I finished this as fast as possible, 'cause I won't have much time in the next few weeks! I'll have my intermediate diploma in two weeks and a dozen exams to pass! Wish me luck! Afterwards I'll immediately finish the next chappie (in case you still want one XD ).
I recommend you read this one while listening to the incredibly sad song of the Naruto anime! That one when Zabusa dies or when Sasuke goes and Sakura declares her undying love or whenever something important and tear-spilling happens! You know which one I mean? It'll hopefully contribute to the emotional parts of this chapter.
I love you all for having reviewed! I was smiling a hole into my face when I read 'em! I really appreciate every single comment, even if it was only one word! So don't stop and keep on telling me what you think!
Thanks and hugs go as always to my wonderful sister aka Orochimaren! You rock! Kakasarah loves you!
--------------------
"Shit!" Swearing soundly, Sasuke swivelled around on the spot, the kunai in his hand slicing through air. But the man who had attacked him was already gone.
A sticky wetness was descended his back from where his opponent's weapon had caused a gaping wound on his shoulder.
Struggling to regain his composure, Sasuke took a calming breath. Slowly, the feeling of shock subsided, leaving behind a bitter, iron taste from the moment when he had bit his tongue in surprise. Sasuke realized that he had his eyes wide open, pupils that couldn't see flickering across his surroundings in a desperate attempt to find his brother.
A shiver ran down his spine when he felt a familiar chakra pattern appearing in front of him.
Grip tightening on his kunai, Sasuke straightened.
With an effort he closed his eyes again and allowed his other senses to take over completely. There was again the smell of bile and blood and his ears picked up the heavy gasping of his brother.
He had apparently still problems dealing with what had happened inside the Tsukiyomi ('moon of the underworld'), his mind unable to come to terms with all the information that had flooded his senses.
Sasuke remembered his first encounter with the doujutsu and suppressed a shudder. The power of the Mangekyu didn't lie in injuring the opponent physically. It was the mental damage and the problem of dealing with it afterwards that made it a weapon to be feared.
Taking an insecure step forward, heading again to the body that emitted the strong chakra, Sasuke tried to comprehend what had happened after they had lifted the genjutsu.
It seemed Itachi, having realized that he was in no condition to fight right away, had hid his chakra signature from Sasuke's senses and had created a Kage Bunshin, having made it appear behind his little brother.
When Sasuke had noticed that 'someone' was behind him, it had been already too late.
"You can't see either, right?" Itachi's voice suddenly errupted. Sasuke flinched involuntarily and tightened his grip around the hilt of his kunai.
Against his will, the young man's eyes snapped open again. A momentarily feeling of panic rose within Sasuke, making the nerves in his body tingle in fear and anticipation.
'You're blind! Deal with it!', a voice told Sasuke from the back of mind.
"Yeah..." Sasuke heard himself mumble, not knowing whom he had answered.
"Unlike you, I'm already partially used to this condition. My eyesight has suffered from the constant usage of the Mangekyu and I was forced to accept the fact that one day I'd be blind."
Frowning, Sasuke wondered why Itachi was suddenly so talkative. And especially why he was telling him details about his weaknesses. An odd feeling developed in his stomach and the raven-haired man stopped dead in the middle of the destroyed street, eyes still wide open as he 'stared' ahead.
"You won't be a problem for me. It seems you havn't inherited the hatred you need in order to kill me." The Akatsuki member continued. Heart pounding angrily in his ears, Sasuke glared at where he assumed the elder Uchiha to be.
Itachi had stopped breathing heavily and judging by the sound of scraping of boots, had gotten up from the ground. Another noise, so subtle that Sasuke had never paid much attention to it, made him clench his jaws. The sound of a shuriken holster being opened.
"Having revealed his Mangekyu to me, has been a vital mistake of your sensei... Kakashi, unlike us, hasn't suffered from any obvious damage to his eyes. He has in fact a very accurate sight." Sasuke listened as Itachi took three steps towards him, his monotone voice accompanying the noise he made as he advanced.
"It made me wonder... If we say he has mastered the Mangekyu about 8 months ago, this would mean, he shouldn't be able to see shapes farther away than twenty meters sharply. Now I ask you..." Sasuke could almost feel the subtle grin spreading out on Itachi's lips as he drew a breath before his final revelation. "...'who' has acquired the secrets of our treasured sharingan and has the knowledge needed to heal such delicate structures as chakra channels?"
In the blackness surrounding Sasuke, a picture of a young woman flashed up. Her face was tainted with dirt and blood and her green eyes looked tired and desperate, emotions that were immediately replaced by determination and passion when her patient begged her to rescue an unborn child. Pink hair fell in front of her eyes as she turned around to give orders to her friend, and her hands glowed in a darker blue than before.
"Sakura..." The name sprang forbidden to his lips and Sasuke's eyes closed as he fought his first instinct to attack.
"It seems the kyubi shouldn't be my only priority anymore"
"Leave her alone..." Sasuke suddenly choked out, his chest rising angrily as he dug the heel of his left boot into the ground for leverage.
"Not enough hatred yet"
Itachi hadn't even finished his sentence when he felt Sasuke's chakra signature vanishing into nothingness.
Unable to use his eyes, Sasuke focused on hearing, feeling and smell.
A faint trace of blood, a feather like breeze as he moved past Itachi in a blur and the noise of a boot lifting off the ground. Itachi was one and a half meter to his right, moving slowly around in a circle as he was probably searching for him.
Stopping dead, Sasuke dashed to his right, two kunais in each hand. He jumped high into the air and threw them down at the unmoving person. Before the weapons had hit their target, Sasuke had already landed on a large boulder, his arm shielding his face protectively.
With a loud explosion, the tags around the kunais went off, sending debris flying through the air. They showered down on Sasuke like a rain of stinging needles.
Beside the noise the attack had caused, the black-haired man noticed the sound of six shuriken slicing the air on their way towards him.
Still crouching on the boulder, Sasuke flipped backwards a fraction of a second before the shuriken would have hit him, his fingers digging hard into the rough texture of the ground as he landed in a handstand.
Without wasting a moment, he jumped back into a kneeling position and clasped his hands together in the tiger seal. He strained his ears into the silence, but they couldn't pick up anything. Neither his brother nor a Kage Bunshin.
Suddenly two senbons imbedded their sharp heads in his thigh and were soon followed by a shower of other needles.
Not letting go of the seal, Sasuke dived behind the boulder for cover, feeling faintly the chakra pattern of his brother reappearing right where he had been kneeling a second ago.
He formed the last two seals to awaken the jutsu he had learned a year ago from Orochimaru.
'Hidden twin snakes', he thought, an image of the ninjutsu popping into his mind as he waited for the typical sounds.
Right on cue, he heard the boulder cracking open in front of him, closely followed by the ground and a part of a wall.
A whoosh of air indicated Sasuke that the boulder had been broken into half as a twelve meter snake wound its way out of the stone. He didn't have to see it in order to know what was happening.
It was attacking Itachi frontally, angry snarls telling Sasuke that his brother was fighting back vehemently.
There was a grunt from the other man, closely followed by another, lightly darker snarl, which came from the second snake. Sasuke imagined their long lithe bodies gliding across the broken street, their red forked tongues flickering in and out of scaled lips.
"Amaterasu (divine illumination jutsu)!"
Frowning, Sasuke listened as the snakes broke down in the street, their bodies writhing in pain. It was then that he felt a strange heat spreading out across the boulder, crawling slowly towards him.
Jumping back in realization, Sasuke tried to imagine how the jutsu his brother had casted looked like.
The black flames must have already decomposed the bodies of the gigantic snakes and were now spreading out across the surrounding area, burning everything on their deadly path.
'Amaterasu is a doujutsu...', Sasuke mused, brows knitted together in confusion as he jumped away into the opposite direction as silently as possible. He had hid his chakra for now, not intending to draw his brother's attention. He had to work out a new strategy before engaging Itachi in another fight.
'That Itachi can use this jutsu would mean, that the blindness hasn't affected the sharingan itself... '
Which meant that maybe the state of his eyes was either temporary or reversible...
Tentatively, Sasuke reached out blindly. He knew that something was right in front of him and hoped it was large enough to work as a shield. When his fingers came into contact with the rough texture of wood, Sasuke knew that it had to be at least a part of a stall. Slowly he edged around it and leaned back heavily against one of the four tires.
Carefully he felt along his trouser pants to where the senbons were still sticking out of his thigh, blood dripping down his leg from the deep puncture wounds. As he touched them, he felt the liquid pulsing out of the injury in the rhythm of his heartbeat. Itachi had hit the main artery at the inside of his thigh...
Unwinding a bandage from around his ankle he deliberately tied it around his thigh, applying as much pressure as he dared to without cutting the blood circulation completely.
There was a sudden feel of exhaustion when he allowed his head to fall back against the stall and his limbs felt heavy like dead weights. The strain on his mind and body was catching up on him.
Taking stock of his injuries was no good idea, Sasuke decided, trying to ignore the sticky feeling as his clothes clung to his body from his bleeding wounds and sweat.
He knew that killing Itachi was slowly but gradually slipping out of his fingers. His stamina, just like his chakra reserves were low and he doubted that this break would help in the matter.
'I have to finish it with one move', he thought, eyes that couldn't see searching in the darkness behind closed lids for anything that would help...
But there was nothing.
Summoning wasn't an option anymore, for it would alone use up all of his energy. Something he couldn't afford to.
Any fire-attack was useless if one couldn't see where to aim or if one couldn't estimate how much chakra to use to hit the target... and he wasn't even talking about a 'moving' opponent!
In the back of his mind, a voice kept on whispering an attack he had learned many years ago. It had been his favourite move since then, having helped him to kill many enemies. Even Orochimaru's medical pet, Kabuto, hadn't survived a full blast of his jutsu.
'Chidori', the word just wouldn't leave him alone...
The words of the man who had taught him 'Chidori' repeated themselves in his blank mind. It had been the day before he had left Konoha, his friends and his future. When he had made his way down into the abyss...
'Chidori is not to be used against your friends or for revenge... you should already know what this power is for.' Kakashi had told him solemnly and Sasuke 'had' understood.
It had been his sensei's way of telling him to turn from the path of avenging his family. Kakashi had intended on opening Sasuke's eyes for what was lying directly in front of him, waiting patiently to finally get a chance.
His new family.
'Chidori' was a jutsu to be used to save them. Konoha, Naruto...
Sakura...
There was a strange feeling that spread out through his mind suddenly.
'Was this new anger, this newly inflamed hatred against Itachi just his wish to protect them? Was this actually still about revenge at all?'
'It seems the kyubi shouldn't be my only priority anymore', Itachi had said.
Gaining the power of the nine-tails meant killing Naruto. Itachi and Akatsuki would have the means to destroy 'his' village.
And Sakura?
A bitter taste lingered on his tongue when he thought about what Itachi would do with her.
Was 'Chidori' the only thing capable of saving them after all?
But he couldn't use it, even if he wanted. Without being able to see his brother, there was no way to even attempt it. Itachi would be able to dodge before Sasuke had even decided where to thrust it. One didn't need sharingans to hear the chirping sound of the 'Raikiri' to know what was about to happen.
Suddenly a thought hit him.
'But maybe...'
----------
"How's he doing?"
Bewildered, Kurenai looked up to find Naruto staring down at her. She was leaning tiredly back against the wall of the Ichiraku, Asuma's head lying motionless in her lap.
"The bleeding has stopped, but his breathing is still shallow..." She answered slowly, her red eyes flickering to the area of his thigh where a large wound had been ten minutes ago. The ground was covered in blood, hand- and footprints indicating where Sakura and Kurenai had been kneeling.
An exhausted yawn threatened to escape her lips, so Kurenai merely nodded towards the two unmoving forms beside Naruto.
"Sakura is still unconscious... and Kakashi... I'm no medic, but I guess"
"Naruto?..."
Frowning, the blond man swivelled around to find his former sensei staring tiredly up at him through half closed lids.
"Kakashi! Boy, ya got us worried there for a sec!" Naruto exclaimed, grinning like a cheshire cat. He was glad that at least one of his concerns had decided to vanish.
Coughing, Kakashi tried to pry his lids further apart, but to his dismay, his efforts were futile.
"Looks like... I'm stuck like this... for a while." He finally mumbled, letting out a long strained breath.
"Yeah, seems so..." Naruto's gaze suddenly became distant as he looked at Sakura. She was, beside Tsunade, the only one capable of healing Kakashi faster. At least she had been able to get him back into the land of consciousness before she had passed out.
"But don't even think... you could take... advantage of me"
One brow risen, Naruto stared down at Kakashi with questioning eyes.
"My mask is prohibited area..."
A lopsided grin spread out on Naruto's face at that. Patting a hand on the silver-haired shinobi's chest (and ignoring a pained groan from him pointedly), Naruto chuckled warmly. "Seems like you can read minds after all!"
Suddenly, the smile vanished out of Kakashi's eyes, surprising Naruto momentarily.
"Was it Sasuke"
The question didn't shock the younger man at all. This was Kakashi, meaning that even though he had been out cold when their former teammate had appeared, he could have still realized it from the beginning. Knowing the unknowable, or looking underneath the underneath... that was Kakashi-sensei for you!
"I thought I had felt... his chakra pattern for a second before I activated the Mangekyu... but I wasn't sure then..." He said, sounding almost apologetic to Naruto.
"Yeah, he's here... he got us a head start from Itachi." Naruto paused, making a tight fist as he remembered his words. "He promised to make it... "
Looking into the averted eyes of his ex-student, Kakashi registered a shift of emotions. There was something like determination and anger clouding the younger man's bright blue orbs.
"Naruto..." Kakashi didn't get the chance to finish when Naruto suddenly got up and cut him off mid-sentence.
"Take care of Sakura for me. I'll be back soon!"
With that he smashed his palm on the counter and jumped across the structure in one fluid motion, making no noise as he started running away in the opposite direction.
"... don't even think about it..." Kakashi breathed out in a low voice what he had intended to say and had feared would happen.
----------
Sasuke had one chance.
One moment that would decide whether he'd win or lose.
Getting up, he walked slowly around the stall, his fingers tracing along the wood. His ears listened carefully into the ominous silence. There was nothing. Even the explosions had ceased to nothingness.
Itachi had hidden his chakra from Sasuke and was lying in wait somewhere in the darkness.
A slight breeze picked up, playing with ripped curtains and fallen leaves. They rustled in the broken streets and collected around crashed houses and debris.
'There!'
A heartbeat before the two shuriken whizzed past him, Sasuke stepped aside. His hand automatically flew to his own holster,
but to his surprise it was already empty.
"Dammit..." He mumbled, jumping back to where he had heard the weapons imbedding their sharp edges in a wall. Sasuke pulled them out, swivelled around and threw them back at their original owner.
But Itachi had already changed his location.
Before Sasuke could find him with his senses, a felt the chakra of his brother splitting up in four.
The Kage Bunshins were circling him and judging by the sounds of holsters snapping open, were armed with kunais and shuriken.
Jaws clenched, Sasuke's hands sped through a set of seals, ending with 'tiger.
He felt the chakra rushing through his body towards his lungs and he inhaled as deeply as his aching ribs allowed him to.
"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"
A ball of fire blazed in front of Sasuke as he exhaled the chakrafied oxygen. At the same time he spun around his own axis,
listening as the Bunshins exploded from the enormous heat his jutsu was generating.
After some seconds, the flames died down, leaving behind a scorched circle around the younger Uchiha.
For a long second, all he could feel was the hot air washing over his body. He could smell the burnt skin of his face and the smoke that ascended from the melted asphalt, bubbling angrily all around him.
Suddenly the air pressure seemed to shift the slightest bit, telling Sasuke that his brother was near.
Not hesitating, he started forming the first seals for the 'Raikiri', concentrating all his chakra into his arm. It would be just enough for one bright ball. One strike was all he had.
A feeling of unease spread out through his stomach as he waited for the chakra pattern of his brother to reappear.
When it did, surprise registered for the shortest moment on Sasuke's features.
Itachi was right behind him and without thinking, Sasuke turned around, performing the final seal. He felt the chakra speeding through the keirakukei (chakra channels) into his left hand and seeping out of his palm. As it emerged from his skin it formed a flashing ball of energy, sounding like thousands of chirping birds.
In the sun of the early morning, the edge of the kunai in Itachi's hand shone metallically. But Sasuke couldn't see it.
When he heard the sound of Itachi's moving arm and realized what was about to happen it was already too late.
Pain exploded like a jolt in his right shoulder, intensifying as the nuke-nin pulled it down Sasuke's side. There he plunged it deeper into the younger man's stomach, causing a grunt of pain from Sasuke.
The darkness around him vanished for a split second, being replaced by a blinding light as the agony became unbearable.
Everything around him seemed to fade away, sounds being reduced to the dull heartbeat in his ears.
It was then that the loud chirping of the 'Chidori' penetrated the haze clouding his mind and Sasuke knew what he had to do. Ignoring his screaming body and the searing pain in every part of it, Sasuke thrust his left hand forward.
At first there was nothing, but after a heartbeat, that felt like minutes, he felt a slight resistance against his hand.
Which meant that Sasuke had hit Itachi.
Clenching his jaws tightly together, he put all his remaining and rapidly fading strength into his arm and pushed. A strange sound, reminding Sasuke of a spoon gliding through jelly, resounded from where he had pierced Itachi's chest. He ignored it and thrust deeper, impaling his brother further on his arm as the 'Chidori' burnt its way through the tissues of Itachi's chest.
Suddenly the resistance disappeared abruptly. Not having anticipated that, Sasuke started, his hand almost popping out into the air. Caught in the motion, he fell slightly forward and his other hand flew up automatically to brace himself from the fall.
"Urgh!" Sasuke felt the bile rising in his throat as he finally registered what had happened...
With the last energy left in his system, he pulled his hand back, nearly gagging as he felt it slide back through the torso of his unmoving brother. It snapped out of his chest with a slurping sound and as soon as he knew his hand was free, Sasuke staggered backwards.
Disorientated he never noticed the small debris around him and stumbled across a larger boulder. He fell ungracefully on his back, where he lay still for a long moment, listening into the silence...
A loud cough errupted from Itachi's throat, sounding wet. Sasuke could hear liquid splattering onto the ground as he coughed again. He was throwing up his own blood.
When the coughing had stopped, all that was audible was a wheezing sound as Itachi tried to inhale. Tried desperately to take a breath and fill his lungs with oxygen.
But he only brought himself more pain and suffering as his lungs filled with crimson liquid.
Itachi was drowning in his own damn blood.
Chest heaving irregularly, Sasuke suddenly heard his brother falling down on his knees. In his mind he imagined him kneeling on the dirty ground, blood seeping out of his mouth and nose. The hole in his chest had to be enormous, giving the way free to his insides. A large puddle of crimson liquid was probably growing in diameter underneath him, filling the street slowly.
Another wet cough echoed through the silence and Sasuke scrambled away from where his brother was fighting to stay upright.
To no avail.
Itachi fell over, landing in a crumpled heap.
Sasuke waited.
It seemed like his brother had stopped breathing. There was no longer the noise of his desperate attempts to inhale and it sounded like he was lying still.
'Cough.
"Thank... you... little... brother..."
Silence.
Dust was scratching in his eyes and Sasuke blinked a few times, not having even realized that they were wide open. They were flickering across his surroundings, unseeing.
His whole body was shaking, when slowly his mind took over again.
'He's not breathing... he's no breathing...', he repeated over and over again.
An image of his parents, lying dead in the middle of the living room, bleeding and lifeless, sprang to his mind unforbidden.
Itachi was standing behind them. Red eyes devoid of any emotion... or was there something?
'Hate me... despise me...'
"God... god... ." He had killed him!
It was over... he had avenged his clan... had had his revenge... had saved the village... had saved Sakura and Naruto.
He had killed Uchiha Itachi.
Sasuke had killed his own brother...
His breath came out in short gasps.
The pain had long ago crawled into a distant part of his consciousness. There was nothing... Nothing but the feeling of 'his' blood covering his body. Clinging to his arm and hand like dirt, slowly dripping onto the ground and drying on his skin. It felt like his body was absorbing the last memories of Itachi, his last breath echoing in Sasuke's ears. Reverberating in his brain like an echo that would never die.
He felt a tear cascading down his cheek, soon followed by more.
Closing his eyes he bit his lip, drawing blood. The feel of the slight stinging pain comforted him minimally and he tasted his own blood in a desperate attempt to escape. Escape from the last breath he had taken... from the last words he had whispered... from an image of his dying body, Sasuke had never 'seen'...
A gutural sound escaped his throat. His shaking hands clawed at his cheeks, smearing his features with Itachi's blood.
He buried his face in his palms and started sobbing.
Again all sensations, all feeling left his body, leaving him alone in the street.
Before he passed out, his mind shutting down completely, a long scream escaped his soul. Terror, grief and disbelief mingling together...
----------
When Naruto heared the bone chilling scream, he stopped dead in the street.
A strange feeling crawled down his spine as he listened into the silence for other sounds. But there was nothing.
Starting off again into the direction where he had last seen Sasuke, he tried not to imagine what was very likely waiting for him. With a grunt, he shook his head slightly, jumping around a crumpled house wall and across a gaping hole in the ground, where a snake had probably wound its way out into the open.
After another few minutes, Naruto stopped again.
Right in front of him, a scene of destruction unfolded itself to his shocked eyes.
Where the main street had been just yesterday, a battlefield had taken its place. Large holes indicated Naruto where explosions had been set off and uncountable shuriken and kunais showed him the path, the two fighting brothers had travelled.
A strange mist hung low over the scene, smelling faintly of burnt asphalt and wood.
When Naruto took a careful step forward, he felt something squishy underneath his boot. Lifting his leg up, he looked down and found a small puddle of blood filling his bootprint again. When his eyes travelled around he found another one some meters away. A broken boulder nearby was sprinkled with red liquid, having been burnt from one of the Uchiha's 'Katon'.
Inhaling a calming breath, Naruto ignored the other stains and concentrated instead on sounds and his surroundings. After all, he didn't know whether Itachi was still lurking around the next corner, ready to engage him in a fight.
And he had promised Sakura not to leave her alone... and he always kept his promises!
Suddenly a strange heat seemed to crawl up his body and immediately, Naruto recognized it. He had felt it before when he had first encountered Itachi and Kisame with Jiraiya on their quest to find Tsunade.
Just then, his eyes caught sight of a small part of the street to his left. Black flames were licking their way across the debris and remains of houses.
Naruto would have to find somebody to seal those later. Right now it seemed they weren't threatening to burn down the rest of the city.
Stepping around a stall, Naruto found a circle of partly melted asphalt. His eyes didn't stay long though and continued their journey, when they suddenly came across a motionless body.
Not intending to run headlong into a trap, the blond man slowly walked up to where the form was lying.
For a fraction of a second, shock and surprise registered on his features as he realized whose body it was.
Right there, Itachi's corpse was lying in an ocean of his own blood.
A hole the size of a large fist was gaping open on his back and Naruto immediately knew what had caused this fatal wound and had killed Itachi with one blast.
The 'Chidori'...
"Sasuke?" Naruto yelled into the silence.
But he got no answer.
Stepping carefully around the corpse, his eyes found a small heap of debris right in front of him. Again an uneasy feeling spread out through his body as he slowly walked towards the heap...
A shocked gasp escaped his throat forbiddenly as his gaze found the ashen face of Uchiha Sasuke.
He immediately dashed to where the other young man was sprawling on the dirty ground, one arm slung across his torso as he gripped tightly onto a long wound at his side.
Blood was seeping out of the injury, spilling onto the already wet ground. Sasuke's face and limbs were caked in dirt and blood. Naruto couldn't tell whether it was Sasuke's own or that of his brother and actually couldn't care less. As he kneeled down beside Sasuke he found his lids tightly closed. The eyes of the raven-haired man moved erratically underneath them, looking like he was having a nightmare.
But he was alive.
"Sasuke? Hey! Sasuke-idiot!" Naruto almost yelled, his hands lightly squeezing the other man's shoulders in an attempt to rouse him from his troubled sleep.
A pained moan errupted from Sasuke's lips as he tried to move away from the source of discomfort.
"Ya wish, you bastard!" Naruto mumbled, shaking him again, this time a bit rougher.
"Na... ruto"
"Yeah, idiot! What the hell were you thinking, huh? You could die silently alone here?" The angry voice of the blond, caused Sasuke to pry his eyes open slightly, revealing a thin line of his pinwheeled sharingan. It surprised Naruto that they were still activated even though Sasuke appeared to be very low on chakra, barely being able to move his mouth.
"S-sorry"
"For what?" The blond man asked harshly. "Didn't you tell me, you were not here to defend your actions! So stop talking shit and pull yourself together!" Naruto was breathing heavily. He wasn't sure why, but seeing his former best friend like this made him angry... even furious! "We ain't got a ton of the best medics here in Konoha for nothing!"
Sasuke chuckled wetly at that, forcing his eyelids apart another few millimeters, hoping to be able to at least focus on Naruto... maybe glimpse a last picture of somebody he loved like his own brother. The image of Itachi was still swimming around his inner eye, slowly bringing him to the verge of losing it. Was his bloodied brother the last thing he would see before he died?
To Naruto it seemed like Sasuke was staring into nothingness. Although his eyes were the sharingans he had come to know, they appeared to be looking across his head, somewhere into the distance. A light haze covered his pupils as they tried in vain to focus on him...
"You're blind..." The words escaped Naruto's lips in a shuddererd breath.
It wasn't a question. And as Naruto uttered it, his gaze averted from Sasuke's momentarily. He was unable to maintain the eye contact right then.
'A blind Uchiha...'. The concept was ironic and the thought sounded ridiculously unreal to him even as it sprang to his mind.
"Are... are they ok?" Sasuke suddenly asked in a whisper, blood seeping out of the corners of his mouth and cascading down his throat.
The muscles of his jaws clenched as Naruto carefully lifted Sasuke's body and cradled him in his arms. His fingers were digging hard into the other man's shirt and skin, but they both didn't care.
"Yeah... Sakura will be mad at us though." Naruto tried to smile.
Despite his efforts it didn't work. For the first time in his life, he couldn't form a fake smile.
Instead, he felt tears prickling at the back of his eyes.
"She'll kick our asses, heal them and kick 'em again." Naruto continued, slowly getting up from the ground with the heavy body of his friend securely in his arms.
Suddenly he noticed a tear making its way down Sasuke's cheek, dropping down his ear and vanishing in Naruto's jacket.
"There are... so many things... I wanted to... know." Sasuke said in between gasps. "So much... I have to say..." He continued, gulping hard as the words caught in his throat.
"But now... nothing comes to mind..."
To Naruto, Sasuke sounded almost desperate. And so completely lost. As he watched him close his eyes tightly shut, he fought the urge to pull up his nose. Seeing the great Uchiha Sasuke like that was almost unbearable for Naruto.
"She'll fix you up... just hold on..." Naruto's voice started trembling and he bit his lower lip in frustration. He wouldn't show his weakness. That bastard was going to live and then Naruto would never hear the end of it. That thought was the only thing that kept him going right now.
Sasuke was going to be alright. He had promised Sakura to bring him back. Naruto had given her his promise of a lifetime.
She would hate him if he broke it.
"Naruto?" Sasuke's voice sounded so tired.
"I don't want to... I can't die, yet..."
Jumping carefully across the crumbled house walls, ignoring again the puddles of drying blood, Naruto watched his comrade with watery eyes. "Yeah..."
There was a short silence as Naruto increased his speed, dashing across the broken street and getting up onto a nearby house. He landed with a 'thud' on the crushed roof. In his arms, Sasuke's chest rose in an irregular pattern as he heaved a shuddering breath.
"I know, I have.. done a lot... of crap... But..." Sasuke inhaled as deeply as he could, wincing as his lungs refused his orders partially. "... I want to see her again..." He whispered and added slowly: "no... that's not right..."
'I want to feel her again.' He thought silently.
"I want to... explain you... what I have come... to see." Sasuke whispered as more tears spilled down his cheeks. He wasn't ashamed of them anymore. He was human after all. Though he had needed his whole life to realize that.
"Safe your energy... you'll need all ya have to survive Sakura!" Naruto suddenly interrupted him, staring grimly ahead into the distance. He landed on another rooftop and his eyes fell on the silent hut of the 'Ichiraku', the sun of the early morning illuminating the streets below in a hopeful light.
"You'll make it. That's my promise of a lifetime."
A soft, rueful smile spread out across Sasuke's features as he listened to Naruto's words.
Slowly darkness claimed him again and for a short second, the image of his dying brother vanished behind the picture of Team 7.
A picture of days he had treasured all those years. A memory that had kept him alive...
----------
"Urgh..."
Slowly, Tsunade's eyelids fluttered open and a heavy groan escaped her split lips as she felt a headache threatening to make her temples burst. A hand flew up to her forehead, wincing as she touched a laceration right above her brow.
At first everything around her was indistinct, the shadows of the forest bathing her in semi-darkness. Slowly, she brought her arms underneath her chest. With hands that were numb, she pushed herself upright. She felt a wave of nausea washing over her and with an effort, Tsunade breathed through the sickness.
"Damn..." She muttered under her breath. Her eyes were only half open and her vision was still slighly blurred, but she could already make out fuzzy forms looming around her.
The bitter taste of iron was lingering on her tongue when she wetted her lips. A jolt of pain went through her skull and down her spine, making even her fingers tingle.
As she touched her cheek, she found it swollen. It hurt like hell and even without any medical knowledge she would have realized that it was broken. It was probably already purple and would need some treatment later.
'Probably looks like the tail of a monster snake has hit me...', she thought with a chuckle, flinching as it started hurting again.
Blinking away tears of pain, she sat back against a tree and allowed her hand to travel across her chest, down her belly and legs. She wasn't surprised when she found numerous wounds covering her body and a fractured ankle.
But it served her right!
She had been careless. And she had to be thankful that a broken cheekbone and ankle were the only things she would have to take care of...
Which brought her back to the topic at hand.
The forest around her was silent, meaning that Manda and Gamabunta were gone. Also, she couldn't hear any explosions in the village behind her. Which was hopefully a good sign...
"Jiraiya?" She asked tentatively into the silence, carefully rubbing a hand across her eyes to clear her foggy vision.
A slight feeling of panic rose inside the Fifth when she got no answer.
If Manda was gone, she suspected Orochimaru to have at least scrammed. Though she hoped Jiraiya had been able to finish their ex-teammate and favourite bad guy off for real this time!
"Hey, Jiraiya!" She yelled, blinking again.
Her sight had cleared dramatically and by now she could distinguish individual trees from one another.
Allowing her eyes to roam over her surroundings, they suddenly fell on two forms lying some ten meters away from her.
Unmoving.
Jaws clenching, Tsunade pulled herself into an upright position, leaning heavily against the tree for support when her knees threatenend to give away underneath her. Her expression was grim when she slowly walked closer to the two bodies, her mind silently praying to the heavens that her worst fears wouldn't come true...
"Tsunade?"
Startled, she stared at the body lying furthest away from her, immediately recognizing Jiraiya's clothes.
But it hadn't been him who had called her name.
Right beside her oldest friend, a small, dark orange toad was sitting, one tiny hand on its master's arm. He looked up at her with watery eyes.
Ignoring the grinding of bones in her ankle and the searing pain they caused, she increased her pace. Her eyes were transfixed on the motionless man. She didn't pay attention to the second body she walked past, her mind not registering that the torso was missing its head, which had landed some two meters away from the corpse.
"No..." She gasped when she saw the mossy ground underneath the white-haired man soaked in dark blood. A hand automatically covered her mouth in shock and tears brimmed in her eyes. Soon the first salty drops rolled down her cheeks, leaving a wet trail on her dirty face.
Slowly Tsunade kneeled down beside Jiraiya and touched his cheek carefully. It wandered down to his neck, where trembling fingers tried to find a pulse that wasn't there anymore.
"He's already gone." The small toad said in a raspy voice, looking away when Tsunade's hand gripped Jiraiya's wrist, searching frantically for a sign of life. But again she found nothing but cold skin.
"You idiot."
Frowning, the small toad gazed up at the clouded face of the Fifth, finding her features partially hidden behind hair. It sounded to it, like she was angry, the only sign that she wasn't, being the hot tears that dropped down her chin and onto the eremite's chest.
"You damn fool!" She suddenly exploded. Her hands gripped Jiraiya's shoulders and started shaking the lifeless body in despair.
"Don'tcha dare and leave me! 'You' weren't supposed to die today!"
Tsunade's hands coiled into tight fists, gripping tightly onto Jiraya's vest. The blood of the man soaked her skin, making her cry even harder.
"You can't go..." Tsunade sobbed, her chest heaving erratically with each shuddered breath she took. "There are so many people that need you... " Unable to hold herself upright anymore, she broke down, her head falling on Jiraiya's chest.
For a very long moment, the clearing was silent, the only sounds coming from the grieving woman as she cried until she couldn't anymore.
Hiccuping, she lifted her head slowly, puffy red eyes gazing tiredly at the peaceful face of her comrade.
A rueful smile formed as her lips as a thought formed in her mind.
There was no way, she would allow that perverted sennin to die before her!
"Ha... I'll show you that I'm not as useless as Orochi has said." With trembling arms, Tsunade pushed herself upright again. Her eyes closed for a second as she tried to calm her breathing back down. A sad smile suddenly spread out on her split lips when her hands started glowing in a bluish light.
Immediately the gaping wound on Jiraiya's chest started sizzling, the skin regenerating and closing the fatal injury within minutes.
After some time, the color of the Fifth's chakra changed. The now purple energy seeped out of her hands and vanished in her friend's body.
"This'll only work, if I take care of your blood loss..." She mumbled, seemingly talking to the man below her glowing hands.
"Don't want ya to kick the bucket afterwards, ne?"
'I know you will hate me, Jiraiya.' Tsunade thought, biting her lip. 'But I can't live on, knowing you died because I couldn't do the job the village has entrusted me with... I couldn't stand the thought'
Abruptly, her hands stopped glowing.
Her fingers, covered in the man's blood, wandered up towards his still face. She traced the lines of his features lovingly, the tips of her fingers lingering on his mouth for a second as she memorized every single unevenness of his skin.
"You know, you pervert, I was thinking about saying 'yes', the next time you were going to ask me out on a date..." Tsunade whispered, slowly leaning down and softly touching her lips with his. The kiss didn't last long and when she straightened again, new tears welled up in her glassy eyes.
"I knew that kinjutsu would be useful one day..." She mumbled. Looking up into the bright sky, she added in a louder voice: "And you said 'Tensei' (ninjutsu to transfer ones own life into a dead) would ruin my life, Sarutobi!"
"No, it'll save it..."
Inhaling deeply, Tsunade gathered her chakra in her hands and laid them down on Jiriya's chest. It flowed out of her palms and entered the dead shinobi's body instantly.
After mere seconds, she felt her energy leaving her system, filling her with a strange feeling of utter exhaustion. A wave of warmth and peacefulness flooded her body and suddenly her fears and anger weren't important anymore.
Her eyelids felt heavy and she lost all sense of her surroundings. All she was aware of were her hands and the two heartbeats echoing in her ears.
One was slowly gaining strength, beating in a steady rhythm.
The other heartbeat was rapidly fading away.
They were mingling together, sounding like the other heart wanted to take over for them both...
--------------------
FINIS?
Sorry this got longer than I had intended, but well... sniff! I couldn't just end it there! T.T
Now that all the fights are over, I thought about writing the conclusion, but that lies in your own capable (of writing reviews) hands...
Oh, and just because I want to show you that I'm actually 'thinking' about what I'm writing: I am aware that Kishimoto Masashi said in recent manga chapters that Chiyo is the only one known to be capable of using 'Tensei ninjutsu'. But I really needed that here! So lets just assume, Tsunade is even cooler than we have thought and that she was working on her own life-transfer-jutsu. o.O'
Oh, and 'lili boom': Sorry, Genma hasn't graced this story with an appearance, yet, but maybe next time... ;)