Memoirs of a Shinobi


Just Say Goodbye

+Iruka+

attach an anvil to the steel strings of my heart.
watch the bloody-pretty organ go hurtling over the edge.


Empty. Empty. Empty.

Empty like your words, empty like your promises, empty like my words, empty like the skies, empty like the night, and empty like my body under my skin. EMPTY. EMPTY. EMPTY LIKE YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING PROMISES.

YOU PROMISED, NARUTO. YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD ALWAYS LIVE.

How could you break that promise?

That one promise that means the most; carries the most weight. The one promise that should never be broken. How could you do this to me—to everyone?

I've been screaming so much, been crying so much, I don't know if I can even speak anymore. Everything hurts now; I can't move without crying out in pain. I don't even know where any of this comes from.

My throat hurts. Can you swallow for me? I don't think I can see anymore; why don't you just take away my eyes? At least they wouldn't burn anymore. Please.

Please, Naruto, come back…

It's hard to leave you behind when there's so much around me reminding me of you. There's a picture on the wall of you, and I stare at it sometimes, wondering if you can see me through the eyes of your picture. My thoughts are drowning in memories of you. It's like you don't want me to forget you, even though I have already tried to several times. I don't think I can ever forget about you, but I'm going to try.

I have dreams about you returning, but they are to remain dreams, or break the fragile barrier between fantasy and reality. If they were to break that vapor-thin ribbon between sleeping and waking, life would slowly unravel.

I want you to leave from these dreams, so I can finally stop dreaming, can finally start living, can finally stop making up fantasies and focus more on reality than I am, because I know I have hundreds of daydreams everyday. Yet I never truly believe they will come true. I want them to, but they shall never break the daylight hours, nor grace the deepest nights.

If these dreams were to come true, it would break the gossamer mosquito-webbing separating my dreams from reality. They would clash, intertwine, churn together until I am caught in the middle of a maelstrom that I can never escape until I pull the plug and it drains out.

It's this venomous hope that feeds these delirious dreams: this beautiful, poisonous hope-flower with hearts for petals, lies for thorns, the stem a thick memory that begins to wilt under times' heavy hand, that rests upon my heart; twisting, twining around it until I cannot help but be possessed, be consumed by it. I cannot help but smell its fragrance that eludes me even now as I struggle to find pure hope yet again in the face of adversity and shame.

Your memory is preventing me from believing in myself and anyone else; I can't live anymore as long as my disillusioned hope rests in my heart. So please just break me, even from behind death's curtain, so I can move on from these memories of you that are as hollow as your eyes in the photograph.

I need to walk away from this past that's clinging to me like a tainted virus that's ready to seep into my skin. I reach up and take your picture down from the pin that holds it up, and fiddle with the edges of the rumpled photograph with my tired fingers. Your eyes gaze back at me, a half-smile poised on your frozen lips and I rub the smooth surface over your face.

But then I remember your betrayal—your inability to keep the promise that you swore you would always keep, and you always kept your word. In a fit of anger I tear the picture into tiny pieces and throw them in the air, away from me, wherever else they can go. As I watch the parts of the photograph float to the ground, I realize I'm crying at the unfairness of it all.

I want to see you again; I want to watch you smile at me; I want you here in front of me so I won't hurt like I do when you're dead. I want you to hurt me, break me, make my insides ache so badly it's like I can't breathe. I want you to make me let go, forcefully, purposefully, in lucid, vivid Technicolor, so I'm forced to accept this tragic ending rather than hang onto fragments of the past, and the hope that clings to my heart. I want these memories to stop harassing me, the smells and thoughts of years past bombarding me so I only get a few moments of peace.

It hurts so badly to be here, to be alive when you're not here to live life with. How can I be expected to live when my 'son' is dead? It's like taking away my lungs, or my heart, or ripping open my chest, and expecting me to live afterwards. But I guess I always expected too much.

We human beings never learn, do we? After we begin to hurt, begin to break, we start to heal. We begin to search for something new to set our sights on, something better, something completely opposite from what we had craved previously. We believe that this time, something better will happen; that we won't break like we did before.

Unfortunately, it is this hope that drives me to believe that you're still alive, the hope that languishes in my chest even now, and was fresh just then. It is this hope, this seed that grew and bloomed into a beautiful flower that is destroying me. It is this hope that fed everything I knew back then, that now, months later, begins to make me hurt more than any broken promise could.

Leave me alone. I'm desperate for just a moment of peace, a moment of alone time that I can be nothing but myself. There's nothing in this tirade of emotions and voices that rolls on inside my head like a wave that never ends, never stops, never begins.

No more vicious cycles of waiting for something that will never come, waiting for someone that will never be there. No more memories.

Oh but I wish, and it hurts to wish for something that will never be true.

Memory is a cursed thing, and I wonder briefly why people possess it. It's obvious it brings nothing but misery to those that have it, yet so why do we remember? Why is it that when we so desperately want to remember something, there's nothing left: no more laughing as I chase after you, no more buying ramen for dinner for you, no more teaching you and you failing miserably, and me taking you out again to make you feel better.

There will be no more meetings, no more love. I will never hug you and send you away to Kakashi for him to teach you to kill. I won't ever be able to protect you again; I won't be able to fight and protest for your release when the village condemned you to death when the Kyuubi was released. I will never be able to lend you my couch for the night, when your apartment was trashed by every hateful villager in Konoha.

There will never be any more chases around the village when you pull a prank; no more condescension when I caught you; no more yelling and screaming and 'Oh, Naruto, why wont you ever GROW UP?'

Oh, memory is a cursed thing. We manipulate our memories (all of our memories, the good the bad and the ugly) to display happiness, to be good and wonderful and nothing terrible left in its hidden depths. We cherish what we once cursed.

I must admit, there were times when I hated you, but I kept it inside. Everyone hates people they love, especially when they don't live up to expectations. Why, Naruto, couldn't you live up to expectations? Just. This. Once. Why couldn't you keep your promise?

I try to forget your smile now, but it keeps coming back. Like a chronic disease, it clings to me and never fully lets me go.

It just hurts; hurts so much when you love someone and they will never return. Or that you believe in them, but they leave and there is no true ending.

It doesn't even have to be a happy ending; it just has to be an ending.

Because, right now, there isn't one, and I'm just fading away.

Why won't life grant me this one last wish? Why do I have to care even after you've been gone a year. Yes, that's right—a year. Do you have any idea how long that is? To keep thinking of someone, to keep wishing for them to return and say, "Hey, guys! What did I miss?"

But I guess you're not going to do that. No one ever does that.

Why should you have to return when there's nothing left to return to? A village that shunned you when it should have celebrated your sacrifice; friends that laughed at you behind your back, wanted and waited and wished for you to fail, but pretended to believe in you. Enemies that wanted your body but refused to accept you for who you were. They were basically a bunch of liars and cheats and cruel, cruel friends (no true friends but me, Naruto, I'm your only friend, but I'm leaving, slowly, slowly.) I know you didn't like this world, but you will not spare us a human courtesy and say goodbye. Just say goodbye. Somehow. A note, a sign, something.

It's so simple. Just two words.

Good. Bye.

And then it will be over. Why didn't you just say it before you left, to me, to Kakashi, to Sakura, to anyone? My heart hurts when I think of how easily it could be over—it makes me sad that all this feeling, all this time, all this heart has gone to waste, but I will be happy if it ends, because it happened. Why can't you just say goodbye?

Say goodbye.

Fuck it, you're never going to speak to me again.


i'm sorry if this sucks, and im sorry if this doesnt live up to your expectations. me and iruka just arent buds, and so this chapter was hard to write. besides, i had to concentrate on school for a while-- a long while, maybe, but it was needed.besides, theres this tricky thing that fellow author(ess)s would understand... its called writers block. oh, and if this is different from what i usually write, sorry. this stuff is actually taken from my journal entries, from various points in my life and situations that differ entirely from what this story is about, and i somehow just wrangled them into a completely unintelligible story that doesnt quite fit with the rest of the entries. so, you get to know a little more about me... i guess. they dont make much sense unless you're me. ill shut up now.

next: tsunade is just so tired of everything.