Genre: Angst, romance.
Rating: PG-13, to be on the safe side.
Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto
Warnings: Character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto and the rest of the bunch in Konoha plus the village itself were created by Kishimoto Masashi. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Author's Note: Err... Hi. My first deathfic, gah. I just felt compelled to write something extremely angsty involving my two favourite Genin and this is how it turned out. I'm not usually this cruel to them, mind, but I'd been reading doujinshi and it was late and...it just happened. Please don't kill me and review instead?
Epilogue of a sorts
It's alright, he had said. It's alright if you don't love me. That you're with me...is enough. I don't ask for more than that.
He had smiled then, that stupid, huge smile of his and anyone who didn't know him, anyone who wasn't close enough to him, would have believed it was genuine. But not Sasuke. He knew him, heart and body and soul, and no matter how many years the idiot had trained his mask there was no way he could hide from the one he loved.
It was peculiar, really, in a sense of the word. After Sasuke had returned to Konoha on the evening of his own seventeenth birthday, bloodied and bruised and not quite there, an orange blur had tackled him to the ground, then endlessly apologized for causing his wounds to remind of their existence and insisted on taking him to the hospital and then dragged Tsunade-sama there all the way from the Hokage tower, things had just...happened between them. The blonde demon vessel had promptly admitted to loving him, and it was just so that he needed reassurance after finally fulfilling the deed that had been his life's purpose up until then.
He never really loved the dobe. Wanted him, yes, cared about him, yes, but never loved. He occasionally felt guilty about that, but then the idiot would smile and say that it was fine, and though he knew the smile was strained and very much fake, put up to hide all the pain felt ever since early childhood, he still took the chance to stifle the guilt and felt relieved that he didn't have to commit himself so completely but could still stay. Because, and he admitted it to himself sometimes, the dobe made him feel accepted and wanted and needed and alive, and he liked to feel that. And so he didn't see the warning signs, he didn't see it coming.
Then again, so did no one else. Not even Iruka-sensei, who was the first of the relatively small group of people in Konoha to acknowledge the Kyuubi's carrier for his worth. So, really, Sasuke wasn't that entitled to feel regret of not having seen it coming. Was he?
But now, when he held the limp body of his lover in his arms, avoiding looking at the long gashes that were pouring the last remnants of life out of that lean body, he wasn't so sure about anything anymore. And as Uzumaki Naruto with his last breath told him he loved him, the bitter sting in his eyes finally erupted.
For the first time in years, Sasuke cried, because he finally understood. Only when the most precious thing in his life was taken away, he understood just how important the idiot had been to him, and to everyone else who had been captivated by those wide grins, those blue eyes, that cheerful demeanor.
The man Uchiha Sasuke loved died in his arms, taking his heart with him.
