The Eternal Dying Flame

The Eternal Dying Flame

Chapter Two: Eternal Heartache

Disclaimer: Yes, I, Masashi Kishimoto, decided to start publishing stuff on a fanfiction site, even though I already own the Naruto series. Does anyone here honestly need me to put this, or can we all conclude that I don't own the series?

A/N: This story takes place just after the Hidan and Kakuzu arc. (Don't read any further if you haven't read the manga and do not want spoilers for the events of that arc.) There's still a while left before their three years run out and Sasuke's body is taken over, so he doesn't have to leave Otogakure for another month or so. (I'm not sure if that was true in the manga, but for the sake of the story, please just pretend that there's still a month left before time runs out.) Asuma is dead (sorry, I miss him too), Kurenai is no longer the captain of Team Eight, and Naruto has developed the Rasen-shuriken. I just wanted to clear the timing of this up here, because the characters don't know that they're part of a series, so they can't just say "it's been a while since the Hidan and Kakuzu arc." On with the story!


The eyes of her reflection stared back at her, twin pools of sparkling emerald in the clear blue water of the river. The gentle current constantly shifted her image, blurring the fine details of her face so that it was impossible to tell if those really were tears in her eyes. But, they couldn't be tears. They definitely weren't tears. What did she have to cry over? The only real suffering she'd ever gone through was when Sasuke left, and she'd long since gotten over that. Sasuke was not worth her tears. There was no way that she would cry over that traitor. He'd never loved her, he'd told her as much when he left, so it made no sense for her to still love him. Before he'd left, she could have been forgiven a schoolgirl's crush, but now it was just plain ridiculous. He was a missing-nin, a traitor to the village. She had long since accepted that. There was no way that she was still crying over him three years later. No, she was not crying. It was just the current messing with her reflection. That was all.

The kunoichi walked away from the bridge, her footsteps making a soft thumping sound on the wooden planks. She was needed for her shift at the hospital soon; there was no time to stare at messed up reflections in the currents of rivers.

And those ripples in the place where her reflection had been moments before were not from fallen tears.


The sanitized smell of the hospital was oddly soothing to Sakura. Many people associated the places with death and anguish, but to her it was almost pleasant. She couldn't say that she enjoyed the knowledge that patients suffered within these walls, dying if their wounds were too serious for the medics to handle, but that wasn't her first thought when she imagined the place. To her, it was the place where she had finally managed to do something useful, instead of just relying on Naruto and Sasuke to take care of her.

She smiled at the secretary, who smiled back at her, handing her a list of assignments for the day. She scanned the list of patients, noting with some surprise the relative lack of severity in their wounds. Almost no one on her assignment list was in the hospital for anything more severe than a broken limb, and no one had any life threatening injuries. The secretary noticed her look of slight astonishment.

"Yes, our ninja have been reporting surprisingly few casualties of late. It's almost eerie. We are a shinobi village after all, one should expect some shinobi to be in critical condition at all times. This lack of injuries… one could argue that it's good, but medics are used to casualties as a part of every mission. Their absence disturbs us far more than others." Sakura nodded; she had been thinking relatively the same thing. It was peculiar how few serious threats there were these days, especially with Orochimaru and the Sound Village still being a part of the picture, and then there was that civil war in Amegakure (the Village Hidden in the Rain), and the Akatsuki… with all these threats, shinobi should be reporting life-threatening injuries at an exhausting rate. And yet there were almost no mishaps occurring on their missions…

"Still," she said, forcing a lighter note into the conversation. It had taken entirely too dark a turn for her tastes, "having nothing serious to attend to is good news for us." How she wished that she were the kind of person who would be able to say that and mean it. For a brief moment, Sakura wished that her life really was that simple, that this apparent lack of threats would only mean less work that she would have to do. But, alas, she was not that kind of person. She was the apprentice to the Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure; she had been trained to be a medic at the hands of the best of the best. And if there was one thing that her teacher had managed to impress upon her, it was that casualties were a part of every mission. No matter how skilled the shinobi concerned were, there would always be some slight mistake, maybe not on this very mission, but eventually. The utter lack of anything major was not something natural. To Sakura, it could not just spell a day of easy work. It spoke of greater tragedies yet to come, made all the worse because their enemies had taken this time now to prepare them. This reprieve, however nice it was, was far from a blessing.

Sakura sighed. Sometimes she wished that Tsunade hadn't taken such an interest in training her, and she could have just seen this let-up in casualties as a much-needed vacation.


"There you go," she said kindly to a young Genin-level kunoichi as she finished patching up the girl's leg. Her team had been ambushed by ninja from Iwagakure Village (the Village Hidden in the Stone), and she had been hit with several kunai knives while attempting to shield her comrades from harm. The odd thing was, the Iwa-nin were apparently only Genin level or so themselves. Even though the girl had been stabbed in her leg with a knife that looked as though it had hurt terribly, it had not been very serious at all, and she had the worst injuries of her team. The enemies had fled surprisingly quickly too; they'd barely even stuck around to see if any of their kunai had hit. Yet another oddity to add to Sakura's growing uneasiness. Her young patient was only twelve or so, fresh out of the Academy and clearly in awe of Sakura's medical talents. She had told Sakura before her healing began that she wanted to train to someday become a medic-nin herself, so that she could protect her teammates and her little brother when they were hurt. A lump had formed in Sakura's throat at the younger girl's words. Minus the bit about the younger brother, it had been like listening to her younger self around the time when she had decided to begin her training with Tsunade-sama.

When I was her age, if I had been allowed to see what I became today, what would I see? Would I see a strong kunoichi whose long hours of training paid off in the end? Or would I see an almost sixteen year old girl who can't let go of her past and forget about… Sasuke-kun? The thought was troubling, to say the least.

"Thank you," the girl she had just healed replied shyly, jolting Sakura back to the present. The medic-nin smiled at her, trying to hide her momentary unease with the simple facial expression. As Sai had always told her, a smile was one of the most effective forms of concealment, because people tended to take it at face value.

"You're welcome," she told the girl, noting how the younger's face lit up with pleasure at her kind expression. The smaller kunoichi dashed out of the room where Sakura had been healing her, a joyful expression on her face. Sakura could not fully suppress a pang of sorrow as she saw the girl run into the arms of her two male teammates, both of whom had clearly been very worried about their companion. She tried to remember if Naruto and Sasuke had ever done that to her, or if Sasuke had always been an ice cube and she had been eternally trying to prevent Naruto from hugging her. A tear pooled in her eye at the memory. Their team had not had such emotional bonds as these three Genin, but there was no doubt that theirs had been stronger. If only Sasuke hadn't left, they could have risen to become the most powerful team in the Hidden Leaf Village.

Sasuke-kun… she thought, trailing off after simply saying his name, as she always did, as though thinking about him enough would give her an answer as to why he had left. But the answer remained as mysterious to her as it always had.

"Hey, Forehead!" She looked up to see a platinum blonde girl heading towards her, a vaguely annoyed expression on her face.

"Ino Pig!" the pink haired kunoichi exclaimed in shock. While she knew that her best friend also chose to work at the hospital in her spare time, it was rare that the Yamanaka didn't have any ninja missions to take away from that time. It was a rare occurrence for their shifts at the hospital to coincide, except for in times of crisis such as an invasion, when the village was in desperate enough need of additional healers to call some of their usual shinobi off duty to deal with the unusually high number of casualties.

The blonde drew even with her, reproach evident on her face.

"Forehead," she scolded, "were you thinking about Sasuke again?" Sakura flushed, and Ino sighed with exasperation. "Sakura-chan, you know you need to move on." The Haruno girl hung her head, her cheeks red with shame. It had been so easy for Ino to accept that he wasn't coming back. She had been the one whose shoulder Sakura had gone to cry on after Naruto left on his training journey with Jiraiya and the pink haired Genin still had shown no signs of having gotten over their teammate's betrayal. Sakura knew that she wouldn't have been able to cope with her own feelings of guilt and loss if her best friend hadn't been by her side.

"I know, Ino-chan," she said, defeat appearing plainly in her voice even as she added the affectionate suffix to Ino's name in remembered gratitude. She had known, like Ino had, that he wasn't coming back. He didn't want to come back. Even though the foolishness of her denial had been obvious even to her right from the beginning, she had never been able to accept the idea that Sasuke would never come home.

Ino knew this. Day after day, she'd had to watch Sakura putting herself through hell because of what the one boy had done to her. Where Ino had once felt love for the mysterious, brooding young man (well, fangirl love), there was now only hate. If she ever caught up to Uchiha Sasuke, he'd pay for what he had done to Sakura.

But right now, Sasuke wasn't here, and Sakura was. Her thoughts of vengeance for her friend's suffering would have to be set aside for the moment. Right now, her best friend needed her.

"Hey," she said, lifting Sakura's chin and forcing the despairing kunoichi to meet her sympathetic blue eyes, "don't look so glum. I know you can never really move on. You really loved him, Sakura; he's just too much of a bastard to appreciate it. I'm not saying that you should give up hope. Just, don't let it take over your life. Smile a little," she instructed her friend, grinning a little to emphasize her point. A hesitant smile appeared on Sakura's face in response. "See, there you go," Ino laughed, inwardly wishing that Sasuke was here right now so she could rip him to little tiny shreds. Before he left, Sakura had been the one who cheered up everyone else and made them smile when they were hurt.

"Come on," she ordered Sakura, exiting the treatment room with her best friend in tow. "We're going to Ichiraku."

"But Ino, you hate ramen! You always say how fattening it is!" Sakura exclaimed in shock. Her blonde companion smirked.

"I know. But you love it. Ramen always cheers you up when you're sad, and right now, Sakura, you need all the cheering up that you can get. I can ignore the fat and calories of it for once."

"Ino-chan…" A look of puzzlement appeared on Ino's face at Sakura's suddenly serious expression. "Thank you for being such a good friend. I really don't deserve it after I ended our friendship just so we could compete over Sasuke." Ino's face relaxed into a content smile at the pink haired medic's words.

"Don't worry about it Sakura-chan."


The secretary looked up from the files she was updating on her computer to smile at the two kunoichi as they headed over to her desk to sign out for the end of their shifts. Sakura smiled back at her, while Ino reached for the clipboard to sign both of them out.

"Anything new ladies?" the secretary asked them companionably.

"We're just heading off to Ichiraku Hoshiko-san," Ino replied, returning the clipboard to its usual place on Hoshiko's desk. The two of them exchanged a knowing look, which Sakura thankfully didn't catch. Almost the entire village knew how badly Sakura had taken it when Sasuke left. While she was still functional enough to continue bother her duties as a kunoichi and her training as a medic-nin, she was still prone to small bouts of depression, and Naruto alone knew for certain how many nights it was that she'd cried herself to sleep while clutching their old team photo. Working helped to occupy her mind and keep out thoughts of him, which was why she had spent a great many nights in the library during Naruto's two and a half year absence, reading up on healing techniques and practicing them in a secluded corner until she collapsed from exhaustion. (The librarians had learned to ignore it when they found her like this after they'd received a few of her superhuman punches for foolishly trying to wake her.)

"Well, have a nice day—" the secretary began. Before she finished speaking, however, a team of medics burst through the front doors carrying four badly wounded shinobi on stretchers.

"Get Tsunade-sama now!" the head medic bellowed.

"Lee-san!" Sakura cried, managing to barely recognize who was on one of the stretchers through all the blood and gore coating him.

"Sakura-san," Lee moaned, obviously suffering immensely.

"Haruno-san, thank goodness that you're already here," the medic addressed her. "They were badly wounded when we found them near the border, and that was hours ago! We need your and Tsunade-sama's help right away if they're to have any hope of survival."

"Of course," Sakura replied briskly, accepting the task even though her shift had just ended. She led the medic team toward the intensive care unit. Ino winced as she caught sight of the state of the four injured ninja. She recognized a badly beaten up Hyuuga Neji, Tenten, and Maito Gai in addition to the already identified Rock Lee. All four bore bloody gashes from kunai knives and shuriken, as well as some serious burns. Gai's eyebrows had been almost entirely burned off. (A/N: Muhaha, death to the freakishly thick eyebrows!)

"Who did this to them?" Ino heard Sakura ask the head medic.

"They fled as soon as we arrived, but we were able to identify them. It was those bastards from Orochimaru's Sound Village and… Uchiha Sasuke." Ino heard Sakura's sharp intake of breath at the name of her beloved surfacing at such a time, but her friend did not falter. There was no time for hesitation in Sakura's mind when the lives of her friends were at stake.


Sakura sighed with exhaustion as she slumped against the wall, thoroughly wiped out from her efforts. (A/N: I have no knowledge of medicine beyond the skill necessary to apply a Band-Aid, so just imagine whatever you think she had to do.) Tsunade had arrived after about five minutes to assist her, but it had still been a huge job for just the two of them. Sadly, they were the only medics in the whole village skilled enough in the whole village (and, with the notable exception of Kabuto in Otogakure, the possibly the whole world) to be of any real use here.

She panted, concentrating on breathing in and out while allowing a satisfied smirk to creep onto her face. All four members of Gai's team would live. Granted, Neji's Byakugan wouldn't be fully functional for a while, and Tenten had nearly lost her arm, and Lee would be out of taijutsu training for a while (again, but thankfully this time he wouldn't need any additional surgery to be able to return to his ninja career), and it would take months for Gai's eyebrows to grow back to their usual abnormal thickness (in the mean time he would look somewhat normal, except for the spandex), but no one had died, which said a great deal about Sakura's and Tsunade's medical prowess.

"Sakura-san," she heard Neji call from his bed across the room. The Hyuuga was the least injured of the four ninja, the other three of whom were sleeping after their close encounter with death. He had a strip of cloth covering his eyes in an attempt to discourage him from their use, but just because his Byakugan wasn't working perfectly didn't mean that he didn't use it anyway. He could still see with it, but the range was smaller, only about seven meters or so in all directions. Which just so happened to be about the size of this hospital room. Lucky Neji.

She walked over to his bedside, trying not to show her tiredness. If he needed her for something it was her duty as a medic to help him, even if she was about to collapse from exhaustion.

Neji appeared to be able to see her thoughts just as easily as he could see her location (or maybe she was just easy to read). Either way, he smiled at her.

"Are you alright, Sakura-san?" She blinked, a bit thrown off by the unexpected question. He was the one who lay in the hospital, barely having escaped death earlier that day, and he was asking if she was alright?! "I mean," Neji elaborated, "are you coping emotionally with this. I heard what the medic told you. I know that you know it was Uchiha Sasuke who did this." She froze temporarily at the name before replying.

"Of course I'm fine," she lied unconvincingly. Neji's expression wasn't amused. She sighed. "I know he's a traitor. I know he left the village and he joined Orochimaru and he would be more than wiling to do this to his former comrades. I know that, but it's just… it's… I can't stop believing in him, Neji. No matter what he's done, I keep on believing that he'd never really hurt us and-" she broke off as her voice gave out and tears began to fall from her sea green eyes. Neji gave her a sympathetic look as she started to cry in truth. Through her sobs she hiccupped something about still being just a stupid little fangirl who couldn't face the truth and move on. Neji awkwardly patted her on the back; crying girls made him uncomfortable, but he wasn't an ice cube like Sasuke who could just sit there and watch when someone so clearly needed comfort.

"Sorry," Sakura sniffed after a few minutes. Neji grunted, attempting to return to his usual stoic manner after that rather unsettling display of emotion. She laughed softly at this awkwardness and he smirked, pleased that he had been able to cheer her up. The two of them sat there like that for a moment before Neji made another attempt at starting a conversation.

"Have you heard from Naruto recently?" he asked. Sakura smirked, sensing what his true question was.

"No, I haven't," she replied. "He's still on that mission with Hinata and the rest of Team Eight; they can't risk correspondence." Neji nodded stiffly. Sakura smirked at his obvious uncertainty before continuing. "Don't worry, Neji-san. Naruto's too much of an idiot to realize that he has feelings for her, and Hinata-chan is too shy to be able to speak to him without fainting. They wouldn't be able to start any romantic relationships without our help if they were kept on a team alone together for years, let alone on a team with Shino and Kiba, who'd be more than willing to kill Naruto if he tried anything." Neji looked relieved by her response; he had been dreading the idea that Naruto might finally hook up with his cousin ever since the hyperactive blond had been temporarily assigned to Team Eight for the duration of their next mission. It wasn't so much that he dreaded the idea of Hinata's love finally being requited as that he dreaded the idea of Naruto having the potential to break up with her, an action that would hurt his cousin dearly. Neji took the word 'overprotective' to a whole new level wherever his cousin and future clan head was concerned.

"Still," he said, "I wonder what's keeping them away for so long. It's rather quiet around Konoha without him causing a near-catastrophe every other day." Sakura nodded in agreement, turning to gaze absentmindedly out the window. She really did miss Naruto; he had been like a brother to her ever since he'd come back from his two and a half year training journey with Jiraiya. They had been gone for nearly a month, the set approximation for how long their mission should take; he should be back any day now. In the mean time though, Neji was right: things did get awfully dull without Naruto there to cause trouble.

Hurry back soon, okay Naruto.


Uzumaki Naruto sneezed as he leapt through the canopy of a dense forest near the border of the Land of Fire. (A/N: In Japan, it's believed that you sneeze when someone talks about you.)

"Daijoubu (are you alright), Naruto-kun?" Hyuuga Hinata asked from just behind him. She pushed off a tree limb, drawing even with the blond kitsune. He turned to face her, his signature goofy grin plastered upon his features.

"Heh, I'm fine Hinata-chan. It's just a little sneeze, dattebayo!" She nodded, smiling slightly at his bright nature. N-Naruto-kun, she mentally stammered his name. Hinata tried not to play with her hands; part of her attempts to change herself had been to try to outgrow her various nervous habits, and playing with her hands definitely counted as a nervous habit. However, no amount of personal growth and willpower would have been able to prevent the small flush from creeping onto her cheeks. She was, after all, Hyuuga Hinata. Naruto noticed her reddening face, and instantly his demeanor changed from goofy to completely concerned for her well being.

"Hinata-chan? Daijoubu?" She nodded, blushing even more furiously at the extra attention he was giving her. Naruto did not appear convinced; contrary to her hopes of being left alone, he peered even closer at her. "Are you sick, Hinata-chan?" She tried to stammer out a reply around the suddenly massive lump in her throat that made it difficult for her to even breathe, much less talk to Naruto. Luckily, Kiba, who had been eavesdropping on their entire conversation in case something like this happened, decided to intervene at this point by distracting Naruto from the near-fainting Hyuuga heiress.

"Hey, Naruto, I suggest that you pay attention to where you're going before you do something stupid like running into a tree!" he called to the blond from up ahead. Naruto turned towards Kiba to shout back at him that while Kiba may have to worry about such embarrassing things as running into trees, he was the future next Hokage, and wouldn't make such a careless mistake. While he was distracted by shouting this, he lost track of where his jumps were taking him, and promptly ran into a tree. Hinata turned to go help him, but was halted by Shino putting his hand on her shoulder.

"Hinata," the quiet insect specialist addressed her, "are you alright? Naruto's presence always makes you feel uncomfortable." She bit her lip before nodding to Shino, feeling guilty for even this half-lie told to her teammate. Naruto's presence did distract her and make her feel uneasy, but in a pleasant sort of way; she certainly didn't want Shino and Kiba to try to separate the two of them. It appeared that Shino understood this, for her nodded back to her before heading over to make sure that Kiba did not further injure Naruto. The Inuzuka's idea of helping a comrade back onto their feet appeared to be getting Akamaru to bite Naruto's arm and drag him into something resembling a sitting position. Of course, it was fairly obvious that this was special treatment reserved for Uzumaki Naruto, because Kiba would never dream of being so cruel to someone like Hinata, and he and Shino got along well enough that it was obvious he did not make a habit of having his dog bite the Aburame to forcibly drag him up after a fall.


Naruto grumbled in his sleeping bag that night. Kiba had insisted upon helping him for quite some time, saying that the fall he took might have hurt him, (It hadn't even been that serious!) and Shino hadn't done much to discourage his teammate's actions. Hinata had stood on the edge of the group, the same unhealthy shade of red as before. When he asked Kiba if she was sick, the dog-boy had had the nerve to hit him and call him a dumbass! Since when was it at all dumb of him to show concern on behalf of his friends, even when that friend was weird little Hinata, who never managed to get out three words to him without stuttering or turning a deep shade of red. Sometimes, he just didn't understand the bizarre things that went on with this team. He didn't even know why Tsunade had assigned him to their cell in the first place; Kakashi was still perfectly available to take Kurenai's vacant spot. The blonde lady Hokage had muttered something about 'keep Naruto busy so he doesn't run off after Sasuke' when he'd asked her. As if he actually would run off after Sasuke if he weren't given tasks to keep him occupied! Well, he would, but that wasn't the point! It almost sounded like they didn't trust him to think things through before acting! (Which, come to think of it, they couldn't.)

He sighed in exasperation. Sometimes, he wished that life could be a little simpler, like it had been during his Genin days. That had been the life: just him, Sasuke, and Sakura, going on missions together and generally behaving like brothers and sister. Then Sasuke had had to go and leave and join Orochimaru and…

No, he wouldn't think about that. He had promised himself that when he came back to the village he would have grown up, and that meant accepting events of the past. He never would stop trying to get Sasuke to come home, but he had to at least pretend that he had accepted that his best friend had left in the first place. He should have been able to accept that after what Sasuke himself had said to him when they met up at one of Orochimaru's bases that previous summer, but he hadn't. Even after he was told by the Uchiha avenger that his own life had been spared merely on a whim, he hadn't believed it for one second. To him, Sasuke would always be his brother. Always, no matter what he did. Nothing could break their bond. He would just have to keep believing that, and maybe someday he could get Sasuke to come back to the village. He had to keep trying, for Sakura's sake if not his own. He had seen her state when he came back to the village, and it hadn't been pretty. That had been the primary reason for him to bury his own feelings of sorrow over Sasuke's betrayal; he had to appear strong so that Sakura could have someone to turn to. Sometimes it was hard, trying to do the right thing. Acting as though he didn't hurt every day at the memory of his failure to fulfill his promise had been about as easy as ripping out his own heart.

Teme, why did you leave? He wondered, rolling over so that he faced away from the rest of his temporary team. He felt the salty sting of tears forming in his eyes, and he didn't want Kiba and Shino to see it and mock him, or for Hinata to see it and worry over him.

There was almost no light on this moonless night, making it difficult to discern any real shapes in the shadows of the forest. But Naruto was fairly sure as he drifted off that those two points of red he saw watching him from the bushes weren't berries, and that the outline behind them had been man-shaped. He would never know for certain though. He drifted off to sleep before he could get up to investigate it properly.


When Naruto awoke the next morning, he had no memory of the red eyes that he may have only imagined seeing in the bushes. He did, however, feel an inexplicable sense that someone or something was watching him. Throughout the whole chore of packing up their camp he remained silent, though the desire to look over his shoulder and catch whoever was spying on him was almost overwhelming. He somehow knew, in the strange instinctive way that people often know things, that if he looked then the person would vanish and they would not come again. Even though this feeling of being watched was rather uncomfortable, Naruto knew that he did not want the other to leave. Their presence felt… familiar, comforting, like the reassurance offered by an old friend. As they finished packing their supplies and turned towards the direction of Konohagakure to begin their journey for the day, he halted, turning around to face the now-deserted campsite with a relaxed smile on his face.

Does this mean that you're finally willing to come home again? You'd better not let Orochimaru kill you... I know that you said you were willing to let yourself die, but you'd never actually go through with that… would you? You can't. You just can't die. Sakura-chan and I wouldn't be able to handle it. Please, come home… Sasuke.


A/N: Okay, just to let people know: contrary to popular belief, 'teme' does not mean bastard in Japanese. It is just an offensive version of the pronoun 'you.' I have seen some translations of the literal meaning of it and why there are so many versions of the word 'you,' but my knowledge of Japanese is nearly nonexistent, so suffice to say that teme means you. I only learned this recently myself. Thank you to Ceridwen Inari for clearing that up for me. So a lot of what I have Naruto say is actually really redundant; I have him addressing Sasuke as 'you' and 'teme' in the same sentence. Since a lot of people don't know that 'teme' means you, I'm leaving that as it is for now. The reason why I pointed that out here was so that if anyone points out the redundancy of those comments, I can say that I have already acknowledged it.

Another note: Updates for this story will probably take longer than they did for my other story, Forgotten Dream. This is because the chapters here are much longer than they were in Forgotten Dream (this one was 5,700 words, while chapters for that story averaged at about 1,800 words), and I pretty much worked myself ragged to finish the other story as fast as I did. I'm not going to pressure myself as much this time, so updates will consequently be a lot slower. Still, updates will probably occur at least once a week.