They'd all accepted the mission thinking childishly that they'd either succeed or die trying. They'd left on the preposterous idea that they would not have to deal with the consequences of failure. And yet…and yet here they were, all alive if not completely well, and having to face that very same failure.
The heaviest burden falling, surprisingly, not on their leader – who did carry his fair share – but on the one who had stood most to lose and who had lost more than he'd ever thought possible. He'd left trying to rescue, not a class-friend, not a class-rival but his best friend, his most cherished rival. And he'd only understood how much was really at stake when he was on the verge of losing it all.
He'd gone in looking for his friend. A friend-rival who'd stood by him on countless occasions during their short period of enforced teamwork. A person that went from being a rival to surpass – both in strength and skill and in Sakura's heart – to a training buddy, to a friend who watched his back in battle, to, finally, a crutch that could be relied on in any situation. And still, always with the same drive to equal him, to surpass him, to prove his worth to him and to him alone.
All in such a short time.
And in a shorter time even, the list of qualifiers almost doubled.
Teetering, on the verge of losing everything, more had come to him. Countless moments that made his childhood less barren, less miserable. Countless moments, countless memories that he'd never given much thought to but that now meant the world to him. Now that they were about to be ripped from him, to be taken away and leave him cold, dead.
But didn't he accept the possibility of death along with the mission?
Yes, but not of life after failure, not of a half-life, not of a living body with a dead soul. So he'd fought harder – more desperate – prepared, expecting, preferring, to leave his life in the hand of his friend rather than come back without him. Because bringing him back wasn't a mission now, was not a matter of heart and hope. It was a matter of life and death, the very center of his existence.
The burden on his shoulders then, now, was not only composed of the guilt of not bringing him back. It was also the guilt of his happiness in not bringing back Sasuke's corpse.