The wind howls through his ears, keening his death-song. The air is musty with blood, and Sasuke closes his eyes, the taste of dying in his mouth. The small rivulets of blood that course between his clenched fingers are insignificant compared to the barrage of emotion that baffles him now.
The tears he has not cried taint his skin and roll over the angled planes of his face. The rain beats a drum against his forehead, a strip of white skin that contrasts with his tanned features.
Sasuke ignores the throbbing wound in his side, ignores how the trickle of blood becomes a sea when he rolls over to gaze into the clear-glass eyes of his killer, eyes that shine bright with barely concealed hatred, with never concealed love. He wants her to speak, to say anything that will shatter the gleaming silence that hangs between the two of them, the silence that aches and leaves him yearning for a single word.
Sakura's matted hair is too short to do anything but whisper against the back of her neck in the breeze that carries Sasuke's death-song and her silent pleas away from the ravaged clearing dark with death. Once, Sakura would have wept at Sasuke's death, but instead she crouches beside him and lays a finger on his pale forehead, his last mark of Konoha.
The blood gurgles in Sasuke's throat and a voice deep inside him whispers that he wasn't supposed to die here, with the grass wet against his back and the rain numbing any final fears of death, that something went terribly, terribly wrong. But the pounding in his ears drowns out any last thoughts, so he looks to the sky one last time. There is a ray of light falling from the storm tossed clouds and the second-to-last Uchiha dies with the sun on his face, and for once, regrets of a different kind.