don't drown?' He smiles the canines noticeably larger. But then they've always been larger then normal.

'And if you don't drown you simply sink and watch them - watch them swim, tire, drown, and rot. Can you see a thousand, thousand bodies flailing against the current only to drown sometimes softly like petals lost, often violently blood darkening the water? Can you see the bloating bodies float toward you as the skin cracks and peels, the eyes sinking in to blossom forth as blood, pus, and filth?' His teeth gleam in the deepening gleam eyes switching between blue and red so fast all she sees is purple lightening. 'You can't. You can't see it cause you're one of the ones that will rot.' He says something else she can't remember, but there's a lot missing a night and a day.

Her fingers tighten on the fake wood table the cup of tea before her long cool - when did they serve tea? "A night and a day during which time Naruto left Konoha as he arrived destruction everywhere. He still cared though - no one died although many were injured or…" …Or went mad like poor Ino and so many other Yamanaka. Pulling her pretty black hair from her head as the eyes rolled in her head. No daughter for either. A city of rubble and pain - but no one dead, only missing. They didn't know that 'til later, had thought her dead for a time.

"He didn't touch the Hokages though - well not the dead ones." Sasuke's face so totally disfigured except his eyes the one badge of pride the Uchiha had -has. Sasuke isn't dead yet, though he hasn't had much to live for, for a long time. "I can't remember why he did it - although he told me, told me a thousand times. I just remember the story he told me and then waking up to another day." Awkward on the forest floor his jacket over her a group of Inuzuka and their dogs surrounding her. The quiet, nervous trip back toward the ruined Konoha Shizune overworked with Sasuke's face, Lee's legs, and Ino's mind.

"If it means anything… I'm sorry." Her eyes so faded, so blank suddenly sharpen. For a moment she is his Sakura. For a moment he is afraid and then her face dims, utterly confused. Face settling into a well-worn expression of concern he leans forward to take her soft, old hands. "I'll tell you the rest Sakura." They stand in the clearing and all he see is a woman getting older by the minute, by the second. He never ages now - never scars. A constant in a decaying world. Now he understands, the Kyuubi is mad not evil, mad as the Hatter surrounded by clocks constantly ticking tocking tic, tic, ticking!

'I shan't drown, shan't rot. I'll lay there at the very bottom as the fox did before me watching. Watching wave after wave swim, tire, and drown. Watch them rot as the salt water cracks the veneer, peels off the pretty skin, loosens the scalp 'til hair and face leave the grinning skull be.' Grinning skeletons everywhere decaying and floating in a macabre dance amongst the currents of the Great Sea. She doesn't understand though. Can't - her hard green eyes writing him off again, always writing him off.

'Fuck you Sakura.' She looks shocked, she shouldn't be because he's seen things - the monsters men are and can become. He's seen the things men can't begin to dream of even in their darkest nightmares, the Things Among the Trees. And he'll see worse as the years go by like Hidan and Kazuka and all the immortals have. 'I'll watch and despite the flesh', his fingers tighten cracking loudly as his smile twists into a sneer,' the flesh particles everywhere the water is clear enough to see the sun you've left behind. Yet in either direction the water darkens until you can barely see the things in the Deep with you. The Things that Feed - Leviathan and Worm feeding on and off the rot as it floats slowly down to fill your lungs and stop up your ever heavy eyes. Their shadows touch you and you know you'll never escape before they come to get you - before you're just another one - an Abomination.'

He see her hand reach for her kunai and he doesn't care. Sasuke rammed his whole fucking hand though his chest, what will a kunai matter? Her eyes are determined as determined as Sasuke is to ruin his life - Rokudaime Sasuke. He can feel the youki burning him and everything immediately around him. 'You're tired Naruto. Lets go back to the village.' The sugar in her voice isn't in her precious eyes and he has never been that stupid. Kind words soon turn to hard hits - he knows they'll kill him. Unless he strikes first. 'Goodnight Sakura, I am sorry.' He is and he isn't needing to erase the past if only to pretend. Pretend its all new, that it all matters.

He is and he isn't sorry. He is 'cause he's let so many down and he's proven everyone he never wanted to right. He isn't because he hates this place - no matter how much he says otherwise he truly hates Konoha and nearly everyone in it. And as long as its standing this hypocritical waste of space - as long as it exists he'll never have peace. He knows this, but as his tenet states he is weak and only the structure is destroyed, the people remain to rebuild. Yet only a few try to the rest give up, give out and so it worked in his favor regardless of the means.

"Do you understand?" His wide eyes search hers for confirmation she understands only to be disappointed. She doesn't know him. He has waited too long and now she is leaving him before he can clear the air between them. He needn't have come - soon enough she'll have forgotten everything including how to breathe. "Do I know you?" She is rotting her mind slowly becoming mulch, her flesh weeping off her bones. And all he can do is watch or turn away. "No Haruno-san, no you don't."

Now with you no longer dancing, leaving me to second guessing.

Where you are and where you're going, maybe it's best left alone like you.

- Annabelle, Heaven

End