A/N: Hello :D It's been quite a while hasn't it? Well, this fic is nearly done, and I'm hoping to finish it during the Christmas holidays! Anyways, a very Merry Christmas to everyone! Enjoy :D

Disclaimer: Naruto's not mine…in fact, a lot of things aren't mine o.O Like a clean room, for example. Wow, it's been a while since I could see the floor. It doesn't help that one of the favourite cleaning brands in this crazy household of mine happens to be Mr. Clean. But at least there's Tide. Sweet, sweet Tide laundry detergent…-hugs clothes fresh out of the laundry- Umm…anyways…yea, Narutonot mine. –coughs and slowly walks away-

Warning: There's yaoi and swearing! If you have a problem, then maybe you should press your best friend the Back Button :D –hugs my friend the Back Button-

"..." normal speech

'...' thoughts

Bolded text – setting

Italics – emphasized thoughts or words (can also be flashbacks)

Chapter 17 – Colour Me Blood Red

Konoha – Forest, clearing

Sasuke trudged onward, and he could feel the wind's fingers running through his hair. His feet were like lead, but his mind was alight with all that would soon come to pass. His body shook with excitement, and the strange glint in his eyes grew ever brighter as he moved closer. Soon, he would have his revenge, and prove to Konoha that Uchiha Sasuke was better than Naruto and Gaara of the Sand. In a few moments' time, he was going to be happier than he had ever been, because something was coming. He could feel it, almost taste it on the night air. He could taste it, a sooty hot taste that came from everywhere, as if someone was planning a cookout and all of civilization was going to be the barbeque.

He could almost imagine the faces on Naruto and Gaara when he defeated them once and for all. Then, no one would dare disrespect him like that ever again. With this thought in mind, Sasuke increased his speed. He knew that with each step, he was getting closer and closer to Naruto and Gaara. And, as if no time had passed at all during his dark brooding, he broke clear of the clearing and landed in front of Gaara, who was already standing there. Although the sand-nin's arms were crossed, the demented grin on his face was like arms opened in welcome. Gaara of the Sand had already been waiting for the prodigy of the Leaf village, and it was unclear as to who was to fall first.

Konoha – Forest, clearing

Gaara stared at Sasuke with angry, reproachful, and distrusting eyes. Naruto stood beside him, but he looked ready to collapse with the suspense. The blonde was supposedly having his own inner dilemma. But that wasn't what was important now. At this moment, this very second, is where the last of the Uchiha clan would be swept away by the sands of time. Despite the circumstances, Gaara felt the grin tug at the corner of his lips as he envisioned the thick, red, coppery liquid that would spill from the Uchiha as sand enveloped him.

Then, Gaara grinned. Naruto had never seen him grin before, and it chilled him. It could not have been more savage if those gleaming white teeth had been filed to points. For a split second, Naruto felt as if Gaara's smile was something he had seen before. A twinge of familiarity arrested him for a few moments, and sound flooded his mind. Most of the noise was blurred and fuzzy, but Naruto could just make out small snippets of it as he felt his mind strain desperately to hear more…

"This is the end! Fifth Gate, the Forest Gate…Open!"

"Primary Lotus!"

An explosion.

"…Sabaku Kyuu!"

An agonized scream attacked his mind, and it became so loud and piercing that Naruto felt himself flinch in pain.

The scream died with shocking suddenness, but the feeling of horror remained, like an echo of evil. It was loose and terrible. Naruto's eyes darted wildly around the clearing, but all he could see was Sasuke's still form, and Gaara standing beside him. 'Probably just nerves…' Naruto thought to himself nervously. He had to escape, he needed to escape, but where would he go without Gaara to guide him?

Naruto met Sasuke's blood-red eyes. There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think – and you would be right. It was a face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated a horrible handsome warmth, a face to make glass cups shatter in shaking hands, to make small children trip and crash into board fences and then run wailing to their mothers with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees. Not so much unlike Gaara's, it was a face that guaranteed to make the innocent turn evil and bloody.

However, on the surface, Sasuke had his trademark smirk.

"I've got you now," he said.

Naruto berated himself for looking so vulnerable. He would rather die than to allow Sasuke talk to him like that.

"Sasuke! –"

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sasuke interjected, venom dripping from his words. He continued with a low, menacing breath, "When I'm through with you, you're going to wish you'd never been born."

Naruto took a breath to retort before proceeding to beat the living daylights out of the glaring Genin in front of him, but the voice of Gaara stopped his words. "Stop talking and fight me, Uchiha," Gaara said, the crazed grin still on his face.

Sasuke suddenly turned on the sand-nin with unsuppressed ire that had been bottled up inside for so long. His face filled with a kind of insane rage. "I'll kill you!" Uchiha cried, his voice filled with revenge.

Large waves of sand erupted from the gourd on Gaara's back. As it spilled out, it seemed like Shukaku was laughing deep in the forgotten depths of the Gaara's mind. The sand became uncontrollable, but Gaara did not even bother trying to bend it to his will. All he wanted now was blood.

Naruto felt sand strike him, and he was knocked backwards until he hit a tree painfully. His head throbbed, and the wind had been knocked out of him. Naruto sat, crumpled on floor, his breath coming in quick, whining gasps. His headache was sharp now, needling into him with quick hard bursts of pain. He could feel blood pumping in his head, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't distinguish what was going on around him. The edges of his vision began to clear, and when it had completely gone, Naruto wished that it hadn't.

Both Genins in front of his dazed self were fighting relentlessly. At the moment, they both seemed to be equal, but as each second passed by, one of them would become even more bloodthirsty and increase the severity of their attacks. Naruto stared, bewildered, as he watched Sasuke charge towards Gaara, kunai in hand. A wall of sand blocked Sasuke's attack, and once again the Uchiha was forced back. Naruto knew that it wouldn't be long until Sasuke began to actually make contact with Gaara.

Sasuke lurched out of the shadows of the small clearing like quicksilver. Gaara had a huge and awful grin, floating dreamily in the fireshot darkness like a trace memory of lunacy.

As he watched Sasuke suddenly appear under Gaara before kicking the sand-nin under the chin, Naruto suddenly felt sick. Dread began to overtake him.

Sharingan eyes were fastened hypnotically on Gaara, but all the same, Naruto felt something eat him up inside as he looked on. Sasuke's body seemed to have become twisted, shrunken, and chronelike. In fact, both bodies of their body seemed to become so. Dread turned to hate. "Stop…" Naruto muttered as he watched a crack appear on Gaara's face as Sasuke landed a hard punch on him. "You idiots…"

Why did it have to come to this? Two of the people that Naruto supposedly cherished the most, pitted against each other. They were fighting to the death, and as the seconds passed by, Naruto tried to pull away, but was unable to. He felt he was dying himself and did not want to see this preview of his own eventual death. This had to stop.

The situation escalated as a chirping sound met Naruto's ears. Wide, blue eyes locked onto something bright in Sasuke's hand. "Chidori…" Naruto whispered the vaguely familiar word as he watched forks of blue lightning appear from the chakra on Sasuke's hand.

When Naruto turned to look at Gaara, the sand-nin's smile was long gone. Instead, a cracked face greeted him. Naruto saw Gaara raise his hand that was hooked into a shaking claw, and a wave of sand rushed towards Sasuke. In turn, Sasuke charged forward, Chidori in hand.

With a long-forgotten agility that Naruto didn't know he had, Naruto made a great leap between Sasuke's chidori and Gaara's wave of sand.

Konoha – North Gate

Izumo lifted his head slightly as he felt large amounts of chakra not too far off. "Hey, Iwashi–" he began.

"I know, I feel it too," the man replied, already looking off into the distance. "We should go check it out."

Izumo paused for a second, then he narrowed his eyes as he realized something. "There's an unfamiliar presence of chakra. It's not the normal kind. It's something…different."

He became suspicious. Was it missing-nin? The chances were low that any kind of nin would possess a chakra so different, and…demonic.

"Let's go," Iwashi said gruffly, senses already alert to the abnormal chakra that seemed to grow stronger with each passing moment.

"Maybe we should get someone to help," Izumo suggested.

Iwashi shook his head. "There's no time for that." With a nod, both nins disappeared into the night, straight in the direction where Gaara and Sasuke were fighting.

Konoha – Forest, Clearing

Sasuke felt his heart stop as a flash of blonde hair appeared in front of him. A feeling of fierce protectiveness swept over him all at once, a feeling that perplexed him and stunned him with its depth and strength.

'Naruto!'

He didn't know what possessed him to do it, but he felt his feet dodge quickly to the left, his chidori missing the blonde by inches before Sasuke lurched to the side. Sasuke was bewildered.

He had the chance to finally kill Naruto, just like he vowed he would do, but he didn't. Even when the perfect chance presented itself, Sasuke let it slip. For a moment, Sasuke remembered all that he had found out about himself over the years: flashes of experience, marginal notations in all the hieroglyphs of emotion – love for Naruto, jealousy, selfishness, a need to subjugate all to his will, disgust for the weak, hate for the people he cherished, hate for himself. Was it possible that a small piece of sanity in Sasuke's mind still clung to the thought of Naruto?

Almost missing his footing, Sasuke felt his chidori dissipate as he quickly turned around. For a shining moment, he surprised himself as he felt relief wash over him when he saw that Naruto remained unscathed.

Then…he saw the sharp pinnacle of sand. He didn't want to see. No, he most definitely didn't want to see.

Yet the dark figure ran towards him, hoping against hope that he would somehow make it in time.

Overhead, the cosmic wheel of the sky.

His head jerked up, his eyes wide, his flesh shrinking against his bones. Now there was sound, and if the night hadn't been cloudy, the moon, nearly full, would have shown him –

A piercing scream shot up into the canopy of night stars overhead, and then it suddenly faded before flowers of blood stained the rich soil of Konoha's forest a beautiful shade of red.

A/N: Ahh, it's been so busy lately that I can't reply to all the reviews! I'm really sorry!!! Honest! Everything's just been going crazy over here, but I appreciate every single review! Many hugs and cookies to all my wonderful reviewers for sticking with me! –teary eyes-

Tsuki