In this valley of dying stars
Summary: Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan. OneShot- Naruto, Sasuke and the end of the world.
Warning: Experimental/Challenge. And oh, how I have wanted to do this! Be warned. I'm entitled to do angst, the last story was fluff. So... warning for over-angst.
Set: Story-unrelated.
Title and quotations, mostly un-marked, from T.S. Eliot – The Hollow Men. If you like, have fun looking for them.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
It ends like it did many, many years ago, in a valley that has seen heroes come and go. Two people meet who once were best friends and now are greatest enemies. One fights for his home, one fights for his family, and both fight for themselves because neither can let go of the other in so many different ways. What is hate but another aspect of friendship? What Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama started long ago, they now bring to an end.
Years of training haven't changed anything.
Blue lightning and white-hot, raw power explode in a shower of light. Sasuke's Chidori sings their song with birds' voices while Naruto's Rasengan adds the underlying harmony and as a world dies, two lives are lost.
Two bodies are brought back to Hidden Leaf. One is buried in the ground, one is burned, and as ashes rise towards the sky people start to forget already. Forget a boy hated and outcast, forget a boy loved and abandoned, forget the people they were and the people they became. Nobody is sure about Sasuke's reasons anymore, which is why he isn't marked as a traitor the way some Elders want him to be. Nobody is sure about Naruto's reasons, either, not anymore. Everything has changed and nothing has and there are two more statues erected in the Valley of the End. One year later, Sakura is elected the Sixth Fire Shadow as Tsunade-hime retires from the post. Oh the irony, both she and her teacher think. The two of them – last remnants of what once was a team of three, what once held the promise of forever. Like Tsunade, Sakura rules Hidden Leaf well and the event is entirely forgotten anyway as the next Great War knocks against the high gates of the village. In the ensuing fights, many people leave their lives, many of who were the last ones to remember the two boys. Tsunade sometimes thinks back onto the one who, in her opinion, would have been able to unite the shinobi world, Kakashi grieves for the team he once lead and Sakura and Sai for the friends they once had. But there is not much time to grieve. For the first time since Senju Hashirama built the stout walls of Konohagakure, the enemy manages to raze the entire village. For the first time in history, there is nobody left to rebuild it.
This is the way the world ends – not with a bang but a whimper.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"No! No! NO!"
The screams of agony that fill the valley cut through the night air. There is nobody left to hear them except himself, so it does not matter it is he who is screaming. It does not matter because he holds the dying form of his best friend in his arms. Broken bones, battered skin, and blood covers everything – hands, face, the ground. Blood is on his hands and he is used to it, oh so used to it, but this makes a difference, this is different, suddenly it feels like it is hot acid on his skin and on his hands and in his eyes. Because he killed many, many people before, even killed his own brother, even killed himself – but this is so much worse, so much more-
"Naruto!"
Blond hair matted with blood and gore, pale skin marked with scars of fighting and living and Sasuke holds his body in his arms and knows everything is too late but he still tries to staunch the flow of blood that spills onto his hands from the severed artery.
"Why? You stupid idiot, asshole, why? You don't have the kyuubi anymore, why didn't you tell me, I didn't know-"
His breath is ragged and harsh. He cannot stop the flow of words dripping from his lips, as if everything he ever wanted to say now spills from him, hot and burning.
"You were supposed to kill me, why didn't you just do it, why did you have to sacrifice yourself like the stupid idiot you are, you could have killed me and gone back and could have lived a happy life, you would have become Hokage soon, all your wishes would have been fulfilled, why the hell did you do this?"
"You are an idiot, Sasuke," a voice whispers at his ear and he stills but he can hear it is the voice of a dying man. He heard it before.
"Did… did you really think I'd kill you and go back to live happily ever after?"
A dying man with a dying voice and a dying body and still he is smiling like he did the only rational thing, like he did well and damnit if this wasn't the most stupid decision Uzumaki Naruto ever made in his entire life, does he think Sasuke will just go back to Konoha like that, with his blood on his hands and his life on his shoulders and oh God, he has done it, he has killed him, he really has. And it is so different from when he killed while he was caught in the cloud of hate, so different when he sent Itachi back to the Silver Gates, this time he killed with his mind free of hate and anger and this is what happened-
"Sasuke," Naruto whispers and he's still smiling, this freaking idiot, he is so angry he cannot even think of proper insults because this is the peak of all idiocy, this idea that got him killed in the end. "Sasuke, now you can go back. Go… Go back. She's waiting for you."
Naruto really seems to believe he will be welcome in Hidden Leaf, carrying the burden of his betrayal and his vengeance and now of Naruto's death, as well. But he has no place to go, hasn't had any place to go since Itachi left him for the last time, and he had come here to end it for once and for all.
"I… I command you," Naruto says, and his maddening smile is so wide Sasuke feels like he wants to punch him. "As your Hokage, I tell you to go home."
And then he is gone.
Remember us — if at all — not as lost, violent souls, but only as the hollow men. The stuffed men.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"The two of you," a voice says calmly, "are the greatest idiots I've ever seen, and trust me. I've seen a lot."
"Let go of me, Kakashi," Naruto snarls while Sasuke only bares his teeth.
"I won't," says the silver-haired man. He has aged – there are deep lines in his face and if either of his students would spare a look they would see the exhaustion in his eyes, the utter tiredness that tells of a life lived with too many regrets and memories.
"Let go!"
He who once was their teacher has grabbed each of them by their hands like the day on the hospital roof. Rumbles and clouds of dust show where the two balls of raw energy have hit the surrounding valley walls. Sasuke tries to twist out of his iron-hard grip while Naruto tries to capture back his own hand but Kakashi holds them like steel vices. They struggle half-heartedly because both of them remember who this man is: this is the man that brought them together in the first place, and as such, they owe him, even if they don't owe him much.
"Listen, you two, for once and for all," he says quietly. "There is something you need to know."
"I don't care about your sermons, Kakashi," Sasuke says coldly. "You're not our teacher anymore."
"You'll listen, nevertheless, because you, Sasuke, want to know the secret of eternity and you, Naruto, still want to bring your friend back."
"It's useless," Sasuke says, his face a mask. "I won't ever come back to that village."
"It's useless," Naruto says, and his eyes are blood-red. "There is no eternity. There was none for Orochimaru and Kabuto and there will be none for him."
Kakashi closes his eyes. It's useless, he thinks bitterly. All these years. All the work. All the love. These once were the children he vowed to protect, the children he wanted to teach how to live a good life. Kakashi has failed. He has neither managed to protect Minato-Sensei's son nor has he honored Obito's legacy. His life is a long list of failures: Obito, Rin, Minato-Sensei, Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto. Everything he has touched has gone to hell, the one way or the other, and he wonders when he will be allowed to walk that path, as well. Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response comes the shadow, he thinks. Life is very long indeed…
These boys are right. There is no other way. They have gone too far, have fallen into the darkness too deeply for anyone to save them. Konoha will have to do without them, perhaps even will be better off without them. Kakashi takes a deep breath. Then he opens his eyes again. "Fine," he says and lets go of their hands. "Do what you have to do."
Between the essence and the descent falls the shadow.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"I killed him," she says as they come rushing into the valley, four worried, worn and exhausted shinobi. Her voice holds nothing, no fear, no anger, no hate and no guilt. No life. She sounds like she died with him. "Don't worry. Naruto's fine. We're fine." She says nothing more. Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone.
As a matter of fact, neither of them is, neither Naruto nor Sakura. Kiba, Ino, Shikamaru and Hinata more carry than bring them back to Hidden Leaf. Naruto sleeps for six weeks, unconscious and deathly still, and Sakura sleeps for one day but still seems like she is asleep even when she sits at the window and stares out into the darkening sky.
"What's the matter with her?" Hinata asks Ino and the medic nin only shakes her head worriedly. It takes them four more days to understand Sakura has left them entirely and Naruto never really accepts the fact but then he, too, never really returns from the Valley in which Sasuke died. Does not accept that she has brought to end what he promised her he would do, that she – the girl, the weakest one in their team, the one he has vowed to protect against everything – has taken upon herself the burden of ridding them from their greatest nightmare. He is not the only one. Kakashi, who still blames himself for the fact that he never managed to stop Sasuke from defecting, returns to ANBU and is killed in action a month later. Tsunade-hime starts drinking again, guilt-stricken at the thought of her student and at the sight of a broken Naruto, and the Council relieves her of her duty three weeks after Kakashi is killed. Naruto disappears two days later, does not even wait for the official funeral to be held. He disappears like Tsunade once did, without a word, without notice. He does not even say good bye to Sakura. Not that she would have cared. She never cared for anything ever again.
Hidden Leaf, without a Fire Shadow to lead it and with its greatest protectors gone, spirals out of control.
When Taki no Kuni, Yu no Kuni and Kawa no Kuni ally to attack Hi no Kuni, Konoha is one of the first villages to be captured. Kaze no Kuni comes too late. The Council, along with the captors, name Shiranui Genma as the transitional head of the village and he does his job well – as well as one can do a job that includes ruling a captured village. There are no medical supplies left, no provisions. Hunger and war claim many lives and who survives falls victim to illness. When the war finally ends the once-proud shinobi village is a shadow of its former glory. The last shinobi are transferred to other villages throughout Hi no Kuni.
What remain are the civilians. And a mad woman in a small room deep, deep inside the building that once was a hospital. In her dead eyes the images of three children laugh and live forever.
Redeem the time, redeem the dream. And after this our exile.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"You know, this is stupid."
Naruto knocks Sasuke's hand to the side with ease. Angrily, the dark-haired Uchiha tries to punch him with his left hand, lashes out, tries to free his hand by whirling into a spin but fails because Naruto dodges and follows his movements easily.
"And besides," he continues on while twisting his opponent's hand away and, at the same time, slapping a seal unto his forehead in a matter of seconds, moving so fast Sasuke never even sees him coming. "We're too old for this, aren't we?"
"What are you talking about?" Sasuke snarls and forms a seal with his left hand – only to realize Naruto has done something to his chakra paths. "You asshole," he presses through his clenched teeth. "What have you done?"
"Blocked your chakra paths," Naruto tells him the obvious with seeming nonchalance. "Those Uzumaki genes finally were good for something. And now stop the nonsense – we need to talk."
"About what?" Sasuke spits out. "About how I abandoned Konoha? How I almost killed you trice? Or about how Konoha abandoned me, for once, how the Elders ordered Itachi to kill my entire family, even myself?"
Naruto shakes his head sadly. "About everything. Sasuke – why are you fighting?"
"Do you really need an answer to that?" He bares his teeth. "Konoha took everything from me."
"Konoha?"
"The Council. The Senju Clan. Call it what you like."
"There are no Senju left anymore."
"There still is the Council! After I kill you I'll go and kill every single member! I'll make them suffer, slow and painful! They should feel how it is like to lose everything, everything that is important to them, they should hear their loved ones scream and beg-"
"Sasuke," Naruto interrupts him. "The council members are dead, too."
For the first time in his life, Sasuke finds he has absolutely nothing to say.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"I give up," he says and watches the perfect mask of surprise cross his opponent's face. His hand has stopped in midair. The Chidori sings, frozen in its movement, and the Rasengan spins in Naruto's hand but never leaves it. Give him that – Naruto has learned a perfect chakra control.
"What?"
"I give up," he repeats slowly and with a flicker of his wrist, the Chidori dies. "I'm sick of this. I won't fight you anymore. Take me back to the village and hand me over to Morino's ANBU – I don't care. I don't care about anything anymore."
And voices are in the wind's singing, more distant and more solemn than a fading star.
His return to Hidden Leaf is nothing as he imagined it to be. He is taken to the ANBU complex and imprisoned in a tiny cell deep down in the cellars. He is questioned every day, watched day and night, his chakra is drowned every four hours and Sasuke finds he absolutely does not care about it anymore. His family was corrupt. His brother was ordered to kill them. His brother left him live and Sasuke has run for his entire life, first searching for answers, then for revenge, then for the truth. He has found everything and, in the process, has lost everything, and whatever is to come he can only close his eyes and wait.
He finds it there. Of any places.
Deep down, while he only is visited by ANBU, Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke finds something he has missed his entire life. Finds it in their visits, in their soft voices that tell him of the life in the village, of what he has missed and of how he can life. Finds it in the silence that, for the first time in years, seems complete. Not like the silence that was filled with his parents' dead eyes and Itachi's spinning ones, not like the silence that was filled with Orochimaru's whispers and lies. Not like the silence that was hatred so thick and black he could not breathe.
When he is brought up into the light of the day again he sees what has changed. Because everything has. Naruto is officially named the successor of the Fifth Hokage. Sakura is a medic nin in the hospital. Kakashi has a new team. He finds he has been either forgotten or replaced, forgotten because there has been so much that has happened since he left, replaced because there is so much more important than remembering a hate-filled boy from a murdered family that left when he was twelve. His home is a place of shadows and ashes and he does not find the strength to return there. Instead, he finds a small apartment in a silent quarter of the village and slowly, carefully, starts living again. Sakura visits him every Friday. Naruto sometimes asks him to come see him in his little office to discuss different topics. Kakashi watches him carefully for months and, one day, asks him if he feels like running a short mission.
Sasuke thinks he might be able to live this way.
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"He was a hero," the Council Eldest says.
Dark clothes, dark clouds, and the sky cries as if it wants to release every last teardrop, as if it cries out the sadness Sakura feels in her heart. She, who once thought Sasuke was her world – who would have thought that Naruto would die for her, die to bring back someone who never wanted to return? She thought she had lost Sasuke – now she has lost Naruto, too. This is the time of tension between dying and birth, the place of solitude where three dreams cross… Hinata chose those lines. Too frozen to even move, Sakura stands in the downpour of heaven's tears and can do nothing but stare at the little altar with the picture of a face that always smiled.
Always.
Thinking back, Sakura cannot remember a day she did not see him smile. Even broken and shattered as he was Naruto only ever smiled at her, as if he would break down if he didn't smile, as if he had to hold on to what he had been, once, to what they had had. As if his smile was the one cure to her sadness – and in a way, it had been. Ino's hand on her arm is cold. Ino has lost a partner. Hinata, on her other side, hasn't stopped crying since they brought back the news. It's a silent, wordless picture, the scarier because she does not look like she is crying. The tears just stream down her face. Hinata has lost a lover. Sakura has lost – yes, what? She has lost her home, her future, her happiness. Sakura has lost her best friend. Lost both of them. Nothing is left of his body, nothing left of Sasuke. Kakashi told her, his face hidden in the shadow of his cloak. His voice had been devoid of any emotion.
"He fought the traitor to save our home," the Elder continues and suddenly Sakura feels hate for her. The old woman sounds like she does not care, like she is reciting a story too old to feel anything for it anymore. She, Sakura remembers, was the one that tried to stop Naruto from taking the chuunin exams when he returned with Jiraiya-Sama. She always did everything to hinder him. Naruto fought to save Hidden Leaf, fought to protect their home – had always done everything for Hidden Leaf. Only this time it feels like he has fought for her only. Her selfishness had killed him. "His soul lives on in our houses and streets, in our children, in our hearts. He will never be forgotten-"
"And I bet that annoys you to hell."
Slowly, slowly, Sakura lifted her head. Next to her, Ino had clapped a hand to her mouth, Hinata looked as if she had seen a ghost.
"It's over, you bitch." Dark and light, black and blonde. The dark cloaks cling to them, wet as they are. Both look hollow and exhausted – but alive, oh so alive Sakura wants to grab them to feel they really are there, their hearts really are beating. "Fifteen years of hide-and-seek, eh, and you never guessed it?"
The Eldest looks like she has swallowed a sour fruit. With thorns. Whole. "What… How… But… You died!"
"You wanted us to die. You planned on killing Sasuke the day he became chuunin. You knew he was the only one Itachi would tell what had happened – you knew your secret hadn't died with the Uchiha because Sasuke was still alive!"
"But… Your defection… You became a traitor…"
"We tricked you, don't you get it?" Naruto looks like a death angel. Sasuke is deathly calm as well. Kakashi behind them seems like a great weight has suddenly lifted off his shoulders. "We pretended Sasuke had defected so you couldn't get to him. We figured he would be safer if he was gone from Konoha. For years, we have looked for the necessary proof to tie you to the Uchiha massacre – and we have finally found it. We just had to fake our death, both of us."
The woman, white as a sheet, balls her fists. "Nobody will believe you," she snarls. "The Uchiha were traitors, all of them. They wanted to usurp the Council, wanted to take power over the village…"
"Because they knew the Council was corrupt. Danzo had to have someone who helped him from the shadows… But we never could tie you to it. Now we can."
Much more is said but Sakura cannot take her eyes of her two boys. They are there, they are alive, and nothing else matters. Her fingers itch to touch them. She restrains herself until the Councilwoman is taken into custody by Yamanaka-San's ANBU and then nothing can stop her from running to Sasuke and Naruto and pulling them both into a hug. She is so relieved to see them she even forgets to punch them because they lied to her for fifteen years.
"Ouch, Sakura, you're suffocating us!"
Dark versus Light. Chidori versus Rasengan.
Explosion.
"They knocked each other out."
Shikamaru shakes his head and feels for a pulse. His voice turns sharp.
"Ino!"
She is already there, the only one of them trained as a medic nin. "Oh, damn," Shino hears her mutter and then she goes to work, blue chakra dancing on the tips of her fingers.
Naruto wakes up first.
He grins at them – his usual, stupid grin – and falls asleep seconds later. Sasuke groans before he opens his eyes and the insults that then leave his mouth are not pretty.
"We're taking you to the village," Shikamaru feels obliged to tell him. Sasuke answers with another shower of threats.
That way, they return to Hidden Leaf.
Many Council meetings, an open trial and a month later, Sakura sits on the edge of a wall in front of the training grounds and stares off into the distance. Tenten finds her there.
"Hey," she says carefully. Sakura turns around and attempts a smile that fails pitifully. "Hey."
Tenten sits down to the younger girl with the feeling that talking to Sakura in her current mood is like dealing with Neji on a daily basis: no wrong step allowed, for it will kill you. She, obviously, is best prepared to tell the girl what everyone knows she needs to be told but somehow nobody dares to.
"So now you've got them back."
Sakura flinches. "I suppose so."
"And you're wondering what to say to Sasuke."
The following silence proves her right.
"That," Tenten tells her, "Is the wrong starting point."
Sakura's eyes show surprise. "Why?"
"Haven't you already given up on Sasuke years ago?"
"Umm. Yes. Well, I… I suppose…"
"Haven't you told Naruto that you'd be strong, that you didn't want him to get killed by retrieving Sasuke?"
"I have."
"Didn't you tell him you cared for him?"
"Why," Sakura asks angrily, "Is that of any importance now?"
"Here is the point." Tenten answers her gaze unflinchingly. "You're going to lose them both if you keep thinking like that, Sakura. Sasuke hasn't changed only because he was brought back to Konoha. He's not the person you knew. But Naruto…"
Tenten looks into the sky. Remembers the day Ino, Shikamaru and Shino brought him back: Cursing them, his blood-red eyes spinning uselessly, hate emanating from him so thickly she felt sick. Even sweet, little Hinata had given a look at him and had completed the medical check-up in record time without saying a word. Just listening to his hate-filled voice loosening tirades of threats and insults was too much for her.
"Naruto is. And you're going to lose him with that attitude of yours."
She can hear Sakura's sobs next to her, but she does not turn around. Naruto didn't cry. Naruto sat with Sasuke day and night, trying to convince him to see reason. We have our inheritance. Naruto looked thin and exhausted, like he was going to faint any second, while Sakura sat here and cried because she didn't know what to do. In Tenten's opinion – and in many others' opinions, as well – there was only one right thing for Sakura to do now. But at least she can understand the girl. Tenten softens her voice.
"You already love him, Sakura."
In this valley of dying stars…