Us;
of what we were and what is left.
He used to say he didn't understand you: he was wrong.
He used to say he hated you: he was wrong.
He used to say he wanted to kill you: he was wrong.
But he felt he loved you, and for once he wasn't wrong.
They have always told you that life is precious.
They have always reminded you that death is forever.
However, while you are walking among the irregular paths in the woods that surround the village, you think that sometimes death is better than life.
Because who lives, who survives, has to carry the heavier burden: the sufference, the guilt, and the memories, the most painful ones; who stays has to live with his memory and go on: he has to fight, again and more than before, face the ghosts of the past and old scars.
Who dies, on the other hand, dies and that's it. Everything ends and everything goes blank in un undefinied world of dark colours.
It's the first hours of the day and dawn is about to lighten the roads around Konoha, the old Konoha, undestroyable by the touch of time; the wind whispers feeble and its rustle is the only sound in the nostalgic quiet surrounding the doors.
Nothing has changed since the last time you have been there and you ask yourself if it is right, if it is positive: years have passed, something should have been replaced, should have been updated, but everything is still folded in the same air, as if the doors of the village blocked the access to any kind of innovation. The academy is still there, beside that so familiar swing, Ichiraku continues selling ramen, and the Hokages' faces look at you from above, so majestic and so far away at the same time. Your father stares back at you, proudly, and you smile, but it doesn't take a lot to remember that he's nothing more that a carved rock, fake and still, and that, like so many others did, he left too.
You take some steps towards that village that you got used to call home, but that today it's nothing more that a place of memories, a place to come back to, a point of reference among the thousand travels that have become your life. You don't remember how it happened, how your dream of becoming Hokage disappeared, but thinking back now, it isn't difficult to blame it on the war, on the pain, on death, again.
The wounds were too many, as well as regrets.
Today you aren't the man you thought you would have become; you thought you were strong, then, you were sure you would have won the war, that you would have made it, that nobody would have suffered anymore. You were ready to die, you, alone, in order to save everyone, but maybe you were a little too prusumptuous and didn't see in time how history was changing right in front of your eyes.
And there they are, again, those damned changes nobody manages to get used to.
It's difficult to change, you tell yourself.
Many dont' manage to, but he did it. He gave up everything for you.
He, who used to swear vengance and see nothing more than hate among the bloody streets of Konoha; he, who just like you was alone in the world and who made a power out of that unbearable pain; he, who smiles so little and who is now looking at you furtively from one of the last houses, there where nobody can see him. He moves in the shadows, as always, when the colours of the sunset still lock everyone in their small rooms.
"Naruto!" a voice suddenly calls you, wakening you up from your flow of thoughts; you turn around and a pink-shaded head greets you, running in your direction.
You turn your gaze towards him again and he answers with a funny expression before disappearing behind a corner, but you don't worry about it now: you know he doesn't run away anymore, you know he waits for you now.
Sakura hugs you as if she hadn't seen you in years, and even thought they are not years, they're surely a lot of months; you raise you hand and caress her head among her straight hair, hugging her back.
You see her grown up, she is no longer the child who used to build flower crowns and fight with Ino for Sasuke's love.
"Sasuke?" she asks after a while, uncertain, as if she had read your thoughts.
"I've just seen him" you reply, smiling a little bit, and taking her hand in yours, before walking to the centre of the village.
"We could have gone together"
"Maybe later" you just answer, shrugging your shoulders.
When you met Jiraya for the first time, you hated him: you wanted Kakashi, but he had chosen to give you and old good-for-nothing writer. It wasn't fair. You were always the different one. Thinking back about it now, your lips fold into a smile and your gaze gets lost among the sky, sailing between its thousand shades.
Jiraya has been everything for you: a teacher, a friend, the father you never had the chance to meet. He guided you, he taught you, he helped you. He appeared when your dream had just been born and look at you now, following his footprints and wandering around the world bringing up ninjas.
And again, what happened to your ambitions and creed?
It was the fear of making mistakes again, you answer.
A blonde-headed woman looks out of the Imperial Palace window and two green spheres stare down at you, surprised, followed shortly by a relieved expression. Of knowing you are alive, you suppose, but you wonder the reason of all those worries now: the war is over, there is nothing to be scared of anyomore.
You steal a glance at Sakura by your side and you come to the conclusion that you are the same: you and her, Jiraya and Tsunade. But then you think about it more and you realise that no, you aren't completely the same, you are better, because Sasuke came back at the end, whereas Orochimaru didn't.
Orochimaru just betrayed.
It doesn't take a lot before you find yourself among those fields in which you used to train. You can almost hear the sound of the small bells, the ungraceful falls on the ground, the screams of resignation and those of courage, of those who never gave up and challenged their own limits.
It's here where you meet Rock Lee, arms aligned to his body, dead, legs crossed and mind focused on meditation.
As soon as he sees you, he hints a smile, but he doesn't say anything. And it's so unusal, you think, he used to talk so much.
Now, however, he just stays there, on his own, looking at the woods, hoping someone would come back from their damned fronds; so many fell there. Too many. And you notice he's thinking about the past, because every time you come back, you remind people of old times (not the gold ones, though). He doesn't blame you, no, he knows you're not the one to point the finger to, but it's inevitable to wonder if you, who had the possibility to do something, couldn't have done something more, just enough to save everyone.
And nothing changes, you think again, because the look you're being talked with is the same of then, of when you were a monster, just a little bit less inquisitional, maybe, less cruel, but it's the same.
Sakura caresses your arm and urges you to go back home: she wants to see you happy, today, she wants to fill the emptiness of those long months with the few days you'll be stopping by the village.
It's while you are walking with the rising sun that you finally realise that she's the only one that doesn't judge you, that doesn't blame you: she knows you gave everything you had in that war and she knows more than anyone that the sufference you're carrying inside won't ever go away, that that strange sense of emptiness you are feeling won't ever get filled.
And she knows it because it's hers too, and she tries to save you, she does, she tries to save you both.
And it doesn't change, Konoha, it never changes.
When you find Sasuke again, he's sitting on the jetty, his feet swinging just above the water, and those dark eyes of his looking back at you. He stares for some moments before getting up and running away, inviting you to follow him, and you do, you smile, and you chase him as if you were kids again.
He brings you back to those times before the war, before the challenges, before the academy: your gazes always so close, and yet so far apart; your pasts so similar, but your future so different.
Sasuke hides between the streets and the buildings, jumping from one roof to another, heading towards the outskirts of the village, his favourite places, perfect for a loner soul like his.
He was never able to create a lot of bonds, but you know that from behind those deep iris he always cared for you, you know that in his strange way he also loved you.
And there he is, slowling down as the colours of the new day are suddenly painting the sky blue; he stops in front of a place where you hadn't been for a long time and that you would have preferred to keep on avoiding. You ask him why are you there, you pray him to go away, that you don't like that place, that it is painful as never, but he sits on a marble slab and he looks right into your eyes, waiting, because he doesn't run away anymore, he waits for you now.
His soul floats on a sign carved in the rock, and you remember it very well, you were the one that carved it, and behind him you swear to see other souls, thousands of them: some are stronger than others, but they are all there, together, and you catch sight of Neji, of Asuma, and you hear Hinata and Shikamaru crying in the night, but going on. He tells you you are the Silver Knight, he tells you to fight and you see him fighting by your side, along with everyone, but then everyone abandon you and you lower your eyelids and you try not to think about it, but they are there, he is there, deep inside you, and you know they are never going to go away.
Sasuke is about to pick a flower, maybe it's for you, maybe it's for Sakura, but his hand passes through it and caresses the grass. And in that moment you ask yourself why, why did it go that way, why did the war break out, why did he abandon you, why did he protect you, taking those kunai that were thrown at you, that had to smash your heart, not his. Why did he have to die, why why why.
And you can't find any answer, only more tears and invisible needles that rip apart your skin, sticking in the deepest places of your soul, so deep you know they will never get to be removed.
You remember his words, the last ones: thank you. But that thank you isn't worth anything now, he is gone and it is your fault, you know it, because if you had been a little bit stronger, a little bit braver, he wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself, not when he had finally found a reason to live.
But you failed, and Obito was right: you let everyone die.
You raise your gaze a little and he's still there, smiling, and Kami how beautiful he is, you would do anything to bring him back, to have him with you again, even for just a second.
But Sasuke looks at you relaxed, as if he would do that thoughtless action another hundred, thousand times, and he thanks you again, because he has finally understood the meaning of what you told him years ago, by the river, in the Valley on the End, between the statues of the two great heroes. This was the bound you were talking about and which he hadn't understood back then, blinded by the longing of power. But he knows it now, and he's happy, and you have to be happy too.
You all have to go on: Hinata will learn not to cry anymore, and so will Shikamaru, and so will everyone. You are ninjas, you have to fight.
And it was fate, you think.
You, were fated.