Okay, to clear a few things up about "Naruto's Death" (heh heh... and the
chapter is called 'Naruto's Life')... no, Naruto's BODY isn't dead... the
Kyuubi is just in control of it now, everyone thinks that the blast killed
Naruto's soul which means he'll never come back. Naruto's body is still in
motion, doing the Kyuubi's dirty work
Also, the blast from the Kyuubi was nothing more than the woman's seal and the final releasing of the Kyuubi's soul... they didn't care whether it killed Naruto or not, so long as he was no longer in his own body. Kuroi Kitsune got it exactly. ^-^
Chapter Title: 38. Naruto's Life
Sasuke went through most of that week as an emotional zombie, only doing the bare necessities to keep himself alive. The same was said about his missions. Though Naruto followed him around (having nothing else to do), he never saw or heard another thing from his friend. Naruto was frustrated that he couldn't figure out how he'd made his voice heard the first time, and, as time went on, he began to pass it off as a fluke and even going so far as to believe it was nothing but Sasuke's imagination.
Even though he'd promised everyone who visited him, Naruto didn't believe for one second that Sasuke would attend his funeral without someone actually forcing him to. He seemed content to stay in his house, but when the day finally came to hold the memorial service, it was Sakura who came and brought him to the monument.
Sasuke hadn't even gotten out of bed that morning, knowing the importance of the day, and when the pink haired girl came over he was still curled up under the covers in just his boxers, eyes open but utterly blank. She closed her eyes tightly to stop her tears, and took a deep breath before prying the blankets from his cold grip.
"Sasuke, get up! It's not even March and you're only in your shorts!" She blushed slightly at the sight of her long-time crush in nothing but a pair of underwear but quickly remembered why she was there. "Do you want to catch a cold!?" Normally he would roll over, shoot her a menacing glare and return to his former position. That morning, however, he didn't even flinch when the frigid air swept over his bare shoulders.
"It doesn't matter." He replied, his voice taking on a dark, monotonous tone.
"Like hell it doesn't!" She yelled back. "You promised us you would go to the funeral. Don't tell me you're going to stay in your empty house and mope around all day. Where is that going to get you?!"
"I don't need your permission if I want to remain here."
"Do you think that being a childish brat is going to bring him back? He's dead and gone, and you're going to have to learn to accept it. I doubt he'd like to learn that you're sulking yourself to death. What good is that?"
"There's not much else left, now is there?" He replied, emotionlessly. Sakura fumed, clenching her fists.
"Why are you being so difficult? Do you think you're the only one who loved him?" He gasped softly and rolled over to look at her. He took a breath to deny any sort of attraction to his rival, but she cut him off. "What about the rest of us? Have you even thought of what Iruka must be going through?! He loved him more than anyone, and yet he's still standing strong." He looked at the floor guiltily.
"I don't think I can get up there and talk about him." He admitted. "He hated me for so long, and even if I did say something, I wouldn't know how much of it was his true self." She sighed and nodded.
"Just come and pay your respects. No body expects you to speak."
"I wish I could."
"Doushite?"
"I wish we could have ended in a place where I knew enough about him that I could tell people just what he meant to me."
"You two were close, though, weren't you?" Sasuke sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, staring at a spot on the wall behind the girl. Naruto side-stepped the glance, getting the eerie feeling that he was looking AT him rather than through him.
"I don't know." He whispered. "I'd like to think so. I'd like to think we were as close as brothers; in a way we were, but I... he... he shut me out, just like he shut out everyone else."
"Come anyways." She pleaded with him. "Maybe you can learn something about him through what other people knew of him."
"Sure." He stood up and, stretching a bit, went to the closet and pulled out the funeral clothing he'd kept from the Third's memorial. It had been altered by Kakashi (he knew Sasuke would never get it done himself and would be damned if he'd get a brand new one) and fit him comfortably.
"I'll wait for you downstairs." The girl lowered her eyes respectfully and closed his bedroom door behind her. Hearing the rustling of fabric, she leaned back against the door and sighed in frustration.
Sasuke's response had startled her. It seemed that generally, people had the same impression, but not even his closest friend claimed to know anything about him. He had managed to remain a well kept secret to everyone, and it wasn't until he was gone that anyone had realised it. She'd gone around to some of Naruto's closer friends; Iruka, Konohamaru, Hinata and even Kakashi, and all of them claimed to know nothing about the boy. She frowned to herself, the reality of the situation hitting her like a ton of bricks.
No one had ever known the true Naruto. And no one ever would.
***
He waited, lying face first on the floor, his head resting on his arms. He didn't feel any sort of unease at being in Sasuke's room while he changed, nor did he feel any disgust. He had become used to catching glimpses of the pale skin from everything; battles to a simple changing of clothing. Chances were it wasn't something he hadn't seen before. But he soon became restless and, wanting to see what the big deal was over his funeral, Naruto pushed himself to his feet and began pacing.
"Sasuke, would you hurry up?!" He growled under his breath, watching the boy pulling the garment over his head.
"I'm coming." Sasuke mumbled reflexively and grabbed a set of weapons just in case. There had been rumours of the Kitsune thrashing villages with the blonde's body and he wanted to be more than ready if ever he got the chance to avenge his friend. He sighed to himself at the sorry state of the village and stepped into the hallway, following the girl down the stairs and out of the cold and lonely house.
As they walked they could see a small crowd gathering in their funeral shrouds at the base of the monument, on the roof of the Hokage offices. They all walked in, Sasuke content to remain at the back of the funeral service as he had no real desire to be there in the first place, but Sakura dragged him to two seats in the front reserved for them. Sasuke frowned, scanning the faces of the people who had come. Sakura pulled on his shirt to signal him to sit beside her and, reluctantly, he turned to the front and sat down.
It took a couple of minutes for the memorial to start, and a couple of the adults spoke on behalf of the boy in the beginning, and Naruto noticed that from the moment someone started to speak of what they'd seen of him, Sasuke had his gaze riveted to the speaker. He smiled remembering the boy's adamant belief that anyone knew anything about Naruto. It seemed that regardless of what he'd claimed earlier, he wanted to know what his rival had been like with others. He wanted to know what other people had seen of him. He wanted to know as much about the now-dead boy's life so that he could know as much as possible.
Konohamaru walked slowly to the front of the crowd not long after. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, much like at his grandfather's funeral, but he was silent. There was a long silence as he stared out at the many faces before he began his eulogy. Unlike the adults before him, he didn't have any paper with him.
"Naruto-niichan was something of an untouchable hero for me for a long time." He started, wiping his face of the tears. "For most of my life I'd always been treated like glass because I was the third Hokage's grandson. Naruto was the first person I met who didn't. I was playing a prank on my grandfather when we first met. We got into an argument and I dared him to hit me. He was about to. I told him that he wouldn't dare because I was Hokage's grandson. He hesitated before slamming his fist down on my head." A few people chuckled quietly, knowing the blonde never followed any rules.
"After that I practically forced him to train me because I saw him as this magnificent prankster. I told him that I was going to become Hokage to show everyone that I wasn't just the revered grandson. He was the one who told me there were no shortcuts in life. You have to work hard in order to get what you want in life." Naruto, who was staring at Sasuke, saw the boy visibly shift in his seat at the last sentences. After another couple of minutes, Konohamaru returned to his seat and Neji reluctantly stood up. He walked slowly and gracefully to the front and stared back at the small crowd with his emotionless white eyes. Naruto watched him for a moment, surprised by their likeness to Sasuke's before returning his gaze to Sasuke when Neji began to speak, gauging his reaction to the speeches.
"Naruto-kun never believed in destiny." He said softly. Naruto saw Sasuke's brow furrow tightly and he remembered that his rival had been in the hospital during his battle with the Hyuuga. In fact, Sasuke had never seen any interaction between the two of them except when they went to rescue him. "It was always something I had the utmost faith in. When I first saw him he looked like a total idiot who probably hadn't learned anything since graduating from the academy. There was no way a loud-mouthed idiot like him could possibly come close to matching me in the Chuunin exam and I believed that it was his destiny to fall quickly and without much of a fight to my touch." Naruto didn't notice the uncomfortable shifting of his rival in his seat. He didn't notice that the speaker's words were making him edgy.
Neji paused, taking in a deep breath, but showed no other signs of distress at his friend's passing.
"He was so strong in his beliefs that he kept going when I thought I'd had him beat. He just had this way of making people believe in him. He was so strong. Even when we were assigned a nearly hopeless mission from Tsunade, he was the one who kept up the hope of the group. I don't think there was a single one of us who doubted Naruto-kun's ability to bring Sasuke back from the darkness."
Up next was Neji's cousin, Hinata, who looked completely frightened at the idea of speaking to the entire crowd. Like the rest of the younger generation, though, she didn't hold a single sheet of paper.
"Naruto-kun was always my role model." She smiled fondly. "He was always so strong even when no body else believed he could keep going. He was always the one thing I would think of whenever I needed the strength to keep on going. I just had to think of him and know I'd be letting him down if I didn't give everything as much as I possibly could. Even when everything was against him, he never ran away, he always faced every challenge head on." Sasuke snorted aloud, halting her speech.
"And look what happened to him the one time he did run and hide." He muttered under his breath. No one but Sakura and Naruto heard his words, and Hinata continued speaking. From then on, neither Sasuke nor Naruto listened to the speeches. They had stopped saying things that were important. After Hinata, Shikamaru stepped up, relating in true Nara style how tiresome the blonde was and exclaiming that it must be something in the hair (he glanced meaningfully at Ino) before the last person stood up to speak to everyone.
Startled, Sasuke turned to see Sakura walking to the front. She took a deep breath and looked at everyone, not knowing how people were going to react knowing exactly what she'd done to ruin her relationship with Naruto. Many even thought she was the reason he'd left in the first place.
"I know I broke his heart." She exclaimed. Sasuke shook his head remembering the night he'd been visited by the outraged blonde. It wasn't her who broke his heart, it was what she did. "I wish there was something I could do to that everything back and have him at my side again, but all I have are my wishes. Even after what I did to him, he was always trying to make the tension between us as unnoticeable as possible. He always tried to make things easier. I talked to a lot of people when I was trying to figure out what I could possibly say to all of you, and I found that very few people knew who he was on the inside. But what I did learn was that he valued friends above just about everything else. He would protect them with his life. He also gave more than one hundred percent in everything he did and he was constantly doing everything he could to make people forget about the Kitsune sealed inside of him. In retrospect, everyone is always guilty for neglecting their loved ones... they always regret stuff they did or didn't do. They always cry because such a beautiful life was taken from them. Maybe Naruto didn't deserve to be taken... but I know I deserved to have him taken from me." She sniffled quietly and went back to her seat.
Naruto had tuned out everyone's voices, not caring a single bit about what they had to say about him. He didn't see a point in listening because the one person's opinion he valued most wouldn't speak. Sasuke had always been as much of an enigma as he'd been to everyone else, and he longed more than anything to know what he felt about him. He knew Sasuke couldn't stand the thought of him never coming back again, but all he remembered was the fighting. Things would have been a lot simpler if he could hear all the turmoil running through his rival's head, but the Uchiha was characteristically cold and silent. Many other people turned in their seats, expecting the boy to stand up and speak to them, but he ignored their gazes and stared coldly ahead.
"Bastards." He muttered under his breath. "Why is it that you only care when he's dead?"
Only Naruto heard him.
~~~~~~~
I figure... not very many people are going to like this chapter as it's got a lot of going nowhere talking, however, there is a lot of hidden meanings in some of the speeches, Neji's for example. In fact, both Hyuugas are somewhat foreshadowing in the near future, both in what they say and Sasuke's reaction to them.
Okie, I've probably given away too much already... so I'll just move on to the next chapter!
Also, the blast from the Kyuubi was nothing more than the woman's seal and the final releasing of the Kyuubi's soul... they didn't care whether it killed Naruto or not, so long as he was no longer in his own body. Kuroi Kitsune got it exactly. ^-^
Chapter Title: 38. Naruto's Life
Sasuke went through most of that week as an emotional zombie, only doing the bare necessities to keep himself alive. The same was said about his missions. Though Naruto followed him around (having nothing else to do), he never saw or heard another thing from his friend. Naruto was frustrated that he couldn't figure out how he'd made his voice heard the first time, and, as time went on, he began to pass it off as a fluke and even going so far as to believe it was nothing but Sasuke's imagination.
Even though he'd promised everyone who visited him, Naruto didn't believe for one second that Sasuke would attend his funeral without someone actually forcing him to. He seemed content to stay in his house, but when the day finally came to hold the memorial service, it was Sakura who came and brought him to the monument.
Sasuke hadn't even gotten out of bed that morning, knowing the importance of the day, and when the pink haired girl came over he was still curled up under the covers in just his boxers, eyes open but utterly blank. She closed her eyes tightly to stop her tears, and took a deep breath before prying the blankets from his cold grip.
"Sasuke, get up! It's not even March and you're only in your shorts!" She blushed slightly at the sight of her long-time crush in nothing but a pair of underwear but quickly remembered why she was there. "Do you want to catch a cold!?" Normally he would roll over, shoot her a menacing glare and return to his former position. That morning, however, he didn't even flinch when the frigid air swept over his bare shoulders.
"It doesn't matter." He replied, his voice taking on a dark, monotonous tone.
"Like hell it doesn't!" She yelled back. "You promised us you would go to the funeral. Don't tell me you're going to stay in your empty house and mope around all day. Where is that going to get you?!"
"I don't need your permission if I want to remain here."
"Do you think that being a childish brat is going to bring him back? He's dead and gone, and you're going to have to learn to accept it. I doubt he'd like to learn that you're sulking yourself to death. What good is that?"
"There's not much else left, now is there?" He replied, emotionlessly. Sakura fumed, clenching her fists.
"Why are you being so difficult? Do you think you're the only one who loved him?" He gasped softly and rolled over to look at her. He took a breath to deny any sort of attraction to his rival, but she cut him off. "What about the rest of us? Have you even thought of what Iruka must be going through?! He loved him more than anyone, and yet he's still standing strong." He looked at the floor guiltily.
"I don't think I can get up there and talk about him." He admitted. "He hated me for so long, and even if I did say something, I wouldn't know how much of it was his true self." She sighed and nodded.
"Just come and pay your respects. No body expects you to speak."
"I wish I could."
"Doushite?"
"I wish we could have ended in a place where I knew enough about him that I could tell people just what he meant to me."
"You two were close, though, weren't you?" Sasuke sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, staring at a spot on the wall behind the girl. Naruto side-stepped the glance, getting the eerie feeling that he was looking AT him rather than through him.
"I don't know." He whispered. "I'd like to think so. I'd like to think we were as close as brothers; in a way we were, but I... he... he shut me out, just like he shut out everyone else."
"Come anyways." She pleaded with him. "Maybe you can learn something about him through what other people knew of him."
"Sure." He stood up and, stretching a bit, went to the closet and pulled out the funeral clothing he'd kept from the Third's memorial. It had been altered by Kakashi (he knew Sasuke would never get it done himself and would be damned if he'd get a brand new one) and fit him comfortably.
"I'll wait for you downstairs." The girl lowered her eyes respectfully and closed his bedroom door behind her. Hearing the rustling of fabric, she leaned back against the door and sighed in frustration.
Sasuke's response had startled her. It seemed that generally, people had the same impression, but not even his closest friend claimed to know anything about him. He had managed to remain a well kept secret to everyone, and it wasn't until he was gone that anyone had realised it. She'd gone around to some of Naruto's closer friends; Iruka, Konohamaru, Hinata and even Kakashi, and all of them claimed to know nothing about the boy. She frowned to herself, the reality of the situation hitting her like a ton of bricks.
No one had ever known the true Naruto. And no one ever would.
***
He waited, lying face first on the floor, his head resting on his arms. He didn't feel any sort of unease at being in Sasuke's room while he changed, nor did he feel any disgust. He had become used to catching glimpses of the pale skin from everything; battles to a simple changing of clothing. Chances were it wasn't something he hadn't seen before. But he soon became restless and, wanting to see what the big deal was over his funeral, Naruto pushed himself to his feet and began pacing.
"Sasuke, would you hurry up?!" He growled under his breath, watching the boy pulling the garment over his head.
"I'm coming." Sasuke mumbled reflexively and grabbed a set of weapons just in case. There had been rumours of the Kitsune thrashing villages with the blonde's body and he wanted to be more than ready if ever he got the chance to avenge his friend. He sighed to himself at the sorry state of the village and stepped into the hallway, following the girl down the stairs and out of the cold and lonely house.
As they walked they could see a small crowd gathering in their funeral shrouds at the base of the monument, on the roof of the Hokage offices. They all walked in, Sasuke content to remain at the back of the funeral service as he had no real desire to be there in the first place, but Sakura dragged him to two seats in the front reserved for them. Sasuke frowned, scanning the faces of the people who had come. Sakura pulled on his shirt to signal him to sit beside her and, reluctantly, he turned to the front and sat down.
It took a couple of minutes for the memorial to start, and a couple of the adults spoke on behalf of the boy in the beginning, and Naruto noticed that from the moment someone started to speak of what they'd seen of him, Sasuke had his gaze riveted to the speaker. He smiled remembering the boy's adamant belief that anyone knew anything about Naruto. It seemed that regardless of what he'd claimed earlier, he wanted to know what his rival had been like with others. He wanted to know what other people had seen of him. He wanted to know as much about the now-dead boy's life so that he could know as much as possible.
Konohamaru walked slowly to the front of the crowd not long after. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, much like at his grandfather's funeral, but he was silent. There was a long silence as he stared out at the many faces before he began his eulogy. Unlike the adults before him, he didn't have any paper with him.
"Naruto-niichan was something of an untouchable hero for me for a long time." He started, wiping his face of the tears. "For most of my life I'd always been treated like glass because I was the third Hokage's grandson. Naruto was the first person I met who didn't. I was playing a prank on my grandfather when we first met. We got into an argument and I dared him to hit me. He was about to. I told him that he wouldn't dare because I was Hokage's grandson. He hesitated before slamming his fist down on my head." A few people chuckled quietly, knowing the blonde never followed any rules.
"After that I practically forced him to train me because I saw him as this magnificent prankster. I told him that I was going to become Hokage to show everyone that I wasn't just the revered grandson. He was the one who told me there were no shortcuts in life. You have to work hard in order to get what you want in life." Naruto, who was staring at Sasuke, saw the boy visibly shift in his seat at the last sentences. After another couple of minutes, Konohamaru returned to his seat and Neji reluctantly stood up. He walked slowly and gracefully to the front and stared back at the small crowd with his emotionless white eyes. Naruto watched him for a moment, surprised by their likeness to Sasuke's before returning his gaze to Sasuke when Neji began to speak, gauging his reaction to the speeches.
"Naruto-kun never believed in destiny." He said softly. Naruto saw Sasuke's brow furrow tightly and he remembered that his rival had been in the hospital during his battle with the Hyuuga. In fact, Sasuke had never seen any interaction between the two of them except when they went to rescue him. "It was always something I had the utmost faith in. When I first saw him he looked like a total idiot who probably hadn't learned anything since graduating from the academy. There was no way a loud-mouthed idiot like him could possibly come close to matching me in the Chuunin exam and I believed that it was his destiny to fall quickly and without much of a fight to my touch." Naruto didn't notice the uncomfortable shifting of his rival in his seat. He didn't notice that the speaker's words were making him edgy.
Neji paused, taking in a deep breath, but showed no other signs of distress at his friend's passing.
"He was so strong in his beliefs that he kept going when I thought I'd had him beat. He just had this way of making people believe in him. He was so strong. Even when we were assigned a nearly hopeless mission from Tsunade, he was the one who kept up the hope of the group. I don't think there was a single one of us who doubted Naruto-kun's ability to bring Sasuke back from the darkness."
Up next was Neji's cousin, Hinata, who looked completely frightened at the idea of speaking to the entire crowd. Like the rest of the younger generation, though, she didn't hold a single sheet of paper.
"Naruto-kun was always my role model." She smiled fondly. "He was always so strong even when no body else believed he could keep going. He was always the one thing I would think of whenever I needed the strength to keep on going. I just had to think of him and know I'd be letting him down if I didn't give everything as much as I possibly could. Even when everything was against him, he never ran away, he always faced every challenge head on." Sasuke snorted aloud, halting her speech.
"And look what happened to him the one time he did run and hide." He muttered under his breath. No one but Sakura and Naruto heard his words, and Hinata continued speaking. From then on, neither Sasuke nor Naruto listened to the speeches. They had stopped saying things that were important. After Hinata, Shikamaru stepped up, relating in true Nara style how tiresome the blonde was and exclaiming that it must be something in the hair (he glanced meaningfully at Ino) before the last person stood up to speak to everyone.
Startled, Sasuke turned to see Sakura walking to the front. She took a deep breath and looked at everyone, not knowing how people were going to react knowing exactly what she'd done to ruin her relationship with Naruto. Many even thought she was the reason he'd left in the first place.
"I know I broke his heart." She exclaimed. Sasuke shook his head remembering the night he'd been visited by the outraged blonde. It wasn't her who broke his heart, it was what she did. "I wish there was something I could do to that everything back and have him at my side again, but all I have are my wishes. Even after what I did to him, he was always trying to make the tension between us as unnoticeable as possible. He always tried to make things easier. I talked to a lot of people when I was trying to figure out what I could possibly say to all of you, and I found that very few people knew who he was on the inside. But what I did learn was that he valued friends above just about everything else. He would protect them with his life. He also gave more than one hundred percent in everything he did and he was constantly doing everything he could to make people forget about the Kitsune sealed inside of him. In retrospect, everyone is always guilty for neglecting their loved ones... they always regret stuff they did or didn't do. They always cry because such a beautiful life was taken from them. Maybe Naruto didn't deserve to be taken... but I know I deserved to have him taken from me." She sniffled quietly and went back to her seat.
Naruto had tuned out everyone's voices, not caring a single bit about what they had to say about him. He didn't see a point in listening because the one person's opinion he valued most wouldn't speak. Sasuke had always been as much of an enigma as he'd been to everyone else, and he longed more than anything to know what he felt about him. He knew Sasuke couldn't stand the thought of him never coming back again, but all he remembered was the fighting. Things would have been a lot simpler if he could hear all the turmoil running through his rival's head, but the Uchiha was characteristically cold and silent. Many other people turned in their seats, expecting the boy to stand up and speak to them, but he ignored their gazes and stared coldly ahead.
"Bastards." He muttered under his breath. "Why is it that you only care when he's dead?"
Only Naruto heard him.
~~~~~~~
I figure... not very many people are going to like this chapter as it's got a lot of going nowhere talking, however, there is a lot of hidden meanings in some of the speeches, Neji's for example. In fact, both Hyuugas are somewhat foreshadowing in the near future, both in what they say and Sasuke's reaction to them.
Okie, I've probably given away too much already... so I'll just move on to the next chapter!