A/N: Here's the next chapter; hope you enjoy it. All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. This chapter also contains a pretty graphic medical scene, so if that squicks you, sorry.

So many dreams were broken and so much was sacrificed
Was it worth the ones we loved and had to leave behind?
So many years have passed, who are the noble and the wise?
Will all our sins be justified?

- 'Hand of Sorrow' by Within Temptation

The last light of the sunset shone in through the window, dust motes twirling in the sunbeams. Naruto hummed under his breath, dipping the brush back into the bottle of nail polish and painting a last swipe across Riko's fingernail. Riko kept shifting back and forth, toes curling in the carpet, and it was making it really hard to keep from getting nail polish everywhere.

Naruto got up at the hesitant knock on the door, capping the bottle of bright blue pigment.

"Done!"

"Does it look ae- aesthetically pleasing?" Riko asked, reaching for her blindfold to push it up.

"Riko, don't-" Naruto began, lunging for the blinds.

"Fine," she muttered, her hand dropping as she got up and wandered into the kitchen, passing by Yugito and Noboru, who had maps of the area surrounding Konoha spread out across the kitchen table. Shinobu was still at the meeting with the Hokage.

"Thanks," Naruto called after her, turning back to open the door as another knock split the air.

Iruka blinked at him, his hand raised in mid-knock. Slowly, as if moving through water, his hand dropped to his side, his eyes wide, as if he was burning Naruto's face into his brain. The papers beneath his other arm fluttered to the hall floor.

Naruto stared, felt his stomach twist inside him like an enraged beast. Iruka was the same- the spiky hair a little shorter, a few wrinkles (not smile lines; stress lines, and he shied away from the thought that he was the cause of them) dusted across his face- but the scar and the eyes and the warmth and the chuunin vest were still the same.

'I-' And it had been so long, and he'd left Iruka- the first person in Konoha to love him, to see him as more than a burden- without even telling him why, or saying goodbye, or-

"Naruto?" Iruka whispered, taking a halting step.

"I-" he blinked tears out of his burning eyes, felt his lips twitch into a trembling smile as he lifted his hands in a useless request for a hug, let them fall again. 'I'm… sorry?"

Iruka got it- he always got it- and yanked him into his embrace, and it was different, the fit was all wrong, but it was Iruka and that was all that mattered. Naruto grabbed Iruka, held on tight, let 

his head rest against Iruka's shoulder, like he had done when he was small, felt the harsh cloth of the vest dampen with his tears.

He heard a rough sob from beside his ear, turned his head long enough to mutter, the words scraping his throat raw,

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm-"

"It's okay-"

Naruto turned his head back as he caught a glimpse of the other jinchuuriki peering around the doorframe- Katashi's mouth was open, bloody and sharp- before Noboru suddenly came to his senses and harried them away, the others disappearing back into the living room.

Iruka pulled away, his hands resting on Naruto's shoulders, as if he needed the contact to prove that Naruto was really here, and not just a figment of smoke and mirrors. It was too hard to meet those brown eyes full of unconditional love, love that he had betrayed- he looked away, bit his lip. Iruka sighed.

"It's okay." Iruka scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, his smile a painful thing. "I'm sorry I didn't come earlier- I wasn't avoiding you or anything-"

"I know."

Iruka blinked hard. "I… missed you. We all did." He laughed, the sound harsher than Naruto remembered, and the harshness scalded. "It's been… a long six years without you."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you why I left."

Iruka's expression changed, his smile muted with disappointment. And that was the worst: anger, he could deal with. He'd dealt with it for years. But disappointment?

That was an even more effective weapon.

"I wish you had," Iruka said, but then he straightened up, forced his smile to strengthen. Naruto tried to think of something to say, something to talk about, finally said,

"Um… do you want to go to Ichiraku's?"

Iruka's smile became tinged with relief as he glanced at his watch. "Sure; I can come meet this Noboru later."

"Come whenever," Naruto said, closing the door behind him, "he doesn't sleep much."

Not anymore, at least; not with splinters of bone and shrapnel floating around inside him; not with his formerly-crushed pelvis still a ruin of hastily-soldered bone.

Not with the sound of the guns outside his window.

Their feet clicked on the wooden floors as they entered the stairwell, the golden light of sunset coloring the air.

"So," Iruka said, swallowing, "what have you… been up to?"

It was awkward.

It shouldn't have been awkward.

Grief pricked at the corners of his eyes, but he straightened, glanced over. "I've learned a lot of jutsu; even some healing jutsu, too, so you can stop freaking out about me not being well-rounded."

Iruka stared blankly for a moment- Naruto's smile faltered- before Iruka seemed to remember the long tirades he used to go on and laughed, although it sounded brittle.

Six years was a long time for things to be forgotten, and awkwardness to fill the gaps.

And though the love was still there- unceasing, unchanging- it wasn't the same.

"My lady!" Footsteps- light and quick, Shizune's footsteps- raced down the hallway, stopped as Shizune flung the door to Tsunade's office open. Tsunade didn't turn to look, her eyes still fixed on Shinobu's white, still face, the breath sucked from her lungs at the terrible thing Shinobu had just revealed.

"My lady," Shizune panted, "Patrol A just came back- they're in operating room C- it's bad."

The words sunk in slowly, but then Tsunade was up, moving, at the door-

"Shinobu," she called, "come with me, please."

The younger girl nearly tripped over herself as she stood, grabbing her sword and joining Tsunade. Tsunade's fingers flew through seals, and in the blink of an eye they were standing in the operating room of the hospital.

There was blood everywhere, the stench of rot and death permeating the air, the other medic-nin's scrubs dyed black with gore as they sloshed through the puddles. Tsunade took in the situation at a glance- two of the three-man patrol were already dead, their corpses white and twisted on the gurneys in the corner- while the other was hemmed in by three medics.

"We're losing him-" a medic-nin muttered to his compatriot, and Shinobu snapped into action, 

joining the team arrayed around the last gurney as she snapped gloves on. Tsunade followed.

The man on the gurney was barely recognizable as human, his entire torso blown to shreds, his face scarred and burned beyond recognition from shrapnel and flame. His left leg was destroyed, splinters of bone protruding from lacerated skin, blood pumping from the deep gash in his thigh. A medic stood over it, gray-faced, chakra sputtering as she poured more in.

'Femoral artery's gone.'

"We can't stop the bleeding," the supervising medic said, wrist-deep in blood as she massaged the man's failing heart, green chakra glowing on her fingers as she tried to repair the ruin that shrapnel had made of his heart. "Rumiko's trying to put a patch on, but it didn't take the first time; there's too much damage, and the leg's got to go, but it'll take time we don't have-" Tsunade joined the group, adding her chakra to the supervisor's. The man's eyes rolled in his head.

They were brown, like Jiraiya's.

Shinobu elbowed her way in, scooted down the side of the gurney to hover over the man's leg, elbowing Rumiko out of the way and placing steady hands above the gushing artery.

A storm of chakra whirled out from her hands, sucked into the greedy body- and there was so much of it, enough that Tsunade would be wiped out after that first pulse-

Someone gasped.

Shinobu's face was serene, like an ancient statue, as she fed more and more power into the man's body, producing platelets, urging them on, clearing infectious agents and coaxing the battered vein to knit itself back together.

The flow- the hot leap of purple spurting from his thigh- slowed to a trickle, as if a dam was slowly being built inside the gaping wound, then stopped. Shinobu didn't seem to even realize the magnitude of what she had done, moving her hands to the other, whole leg, directing chakra- and did she ever run out?- into the bone marrow.

Tsunade felt the sudden rise in blood pressure beneath her fingers as Shinobu did in a few seconds what took a human body days to do.

"Tsunade," Shinobu said, her voice calm, as quiet as if she was reading a book to children, "can you come over and keep the cycle going?"

"I don't know if I have enough-"

"It's okay," and it was so frightening, the placidity in her voice, as if she hadn't just saved a man from certain death with nothing but a few bursts of incredible power, "I started the cycle. I just need you to feed a little in every time it starts to weaken, and the rest will take care of itself. I 

need to handle the leg."

Tsunade moved over to funnel chakra into the bone marrow. She hissed between her teeth- it hurt, the amount of chakra swirling around in the man's bones- she could feel it scalding her palms, and could only imagine the agony the patient would be in if he were conscious.

Shinobu's hand glowed green, a chakra scalpel, as she sliced through skin and muscle, exposing the gaping break in the ruined leg, where the femur ceased to be a femur and became hundreds of shards of bone. The muscle and skin retracted, exposing the old-ivory shade of the bone.

Tsunade fed more in, glancing up the patient's body to check on the others: the supervisor was still working at keeping the heart beating; Rumiko was now laboring over his lacerated hand, metacarpals pink and terrible; and the last was trying to keep the intestines from perforating as he picked pieces of shrapnel out.

Shinobu reached for her sword, the green flames brightening to a white as hot as the sun, with only the palest traces of emerald around the edges of the flames to show their color. Tsunade could feel the heat beating against her skin, sweat beading at her hairline, dampening the hair at the nape of her neck.

Shinobu lifted the sword, her eyes distant- Tsunade knew that she was in the presence of someone who was completely in their element, completely unaware of anything but the body beneath her hands- and tightened her grip, widening her stance.

"Stand back," she said softly, before the blade came down-

The stench of burning bone joined the plethora of sickness in the air as the sword- and how was it able to do this, when even the sharpest medical tool took several minutes to cut bone?- separated the ruined two-thirds of his leg from the whole third in one clean cut, cauterizing as it went.

The sword's flames died down, retreated back inside the sword, becoming only the sullen, flickering emerald that she had seen before, as Shinobu leaned the sword against the wall and glanced at the medic laboring on the man's intestines.

"Can you sew him up down here? I can take care of the peritonitis."

The man's eyes were wide, his mouth half-open, but he did as she said, swapping places. Shinobu stuck her hands inside the patient's body without hesitation, tendrils of chakra, so powerful that it glowed white, rather than the usual green, crawling over the ruined ribs, the ropy coils of internal organs, pieces of shrapnel sliding free at her coaxing, floating in the air, buoyed by chakra. The holes immediately staunched themselves, the perforated stomach knitting itself back together before Tsunade's astonished eyes, the chakra slipping, twisting through the man's body in a river of white light.

She could feel Shinobu's chakra beneath her fingers, as placid and yet as powerful as a 

slumbering beast, and the man finishing the amputation muttered a surprised thanks as the flaps of skin and muscle that he was sewing together over the newly shorn bone healed, with only a pink scar to show the suture.

Shinobu hummed beneath her breath as the chakra returned, reaching up and snatching the pieces of shrapnel- so many pieces that they filled both her hands- and flinging them into the biohazard container.

"Leg's done," the man announced, stepping back. Shinobu nodded, slid up the man's body as the supervising medic-nin stepped back, and let her hand float just above the heart that scarcely fifteen minutes ago had been on the verge of giving up forever.

Another pulse of chakra, then another, and the heart beat beneath her fingers. Shinobu grinned, bounced on her toes, sent a wave of white light around the man's open torso, mopping up one last time.

"Sew him up," Shinobu directed, the woman seeming too shocked to protest as Shinobu glanced over at the man's lacerated hand, deemed the last medic-nin's work sufficient, and picked her way over the puddles of blood to stand at the man's head, placing her hands on either side of his head.

More chakra- and how could she have more? Shinobu had already put out as much chakra as Tsunade used in a month- seeped over blackened, weeping skin, Shinobu's eyes closing.

"Oh, that's not good," she muttered to herself, seeming as if she had left them all behind, her hands twisting. "Better." The blackened skin sloughed off in curls of black paper-thin material, pink, fresh skin rising to replace it like new continents from the ocean.

Tsunade felt the cycle of blood production beneath her hands slow and stop, the man's circulatory system filled once more, and stepped back, circling the gurney to watch Shinobu work.

There would be deep silver scars tracing over the man's skull for the rest of his life, but-

And the sunken nose became full again, the lost eyelids regrew, covering the rolling eyes, dark hair sprouting like grass in a field from new skin.

Long minutes passed, before Shinobu took a deep breath, opening her eyes. She braced herself against the gurney, her smile of joy trembling with exhaustion.

"Well, he's had some traumatic brain injury-" she patted the man's head, "-but nothing too serious, I was able to fix it. At most he might not remember the last week, but that's not a big deal.

"His sight and hearing aren't going to be very good, though," Shinobu said, scowling. "I tried to repair the cilia and the damage to the rod and cone cells, but I couldn't get all of it." She sighed, 

let her fingers card through the man's hair as she bestowed an apologetic look on him. "I'm sorry."

Tsunade's throat worked. Shinobu was apologizing? She was apologizing to the man whom she had saved? She wanted to cry, she wanted to grab Shinobu and shake her and demand 'how, how, how did you do that, how did you snatch this man from the jaws of death when I would've thought him doomed? How do you have such power?'

But she knew.

It was the gift of the Hachibi; the power that Shinobu had paid such a high, high price for.

It was power given by catastrophe, the catastrophe of the jinchuuriki, sacrificed for a hypocritical humanity that preached love and faith and togetherness-

But only for themselves.

The jinchuuriki were the walking symbols of man's inhumanity, man's ability to sacrifice everything for a tiny hour of peace.

They were the symbols of mankind's true self.

And their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind.

Naruto attacked his tenth bowl of ramen with a vengeance, while Iruka, Ayame, and Masahiro- and how funny, that he'd only just learned the Ichiraku owner's name now- looked on in amusement.

Ayame had thrown her arms around him, a welcome change from the surreptitious glares and whispers as he and Iruka had walked through Konoha.

So much had changed; the crumbling brick apartment building that he used to graffiti was gone, replaced by a new structure of clean lines and shiny stone. The fountain that Academy students used to throw coins into for good luck on exams had been removed.

But he and Iruka had managed to finally strike up a conversation about pranks, and it was fun to see the mischievous light in Iruka's eyes as Naruto rambled on about how he and Katashi had once hidden an exploding tag inside Shinobu's textbook on how to perform biopsies.

Iruka had asked question after question about the other jinchuuriki- and it was kind of funny, in a way, like a protective older brother vetting his younger sibling's friends. Masahiro and Ayame had enjoyed his stories, and that gave him hope-

Hope that maybe the people of Konoha could learn to accept the jinchuuriki, to honor them for 

their presence.

He hadn't had hope for so long-

It was nice to be able to hope for something again.

The Ichiraku ramen was just as good as he remembered: salty and hot with the noodles exactly the right texture.

But so little else was as he remembered it: the pinched fear on the faces of the civilians, the weary resignation on the faces of the genin, the barbed wire bristling on the walls.

"So has much changed, civilian-wise, since the beginning of the war?" Naruto asked around his mouthful. Iruka groaned in annoyance at his bad manners, but Masahiro only shrugged.

"Prices have gone up, so the supply lines are mostly cut off," Masahiro said over the sounds of his stirring, "but the shinobi are managing to keep three of them open, so we can still get our goods."

"I bet the civilians are pretty grateful to the supply line defenses," Naruto said, slurping down the last of his ramen.

There was a long silence.

Naruto started to get the crawling feeling that he'd said something he shouldn't have, as Masahiro stopped stirring, turning around. Iruka winced.

"Masa-" Iruka started, cut off as Masahiro threw a hand up, his eyes strangely intent.

"Would you like to know what a civilian's life is like? What it's really like?"

Naruto felt something unseen, some buried, ancient conflict, rising to meet him as he blinked, said,

"Yeah, sure."

Masahiro nodded, while Iruka sat back, mouth pressed into a thin line. "This world," Masahiro said as he leaned his elbows on the counter, white hat drooping, "is not a world for the civilians. We are but pawns in a world that is solely for shinobi. And it's decided so early whether this world is for you.

"When you go to the Academy for the first time, they test you to see if you can produce enough chakra to be a shinobi."

Naruto frowned. He had a very vague memory of a test, although it wasn't much of one. All the kids were crowded into an auditorium, and a medic-nin walked around and put her hands on the 

kid's shoulders.

And then she'd said 'yes' or 'no' to the person following behind her with a clipboard; and he'd never really thought about that again, about the fact that the kids that were told 'no' never came back.

Masahiro tried to smile, his grin dulled by the old wound. "And if you fail… you don't know it at the time, but that's the end of all your hopes to become one of the elite. To become one of the shinobi. Because if you're not a shinobi… then what can you do?"

Iruka opened his mouth to say something, but Masahiro rolled right over his argument.

"Of course, there's Rock Lee, but he's a freak. Everyone knows that- even him. If he hadn't had Gai to sponsor him, then he'd be just like us. Do you know how many kids with just as much ambition and drive fail the test, but don't get a sponsor like Gai?"

"No," Naruto muttered, dazed by Masahiro's passion- the Ichiraku man had always seemed so calm. How long had this rage been stirring beneath the surface?

"I'll tell you: a lot. So they're condemned to be considered useful, but lower-class; integral, but less important. Shinobi fight the wars; shinobi bring income to the village; shinobi make up the Great Clans; shinobi are the Hokage and the Councilors."

He snorted. "Sure, the daimyo's a civilian, but he's just a figurehead. Just some silly old man sitting in a castle, thinking he's got power when he only thinks that because the Hokage is content to let him do so.

"And they try to make it seem like it's okay when you fail; when Ayame failed the test, they sent us pamphlets droning on about how civilians are an integral part of Konoha's society, and how we provide the infrastructure that makes the village work, and so on and so forth, so we could explain that to her and make her feel better. But that doesn't change things. That doesn't help the resentment when the shinobi look down on you."

Naruto shook his head to clear it; how had he not noticed? Was their society really that shinobi-focused, to make all the civilians feel undervalued?

Masahiro shoved another bowl of beef ramen across the counter, gesturing with his spoon, boiling ramen droplets spattering the back wall of the booth.

"And now there's a war on, and we can't do anything. All we can do is sit back and watch the shinobi fight for us; we can be doctors, but we're never as good as medic-nins; we can train to use a sword, but we'll never be as strong as someone with chakra."

Ayame didn't turn around from where she was stirring the pot, but her voice, calm and clear and lacking any hate or judgment whatsoever, carried, "Shinobi have no idea how frightened we all are. They can make chakra. They can call fire, or summon beasts, or make someone believe in 

something that doesn't exist. They can go out and fight; they can influence the outcome. We just have to sit, and go about our daily routines, and pray that the lines don't fall.

"Shinobi- as much as we love and respect them- just don't understand."

Naruto stuffed down the urge to apologize.

A bell rang out across the village, and silence swept across Konoha in a wave, as people paused, looked to the skies.

Fear, resignation, pain- all were etched on those tired faces as the people in the streets hurried away, shopping bags banging against each other. Doors slammed in distant houses. The streets emptied, until Masahiro, Ayame, Iruka, and Naruto were left alone in the square.

"What-" Naruto began.

Iruka pointed with his chin in the direction of the Hokage Tower; Naruto turned to watch, sucked in a breath as a small cloud of ravens rose in a black storm from the tower, silhouetted against the stars, the white papers tied to their legs bright in the gloom.

The ravens separated, spiraled higher over Konoha, and then, catching sight of their destinations, arrowed downward, black blots of death against the sky. Two ravens winged over to an apartment building across the square, shadows stretching across the pavement-

Naruto felt sick, his eyes burning for those people inside those unlucky apartments, who had lost everything they loved in the tap of a raven's beak upon the glass.

The raven on the second floor tapped once, twice.

He had to look away, had to leave whoever was in there their privacy-

The window slid up, and a woman- young, her brown hair pulled back into a messy bun, toothpaste smeared around her mouth- stood framed in the light, her eyes fixed upon the bird on the sill.

"Qwork!" the raven said, thrusting its message at her.

She stumbled back a step, dropping her toothbrush. Her lower lip trembled, tears welling, tumbling down her cheeks in silver rivers as she took a shuddering breath, face crumpling in on itself like a wadded ball of paper, her tiny hands clenching into fists,

"Go away! Go away go away go away-"

The raven, implacable, uncaring, hopped forward once more. The woman took another step back, throwing up a warding hand, her eyes clenched shut.

"He's not-" she sobbed, "he's not.."

Something was stuck in Naruto's throat. He looked at Iruka, saw the same helpless sorrow in his eyes.

The woman's lips twisted in a painful, ingratiating smile as she fell to her knees, her head the only thing above the windowsill as she leaned forward, met the raven's eyes.

"Go away… please?"

It cocked its head, lifted its leg again, uncaring of human pain.

She let her head fall against the sill, her eyes- dark and helpless- gazing at that tiny little roll of white paper.

And slowly, her hands steady- for what harm could the message do, when all had already been lost?- she reached up, untied the paper, the string curling like a black snake on the windowsill as she spread the paper open, her face a ruin of grief.

The raven stepped back, launched itself off the sill, and with four great wingbeats was above the square and soaring back to the Hokage Tower, its message of sorrow delivered.

Naruto turned away from the open window, leaving the woman to her private hell. Shame boiled thick and hot- why hadn't he turned away? Why hadn't he given her that tiny, simple courtesy?

Masahiro's face was pinched and worn, Ayame's back too straight to be natural.

There was an awkward silence, and he felt the urge to run, to get back to the jinchuuriki, to his family, the only familiar thing in this village.

Because everything had moved on without him.

"Um…" he said, "I've… got to get back to the others."

Ayame nodded, while Masahiro squinted at him, shrugged, and clapped him on the shoulder with an attempt at a smile.

"It's good to have you back, Naruto. Ichiraku's missed you."

"You mean they missed my money, right?"

Masahiro snorted, grabbing his spoon and trying to rap Naruto's knuckles- but he was too fast, and the spoon whacked the countertop instead. Masahiro frowned, folding his arms across his ramen-spattered white shirt.

"Okay," he conceded, "maybe we missed your money. But we missed you, too."

Naruto tried to smile, but it was hard- so awkward, to come back to people you hadn't talked to in six long years and to deal with all their questions and the open stares- to smile when he could distantly hear the sobs from across the square.

"Yeah, it's good to be back."

Ayame swooped down to take his and Iruka's bowls, efficient and tidy as ever, smiling- a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"I just wish you'd come back at a better time," she said, turning to the sink and tying the floral-print apron around her waist.

Guilt welled thick and cold in Naruto's stomach. He could understand the glances of hate, of fear mixed with awe-

The jinchuuriki's arrival signaled the death of the old world, and the beginning of a new: a new world that many of Konoha's people would not live to see.

And how galling it must be, to know that the jinchuuriki were only here because the Konoha shinobi couldn't protect themselves, couldn't hope to even put up a fight without the help of outsiders.

To know that their shinobi, the pride and joy of the Land of Fire, the strongest country on the continent, were too weak to save themselves.

As he stared at the chipped counter beneath his hands, he muttered, "So do I."

He could hear the guns as he closed the door to the apartment, calling, "I'm home!"

Only silence greeted him as he tiptoed into the living room. Shinobu was sprawled across the couch, mouth open; he could hear Riko and Gaara arguing over some bit of religious philosophy in Gaara's room- probably waiting up for whoever was going to come take Riko on her tour.

He passed down the hallway, popped his head in to check on Moriko. She was curled like a sleeping puppy underneath her flower-print sheets, the horse that Varg had given her clutched in her hand, the soft yellow night of the nightlight casting golden flecks in her hair.

Varg was in the next room, sleeping on his belly- it still hurt too much to sleep on his back, to have the pressure against his long-healed whip scars- his legs tangled in the sheet and his head halfway inside his ratty T-shirt.

Yugito opened one eye as he stuck his head in, hand already reaching for a kunai hidden in a sheath inside her shirt. When she saw it was him, she nodded, familiar with his old ritual of 

checking on his family each night, making sure no nightmares disturbed them, before her eyelid drooped once more and she slipped back into dreams.

Katashi was a restless sleeper, mumbling something as he thrashed against the cruel grip of his sheets. Naruto sighed, went over and untangled his limbs, pulling the sheets back up to Katashi's chin. The younger jinchuuriki stilled, curled into himself, like the spiral in a seashell.

He knocked at Noboru's door, knowing the oldest of the jinchuuriki to have no qualms about flooding the room with poison gas when he was surprised.

There was a long pause before the scratchy,

"Come in."

Noboru's voice sounded… strange, exhausted, thick. The door creaked as Naruto stepped inside, the moonlight shining white on the books scattered around the room.

Noboru was ensconced in the overstuffed chair that served as his bed- it was too difficult for him to lie down now; hell, just getting up was enough of a chore- a book open across his knees, his eyes gleaming yellow from the black mark across his face.

The air in the room was heavy with the salty smell of tears.

"You okay?" Naruto whispered, catching sight of the solitary tears glinting behind the spectacles.

Noboru's fingers- swollen knuckles, papery skin, old scars- spidered out over the page as he glanced down, silent. Naruto took a seat in the other chair, leaning forward, flinching as Noboru jumped at the roll of distant explosions.

"I was reading," Noboru said, and his voice was choked, "about my war."

Naruto said nothing, waiting.

"About the battle of Knife Ridge, where I walked up behind a boy no older than myself and put a kunai through his spine. About how we found Hide, the son of my commander, in a prison camp, where they'd put out his eyes and cut off his legs. About the boys that I played ninja with-"

Tears plopped onto the paper, "-and the way they screamed when the explosion hit and blew them to red shreds of flesh.

"And I sit here, and I see the Academy from my window, and I watch those little children, just like them, throw kunai into targets. I watch them practice the jutsu to protect themselves from poison. I watch them spar for hour after hour, and I know…

It's not going to be enough to save any of them. So many are going to die. So many mothers are going to lose their children, so many husbands their wives, so many sons their fathers. So much will be lost, and so I wonder…"

Noboru's thumb absently caressed the picture on the page, a black-and-white photograph of two shinobi after battle, curled against each other, comfort in the midst of desolation.

"And I wonder…" Noboru smiled through his tears, and Naruto felt his heart break, "what did we die for? What good did I do by killing six hundred people? Why did Hide have to spend the rest of his life a lump in a bed, without eyes or ears or legs? Why did I have to watch one of the little genin cut his own throat because he couldn't bear it anymore? What use was all that death, all that pain, all those-"

His breath rattled within him, "-wasted years? What use was any of it, when we didn't even stop this war?

"We were fighting for…" another sob, and it was all Naruto could do not to cry, "a safer world. A better world. A world without war."

The guns rumbled like the voices of the thousand dead entombed in earth. Noboru's mustached mouth crumpled, the book falling from his lap as he buried his face in one hand, the other curling in the cloth of his pants.

"And we failed."

His voice was as hopeless as a death knell.

"I failed."

Naruto pitched forward, grabbed that thin hand, cold and bony like the hand of death, and clung desperately, trying to impart warmth, hope, life, their joined hands limned silver in the moonlight as Noboru's frail shoulders shook with dry sobs, and each sob tore Naruto's heart out.

Annotations

"The hot leap of purple spurting from his thigh." - A line from one of Wilfred Owen's lesser-known poems, 'Disabled.'

"Their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind." - A line from Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.

A/N: All comments and criticisms are loved and cherished. If you have questions, please post them in the forum linked in my profile.