A/N: actually going to leave this as in-progress because i have fledgling ideas for this morsel
Whoever told you there was finality in death hasn't died yet.
Or more accurately, they have died before and they don't remember their past lives. However, there are an unlucky few that do remember...
They carry the weight of their experiences - countless memories. Memories so potent that they bled into their new lives. Some souls lived and died violently, some souls loved and died passionately.
Sasuke was one such soul.
Though he had gone through many names, many lives, it seemed that suffering was to be threaded into his existence, no matter the time nor circumstance. He fell into the belief that to live is to suffer. (It was a rather bleak way to think.)
With enough experiences to drive a man insane, he's wrestled with all kinds of pain, but the worst of them was longing. See, physical pain was temporary. Wounds stitched themselves together and became scars, bruises faded, but longing? This sick infatuation?
It's lasted lifetimes.
He thought leaving would remedy this fixation, maybe the proverb was true and time did heal.
Except it doesn't; time just allows you to file unpleasant memories away in the folds of your cerebrum. And slowly, but surely, you distract yourself with menial tasks like making breakfast, going to work, filing taxes. Things that make you seem like a fully functional adult with their life put together.
None of that ever works, not really. Not at 2:57 AM, when the light of your clock glares accusingly at you for being awake and you're left alone with your thoughts, your conscious digging deep enough for it to hurt - unearthing old memories that twist your gut upon remembrance. Not when you're driving home and you think you catch a glimpse of midnight blue hair, but you're going fifty miles per hour and there's no way you could stop without causing a serious accident. Not when you're at the supermarket and you think you hear something that sounds remotely similar to "Hinata" so you frantically comb through each aisle with the perverse hope that you heard correctly.
For all of his efforts, he was wildly unsuccessful. He came to realize this when he ran into the one person he simultaneously longed to be with for eternity and never wanted to see again.