Title: All I Live For

Category: Angst, Slightly One-Sided Narusasu

Rating: PG

Author's Note: Just a short thing I wrote while repairing my old fic Tsurai. I'd recently read a fic which made me feel very deeply for the characters already that I was compelled to write something myself.

Years change everyone. For years I hated Sasuke, and then for years I trained and worked together with him as a team. Over those years we became more then just rivals, more then just best friends. There was something between us then, something undeniably different then either of us had ever felt for another person. When we fought it was always filled with energy that was more then just the need to beat each other, there was passion. The final time we fought for three years was no different then that, but even then - then when Sasuke was betraying more then just his village, he could not truly defeat me. Even for his dreams and his power he could not kill me. Just as three years later when the time came and I was too late, I couldn't kill Sasuke to destroy Orochimaru.

And so I gave up nearly everything to seal Orochimaru within Sasuke. It was a seal much like mine with the Kyuubi. I suppose that had I been any other person doing the seal, I too would have died from it. And just as I saved Sasuke that day, he saved me.

"Don't you dare leave me! Live, live if only for me." Were the words I heard that day. The words with which I clung onto the remaining strands of my life and refused to give into the peace that meant death.

Over the next few years I came to accept that the charge I always felt when Sasuke was around was love. Pure, untainted and unbreakable. Loving Sasuke was and never would be something that was easy. Sasuke was no different most of the time then how he had been when I first met him. He was cold, unreadable and as always beauty in perfection that few would ever even glimpse at.

The years changed us more as Sasuke continued to train, to fight and to prepare for the battle that he lived his life for. With him as I always did, I trained for goals so very different then his. I continued to push him to points that he would not have reached otherwise as he did with me. The love was there still yet we both continued to ignore that it was there. I would never mention it to him because the plaguing memory of the other goals he had remained in my mind to taunt me.

When you defeated Itachi, I was there by your side as I had been for all the years previous. You'll eventually continue with the rest of your goals and then I will break. But until that say I will remain here by your side because truly, that is all I live for.