A/N: The newest fic I have written to date, as it was actually written today (the day these were first published.)
Disclaimer: A long time later then writing the rest of these fics, I really still don't own Naruto.

There are some days when I feel inexplicably trapped. As I sit here and watch, just watch as Konoha's ninja's pair themselves off with eachother, I can't help but wonder and know that I will never have a chance at that kind of life. I am the Kyuubi's container. I am an orphan, annoying, hyperactive. I am a mask that will never be shown to the world. I am not free to do what I want or go where I please.

I am forced to watch as the person I care for, and possibly even love the most marries someone that's not me. I am trapped into pretending to be happy for them, to act as if I wasn't falling into a thousand pieces as the moments pass, breaking a little bit more minute by minute. I want to be happy for them, I really do but I can't do more then pretend.

Have you ever had a broken heart? When it feels as if ever fiber of your being is on fire, as if ever happy moment of your life never happened, as if the sole emotion you have left to feel is sadness. There is no anger, no joy. Only sorrow. And while later you can pretend that everything is alright for those who care about you, it's only another stabbing feeling because the one person you want to be asking you that question isn't. They're gone like the foggy breath you breathe on a cold night. Visible, but forever out of reach. You can try to touch it but it just dances around your fingers, before finally disappearing forever.

They say that you only truly fall in love once, that once in your life you come upon a great love. If this love is returned, it's forever. However, if this great love is refused then you are forever broken, forever changed and the damage it does is unrepairable. That is what this love is to me. I can't be happy just because he is happy, because I want to be the one that is making him smile, making him laugh and seeing those emotions that are so infrequently shown in his black eyes appear.

I am expected to be hyper, expected to be moronic, stupid and maybe even in a way unfeeling. I wonder if they really know just how like Sasuke and I are, only wearing a different mask, a different persona. He feels no emotion by refusing to show any. I show no emotion by only displaying one of them. If I were truly to be myself, I doubt people would even know who I was. I can't wear this mask any longer though. It's breaking as I break, crumbling as I do. Tomorrow, tomorrow the world will see Uzumaki Naruto for how he truly is. A broken lost boy who can never ever be fixed.

I laugh when people ask me what's wrong, I nod when people look at me, knowing how it is that I feel. Shrug when some look at me in curiosity, trying to figure out if this is who I have always been or if this is something new. They don't really care though, and if they are, they aren't the person who matters. I want so much to be free of this pain, of this strangling emotion that I can't escape. They call it love, I call it misery. If this is love, kami let me never feel it again. Just set me free...

He looks at me like he's trying to understand, like maybe he does understand but he never will. He never will and I have always known this. Known that all there ever will be for Sasuke is duty and vengence. If he changed he wouldn't be the person I loved and I wouldn't love him. Given one chance to change anything in this world, I would never be in her place. I wouldn't be able to handle a marriage of duty, of falseness.

Death would be cowardly and to flee would show weakness. Two things I will never be is a coward or weak. So I will stay, stay because things can get no lower, you can feel no more pain when you have already felt it at it's worst. He will never know my feelings, will never know about this love that I hold for him that will never go away, and I will always wonder if things could've been different if I'd only told him.

So tomorrow I will go to the wedding, I will try to smile, try and pretend. I will watch as my every hope comes tumbling down and watch as he traps himself to Sakura and she does to him. Neither of them to ever know what it is like to love so much that nothing matters, nothing other then the person they love. Never know what it is like to live for a love, to die for a love. As tomorrow occurs I wonder who I feel worse for. Me with the broken soul and a torn heart, or them who will never ever get the chance to know how great and horrible love truly is.

If only... if only we were free...