A/N: This is my first foray into the Naruto fanfiction world, and to start off I'm going to try posting the climax of a possibly much longer story. It's up to any and all reviews received to decide whether I turn this into a longer one.
'Til Death do us Part
A soft breeze sifted through long golden hair, teasing it only the tiniest bit. The owner of the golden hair sat with her legs crossed and lips slightly parted, her Konoha headband glinting in the dim moonlight. The grass swayed a little more than her hair and the leaves rustled softly, hiding the sound of nearly noiseless footsteps. The woman excelled at sensing chakra, though, and had been looking out for this particular chakra all night.
The chakra grew as it stepped out into the open field, the owner of the chakra abandoning his attempt to hide it when it became apparent he had already been noticed. "Naruko," the voice said with mixed feelings.
Naruko slowly stood up, one eye finally opening to take in the man standing twenty feet from her. "Sasuke," she said with similar mixed emotions. "I'm surprised you identified me after all this time in the middle of the night." Then she chuckled softly. "It's almost as surprising as how I guessed you'd come through the training field in the middle of the night."
"Three years isn't a long time," said Sasuke.
"I think it depends on how you look at it," Naruko replied. "I've been Hokage for a little over a year now, ever since you killed Tsunade."
Sasuke rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Is that Kakashi-sensei's sharingan you have there, too? Is that why your eye's been closed this entire time?"
"Maybe," Naruko replied, digging her feet in the ground a little as her anger began to rise. That was right; no matter how much she wished otherwise, this was the man who had killed so many of the people she loved.
Sasuke's fingers tightened on his sword. "So you still get upset that those weaklings were killed?" he said condescendingly, a smug grin on his face.
Naruko let her other eye open, and despite the darkness, the sharingan was most definitely visible. Golden chakra began swirling around her, illuminating her as she pulled a hairband out and put her hair up into a ponytail. It was more efficient for a fight.
"Naruko," said Sasuke as he drew his sword. "I will avenge my brother. Do not delude yourself for even one fraction of a second into believing that you have even the slightest chance of winning. I will destroy Konoha."
"Whether or not I have no chance of winning means nothing to me," said Naruko as she settled into a defensive stance. "I will protect Konohagakure and everybody who lives in it. That is my ninja way."
A raindrop sizzled as it came into contact with Naruko's intense chakra. Sasuke grinned, then began laughing an incredibly condescending laugh. "How you've fallen, Naruko. That may be the worst ninja way I've heard yet from you. It makes me ashamed that somebody as pitiful as you ever loved me."
Sasuke's words didn't surprise Naruko at all. After all, she still remembered her desperate, yet honest, bid to get him back to her side. It would only make sense that he would throw it back at her to try to get her off-balance. "I sometimes feel ashamed that I ever loved a man who would try to satisfy his own selfish desires instead of thinking of what his brother would want him to do."
"It doesn't matter what Itachi would want me to do, Naruko," he said, releasing his cursed seal into its second state. So it was going to be an all-out from the beginning fight, was it? "Itachi was Itachi, and nobody else. His wishes certainly aren't mine."
Naruko stared at him with a look of complete calmness on her face, and she was taking deep breaths. The rain picked up a little, some of it getting through Naruko's chakra to pierce her skin with its coolness. Sasuke was standing up straight with his sword held out in front of him, his now brown skin illuminated by Naruko's chakra.
In the blink of an eye, Sasuke suddenly dropped his sword so it sank into the ground and he immediately made several hand seals.
"Katon, Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)!"
A massive fireball exploded from in front of him and screamed towards Naruko, who sliced through it with her hand. Sasuke was right behind it though, sword in hand and slicing through the after-image Naruko had left after dodging so quickly.
"Rasengan!" she shouted from behind him.
"Chidori!" he cried as he whirled around.
Their abilities slammed together as the ground exploded outward from the point of impact, both of them gritting their teeth as they fed massive amounts of chakra into their respective jutsus. Naruko and Sasuke met eyes – Naruko's earnest and damp, Sasuke's angry with a slightly insane edge.
Sasuke stabbed at Naruko, who ducked under sword and chidori to slam a fist into Sasuke's stomach, sending him flying up into the sky. A kunai was right behind him, threatening to embed itself in his shoulder, but he twisted around mid-air to bat it aside with his blade.
Right before he did so, however, he noticed there was a seal on the handle and heard Naruko shout, "Hiraishin (Flying Thunder God)!" And she was right before him, kunai in hand to block his sword.
She bit her thumb, drawing blood, placed her hand on his chest, and cried, "Kuchiyose no jutsu (Summoning Technique)!"
Gamabunta appeared on top of Sasuke, immediately drawing his giant sword as Sasuke bit his own thumb and yelled, "Kuchiyose no jutsu!"
Manda II appeared under Sasuke, who landed on his head and parried Gamabunta's massive overhead blow.
"Fighting Manda is getting old, Naruko-chan!" Gamabunta said as he took a slice at the giant snake, who dodged out of the way.
"Yeah yeah," she said distractedly as she threw kunai at various places around the ground. "You know you really enjoy it."
Manda lunged forward and slammed into Gamabunta, knocking Naruko off of his head and throwing Sasuke off-balance. Sasuke was more ready for it, though, having told Manda to attack Gamabunta, and took advantage of Naruko's confusion to slam her down at the ground with his fists.
Sasuke shot down at the ground faster than her and stabbed upward at her, intending to impale her, but Naruko spun just enough in mid-air to avoid the blade. As soon as she alighted on the ground she sprang at him, rasengan in hand, but was met with another chidori. She twirled around the chidori and slammed the rasengan straight at him, though he dodged too.
Both of them didn't dodge enough, though, and Naruko winced as Sasuke's chidori skimmed her side while her rasengan managed to punch a hole through one of his wings. Sasuke's other hand brought his sword around and slammed it into her shoulder, making her gasp as it exited through her back.
She had little time for shock, though, both of them forced to spring away from each other as Gamabunta and Manda, still fighting, almost crushed them.
"Hiraishin," she said, and immediately appeared thirty feet behind Sasuke. "Futon: Rasenshuriken!"
The giant rasengan sprang to life in the palm of her hand, which was held over her head. There was a snarl on her face as she threw it at him, and he sneered before slicing through it with his sword, the two halves spiraling off to cut through scores of trees.
Naruko let out a sound of frustration and gathered her chakra into her feet and hands, making them glow an intense gold. Since ninjutsu didn't seem to be working against him, maybe it was time to try some taijutsu.
She began using the Hiraishin to jump all around Sasuke via the kunai she had been throwing while she was on top of Gamabunta, though she knew Sasuke wasn't fooled by her movement. "Amaterasu!" he shouted, though missed Naruko by quite a bit, engulfing a tree instead.
She grinned and threw a kunai at his feet, then flashed to the kunai. "Hakke Hyaku Nijūhachi Shō (Eight Trigrams 128 Palms)!"
"Susano'o!" Susano'o took the brunt of Naruko's attack, which blasted it into pieces by the end.
Sasuke had waited for Naruko to finish, though, and used the almost impossibly tiny moment after the attack that she was off-balance to sheathe his katana in lightning and slam it through Naruko's stomach, making her eyes widen. Then a hand covered in chidori sliced through Sasuke's back and into his stomach, the bunshin of Naruko that had been stabbed disappearing in a poof of smoke.
He chuckled as blood trickled from his mouth. "You relish in your victory for too long."
Sasuke suddenly turned into a log with a chidori embedded in it, and this time Naruko gasped as Sasuke's sword hit home, sliding through her stomach and exiting her body covered in her blood. Naruko whirled around to attempt to hit him with a rasengan, but he quickly jumped away.
He floated in midair with steady beats of his wings, his look cold. "Your hesitation is your undoing, Hokage," he said. "You let your personal feelings cloud your convictions. And here I thought you were going to protect your village."
Naruko coughed up blood and gasped at the pain as her torn and sliced stomach muscles screamed in agony. "I will not let you lay even one finger on Konohagakure, Sasuke. Just like any other power-hungry fool, you will die at the hand of true power: the power of nakama and love." Her chakra faltered around her and Sasuke turned into a blur.
"That will not occur today, I believe," he said, alighting on the ground in front of her as she fell to one knee.
"Poison," she said as she coughed up more blood.
"I shall end it mercifully," Sasuke replied, and promptly stabbed Naruko through the chest.
She grinned, reached forward, and with a surprising burst of strength, grabbed his wrist, holding it with the tightest grip she could manage.
"Using chakra to deflect the blade an inch above your heart?" Sasuke said, impressed. "All you did was prolong a painful death. The poison is incredibly excruciating and kills slowly after incapacitating."
Still holding onto Sasuke's wrist, she jammed a kunai into his chest right under his ribcage, skimming his heart with the blade. He gasped and tried to stagger back, but Naruko was holding him too tightly.
"I took an anti-venom to that exact poison not five minutes before you arrived," she said, then cried, "Chidori!"
Pain exploded throughout Sasuke's body as the lightning ripped through his heart and body and relaxed his muscles, and he coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Then…you…it was an act? Falling…to a knee?" he asked as Manda writhed on the ground, headless, Gamabunta sheathing his giant sword.
"Everything but taking the sword through the chest," she said softly, pulling it out as she cradled Sasuke, who was now back in his human form, with one arm. Blood poured freely from the sword wound in her chest, though she didn't seem to care much.
"What…what are you…going to do to me?" Sasuke asked fearfully.
Naruko met his eyes and said, "I'm going to kill you."
Sasuke seemed to accept this, then managed to lift a hand and gently stroke her cheek, a lone tear falling from his left eye. "But I love you," he whispered.
She met his eyes and saw the sincerity, and slowly leaned forward to press her lips against his. She felt tears spring into her eyes and slammed the kunai into him one more time, this time getting it all the way through his heart.
He stopped kissing her and fell limp in her arms, dead, and she pulled back and whispered, "I love you too." Then her arms grew weak and she dropped Sasuke to the ground, his unseeing eyes staring up into the rain.
She then collapsed on top of him, all of the fight leaving her body.
And then she knew no more.
1 Month Later
Naruko stood at the foot of Sasuke's grave, which was right next to Itachi's, a single flower leaning on each of their tombstones. Wind rippled through the valley, gently teasing Naruko's hair as she let out a long, defeated sigh.
"I wish…" she said, staring at the message inscribed on the tombstone, something she had chosen herself.
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
"I…I wish…" she said again, this time with a hoarse voice and tears in her eyes.
What did she wish, though?
"I wish we could've lived a normal life, Sasuke," she said quietly, kneeling down at the foot of his grave. "Who knows how it could have ended up? We could have met and fallen in love and grown old together. Hell, we may have never met at all and grown up to be two happy adults with families of our own and trivial worries. We might have been great friends, and smiled and laughed and supported each other as we protected Konoha…together."
She stood up slowly, still eyeing his grave. There was so much more she wanted to say, but didn't have the time to.
So she finally turned her back on the grave. And, as she walked away, she finished her thought.
"I do know this, though: I wish we could have lived a normal life, Sasuke, because I know it wouldn't have ended like this."
A/N: Well, the battle was a bit shorter and if I turned this into a longer story it would get considerably longer.
Anyway, please let me know what you think and if I should expand this! Feedback would be great!