This is inspired because I'm, frankly, very surprised no one's written one like this before now. Or at least, one I've read... If any of you have written one similar to this, please let me know. I'd like to see if anyone else has had the same idea as mine.
Sad, but somehow... Naruto-ish.
Gah.
Naruto-centric, somewhat stream-of-consciousness, I suppose.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my sanity and my laptop, and I've been wondering lately about my sanity...
WARNINGS: CHARACTER DEATH. (expect anything else?) Language. Spoilers, probably.
Not A Normal Hero
"I've decided to get my name carved on that stone, too! Hero! Hero! That's what I'll become!"
---Uzumaki Naruto
It hurts like hell to die.
Having had so many people try, with various degrees of near-success, over his years should have made him at least a little resistant to the pain.
Not really.
Pain like hell is pain like hell, after all. Can't really change it or pretend it's something better.
He did, of course, because 'can't' was something he'd learned, also with various degrees of near-success, to erase from his vocabulary.
And yes, he realized that there were numerous jokes about his vocabulary.
Sasuke would've probably pointed most of them out right about now.
But Sasuke couldn't point anything out now, or ever, with his heart ripped out by his best friend.
In the end, the only promise Uzumaki Naruto ever broke was the only one that had ever meant anything. Sakura had forgiven him of it, long ago, but he supposed in a way that he'd still held true to his nindo: he'd brought Sasuke back to Konoha.
Just... dead.
Somehow, when the other, impossibly-strong foe (and it irked Naruto to no end that he didn't even know the man's damn name...if something like that even had a name) had come up, he'd given it everything he had but had come into the fight fully preparing to lose.
He hated when he was right.
So now, after so many battles against so many different enemies, this was really The End. He knew it, the same way he knew in that last battle with Sasuke that one of them wasn't going to walk away and, damn it, Uzumaki Naruto didn't want to die yet.
He laughed bitterly.
Yeah, he'd lived another three hours.
Whoopee.
He could hear Sakura-chan's desperate yelling, jumping over Sasuke's mangled body without even a cursory glance. He wasn't sure if he was proud that she cared so much or concerned because, for all Sakura knew, Sasuke could've been still alive—somehow, but then the bastard had always been too obsessive and damn stubborn for his own good—and a threat.
Then again, Sakura-chan was a medic-nin, so he supposed she knew a dead body when she saw one.
Lips quirking into a smile, or at least the ghost of one, he hoped she ignored the blood spurting from his mouth. And the gaping hole in his stomach. And the fact that half of his face was almost blown off.
Whoever romanticized ninja battles should be put in one and see if it turned out like all the shojo mangas they wrote.
If they survived, that is.
He was wandering again.
"... and, damn it, not you too! I've—hic—lost too many damn people that I care about! I am not losing you!"
He chuckled weakly, coughing up even more blood that he knew was unhealthy if he wasn't fucking dying.
"...th-that's the Sa-Sakura-chaan we know and love," he slurred, voice so faint even he could barely hear it.
He didn't want to die—who did? But... it was also a kind of relief, too.
No more pain. No more duty. No more tearing his friends apart, or watching them be torn apart when there was no fucking thing he could do.
No more hatred.
No... more...
"... tell... Gaara... he... was... right..."
Naruto grimaced, struggled to smile through it, and blue eyes that had watched over his village since boyhood slowly flickered out and faded.
----
She stood before the little unmarked grave in the desert, where only the 'ai' kanji was carved on it, stained red from the setting sun painting the sand bloody.
"Na... Naruto told me to tell you... that... thatyou were right."
The grave didn't answer, the sand didn't comfort, and she fell to her knees and wept.
----
"Neh... Gaara, how do you think all of us'll kick the bucket?" Naruto grinned, trying to uplift his somewhat mentally unstable, morose friend.
Gaara blinked at him, taking his time.
"You'll have your name carved on that Stone. That is the only thing I am sure of in this world."
Unspoken were the words, "You'll die a hero..."
----
There is a name written on the Memorial Stone of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. It is a name burned into the villagers' hearts and carved into the mountainside.
Uzumaki Naruto—Rokudaime Hokage
And, in the end, he never did go back on his word, either. And when his name was called among the dead, a village mourned.
----
"I never go back on my word! That's my ninja way!"
---Uzumaki Naruto
"These are not normal heroes... they are all heroes who died while on duty."
---Hatake Kakashi
----owari----