Title: The Beautiful Mistake
Summary: The World has made a fatal mistake. Her perfection has been cut down, and She cannot carve out what is next. Only… The mistake may not turn out to be one. Denied Sasu/Naru.
Rating: PG-13 Extensive emo-ishness
Disclaimer: Agonizing usage of the sky is from me, Naruto is not.
what a murder. D: i'm starting to loathe one-shots.
The existence is carved, a lonely boy with sky in his eyes looks at the ground, averting his eyes from their natural position. At the sky. His left feet draws a single swirl in the dirt, the swing twirling prettily. A drop of rain mingles with the dirt, making a combination of rusty mud.
xxx
"Fight me. I dare you."
"Ha. You're going to lose." And then, finally-no.. maybe, he'll be acknowledged, the sun stroking his blonde hair, but the World still spinning its lavender web.
"I'll fight you one-handed... And don't worry about winning. You won't."
xxx
The whiskers cringe, his feet are quick to shuffle the wrinkled dirt and the World stops, holding her breath.
What should he do?
What can he do?
The boy, looking more and more like the remnants of a ghost, takes a whispered sigh and softly throws it back out in a puff of breath, looking neither up, nor down, his glassy blue eyes staring straight ahead. The World resumes her futile knitting.
xxx
"I won, Sasuke. Fair and square, ne?"
"Dead last, I was one-handed."
Oh?
"I cut off the rope, Sasuke, remember?"
"..Tch."
"Sasuke?" He's lying on his back, looking at the night sky, wondering… begging… Invisible wings itch at his back, and he feels like flying into the night sky… With the world at his feet and Sasuke by his side.
"Hmm…?"
"Never mind…"
xxx
Sasuke's gone. Naruto had failed.
It was all so unforgivable.
The loneliness is a flame of blue, eternity sketching out what was long-forgotten. The little boy is lost, and it seems infinity will pass before he can find himself in the ethereal field of butterflies.
The World dismisses him, another soul in existence, another one who has failed.
He doesn't realize that he's been spinning, thrown wildly off course by gravity, itself, and he finds himself plummeting, tasting the bitter ground, cursing momentum. The swing is still swinging, and it's while he's there, lying still, the ground a reminder of the earth that disregards him… that he finds out what he needs to do.
xxx
"Let me see your face… Naruto."
He can feel something stirring inside Sasuke, a reenactment of everything against what he had stood for… Sasuke… An avenger? No.. Impossible. But he can smell the poison inside Sasuke, an intoxicating mix of innocence and hatred.
But he allows himself to be closer. Pale Sasuke, with his milky throat and eyes that could not only see the flowers of death, but also the infinity inside death. Pale Sasuke, who insulted, and teased, and re-opened time and again forgotten wounds. Pale Sasuke, whom he had allowed to get impossibly close with. Physically, but emotionally?
Never.
"You've got bruises all over your face."
Why are they so close? Naruto's ornamental blue eyes open, china glass against a face of purity. A misty breath tingling with another, ridiculously, intolerably close. Strands of hair, the color of the abysmal night and the color of the dazzling, but bleeding, sun, touching, brushing against each other. Naruto can't think, he feels the boy inside of him smile, and he closes those blue orbs of his, sinking into an almost unconscious oblivion of deadened feelings.
She, the world, only floats above them, knowing certainly, of course, what will happen, next. And she's right.
Sasuke pulls back. The moment they had shared stops abruptly and the boy inside Naruto, the boy who had smiled for the first time, only slips away.
There's nothing now, only the silence that ripped the air between them.
Except She has made a mistake.
"Do you believe in the sky, Naruto?"
He couldn't believe what Sasuke was asking him. The turmoil and coil of his feelings are like a void for the empty shell with blonde hair and blue eyes.
"I have to, I guess."
And it's Sasuke's piercing gaze that sends awkward shivers down Naruto's spine, and it's Sasuke's voice that breaks the thick air between them.
"Believe in it. You're the sky, Naruto. What I am…. I think I'm nothing like you.." And with the enigmatic statement still floating above Naruto's head, Sasuke left. For good.
Because the next day had been the day of erupted feelings, of hot-headedness, and betrayal. What had been shared the day before was a distant memory. For Naruto, it felt so much better to think only of the failure of the mission. To drown in sorrow and misery, to think nothing but one's one suicide of his emotions. In a way, killing oneself inside, was easier.
xxx
'You're the sky, Naruto.'
Yes. The World had made her mistake. She might have carved and carved to perfection, but somewhere she had missed a chisel of perfection. She had created the sky, itself, inside Uzumaki Naruto.
A drop of rain lands on his head, trickling its way down. But instead of letting it fall, Naruto shakes his head. And he looks up.
It's breathtaking. Not only the sky, but the concept that they all shared the same sky, the same air. Someday, somewhere, once more, the boy with night in his eyes would clash with the boy with sky in his eyes. And when they would, Naruto would look at the sky.
The World had made a sky, and it was everywhere. In Naruto's eyes, in their souls, above Sasuke and Naruto.
"You're the sky, Naruto…"
The sky, Naruto was the sky…
And the World can only watch, a smile forming on her beautiful face. A mistake was a mistake, but maybe, maybe… It wasn't one, after all.
Dedicated to Grace. Take advantage of your world's mistake, and have an awesome birthday.