VERY IMPORTANT: I need beta readers for my Naruto fanfics badly, so anyone interested in applying please see my profile for the application. The incentive is you'll get to see chapters A LOT earlier than the rest of my readers and that UPDATES WILL COME FASTER IF I HAVE A BETA.

Hey guys, so I'm obviously having a lot of issues with the ending of this story. Lol

For those who aren't aware, originally there was an ending posted that was kind of tragic/setting up a sequel but due to some reviews and some of my personal contemplation, I decided I wanted to change that ending.

But then contemplation for how to change that ending took me into like a mental labyrinth lol.

So I posted the first chapter of a sequel, and then immediately deleted it because I didn't like that either. Then everything all just became so messy.

ANYWAYS.

This is the FIRST HALF of the original ending (for those who have seen it before you will recognize it), I've decided to keep at least this half, and may or may not post the latter half as the official ending, or completely rewrite the last half of the final chapter. Either way, the next chapter after this will definitely be the end.

Originally I wanted to do a sequel but my mind is kind of out of ideas lol. I might still do one…depending on how the final chapter unfolds. Either way stay tuned, and definitely don't be afraid to suggest ideas because my mind is kind of running in circles at this point in terms of this story. lol

Also note: I will get around to grammatically revising and correcting the previous chapters but not until after I've posted the ending, just so my readers don't have to wait any longer. Just my own personal opinion but I really don't like it when writer's choose to revise or rewrite beginning chapters when they have readers waiting to read new ones. (She says totally hypocritically haha).

Sakura hated how he could do this to her. Always pull her heart back to him when all she wanted to do was hate him. She knew this was the first time he had ever pleaded with another individual, probably the first time he had ever willingly apologized. The first time he ever conceded to his heart.

"Sasuke…" Sakura began but stopped herself almost immediately after hearing herself say his name. Scared of how softly it came out.

Sasuke seemed afraid of what she would say next. His next words came out quick and desperate; his breaths short and heavy with each syllable. "Stay with me. Don't go; don't leave. Please."

Sakura pressed her eyes close. She couldn't forgive him. She couldn't forgive him.

But no matter how much her pride screamed at her, she couldn't bring herself to berate the man, couldn't bring herself to even push him away.

"Sasuke," she said his name again after a long silence. The instant he heard her voice again, the Uchiha sucked in a sharp intake of air through his lips. "I-I…"

-don't love you anymore.

She tried to get those words out but they just…couldn't form.

In her mind, she reminisced about all the instances in which she'd seen Sasuke agonized over his love for her.

When Itachi/Tobi stabbed her with that poisonous dagger and he thought he was going to lose her again:

-a spew of viscous blood erupted from her lips, staining Sasuke's shirt and pants while the residual leaked out from the corners of her mouth, dribbling down her cheeks. The Uchiha's face was almost as pale as hers, his mouth parted in silent horror as all he could think to do in the moment was to cradle her morbid form.

On her birthday when he finally confessed to how much he actually loved her:

"…if you were to go, if I couldn't see you for just a day," he moved and placed his mouth up close to her lips, not kissing her completely as he whispered the final phrase: "I would go insane."

When she was comatose from Itachi's poison:

Sasuke sat next to her beside, his hands clutching her motionless right one desperately. Stress lines marred his once perfect complexion while dark circles hung beneath his eyes as he just sat there, staring into her sleeping face.

"Please...Sakura," he intoned while continuing to clutch her hand. "Wake up."

"...please...just open your eyes."

"I don't want to lose you again."

Sasuke brought her hand up to kiss and then kept it pressed up against his cheek.

"Don't leave me."

His head bowed down as he tried to control his emotions, spasmodic tremors simultaneously raking up and down his body. Then, a second later, he burst standing up, running to a nearby waste basket and vomiting into it.

He really did love her. Sakura conceded this fact now in the present.

But…

"Sasuke," she spoke finally in a soft voice. "I can't stay."

I'm sorry.

Sakura had to fight with every bit of willpower to stop herself from saying those two words as she gazed up at Sasuke's heartbroken eyes. The pained expression across his beautiful face that implored her to change her mind.

She parted her lips to speak again but nothing came out.

Instead she could only continue staring into his eyes, trapped just like before by the will to always help this man whenever he needed her.

"Well, isn't that sweet," a familiar voice spoke from somewhere behind them, amidst the shadows of night.

A loud high pitched laugh shattered their reveries. Sakura turned her head around to take in her doppelganger's form, grinning smugly as usual.

The instant Sasuke's eyes landed on the lookalike's form, he moved Sakura behind him so he could protectively in front of her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked with a familiarity that shocked Sakura. Her twin's laughter came next.

"The real question here is what are you doing here, Sasuke? Winning fair maiden's heart? Redeeming yourself of all the evil deeds you've done in the past? Then riding off to a happily ever after?"

Sasuke remained silent at her jeering. Behind him, Sakura swiped the tears from her face as she tried to regain her composure.

Her twin took one step closer and Sasuke drew his kusanagi from the sheath that hung off his belt. He wore a simple long sleeved black dress shirt and matching slim black pants. At the sight of his combat pose, Sakura's doppelganger threw her head back laughing.

"So eager to fight, Sasuke…" The twin crossed her arms in front of her chest. "But then again, brute force is always your way of doing things, right?"

"What do you want?" Sasuke asked impatiently.

The doppelganger inclined her head, looking at him down her nose.

"I just want to talk, Sasuke. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even have Sakura right now."

The real Sakura stepped out from behind Sasuke finally, took a few steps so that she could look at both him and her doppelganger at the same time. "What's she talking about?"

Sasuke met her gaze: "She is the Third Myael."

Sakura gasped but he continued explaining: "The Third Myael requires a living conduit tied to this world to operate."

Sasuke's gaze dropped to the ground. "…it chose you. I don't know why. Before I even spoke of my wish to revive you…the Third Myael made a copy of your soul and used it to make this insane specter."

The girl in question chuckled. "Oh come now, even specters have feelings. What's all this talk of insanity?"

Sakura turned to look at her twin again. She was pouting in an exaggerated manner. The doppelganger spoke again: "But I guess if you want me to act insane."

In a second, Sakura suddenly saw the doppelganger rushing at her. Before she knew it the doppelganger had disappeared straight into her body.

Sakura found her body acting without her permission: she drew a katana straight out of thin air that looked completely identical to Sasuke's kusunagi. She poised the sword out towards the Uchiha who now stared wide eyed at Sakura's smirking, possessed form.

"You know, Sassssssuke…" she hissed with a cruel grin. "…I've been waiting to do this for a really long time."

The flames around them died down right as she rushed towards him at inhuman speed. Sasuke only just managed to draw up his sword in defense before she slammed right into it, his kusuangi's edge straight out cracked from the force of her attack. Sakura's blade remained unmarred.

The playful façade dropped by her next hit and Sasuke once again found himself looking into the eyes of an insane and enraged Sakura. Her next hit came towards his shoulder which Sasuke once again blocked, and again another piece of kusunagi chipped away.

"You know what I just finished speaking about with your beloved?" she taunted cruelly. "How much she still loves you."

Sasuke's eyes widened at her words. The doppelganger made Sakura's body laugh while the real one flushed on the inside in embarrassment.

"I told her I could see her heart. That she couldn't lie to me about her feelings. She ran away from me because she knew it's the truth!" Her doppelganger shoved Sasuke away with her katana, in the process throwing a deep slice into his chest.

Her movements were too fast, faster than Itachi even and Sasuke couldn't avoid it.

The Uchiha buckled upon impact and had to stab his kusanagi into the ground to maintain upright while he cradled his now badly bleeding chest.

Her doppelganger tauntingly flicked a bit of his blood off of her blade before she spoke again: "But you know what the best part of that was? I was bluffing."

Real Sakura gasped inside her mind, trapped as she was inside the dark space.

Sasuke panted heavily while sweat poured down his forehead from his severe wound; he strained his eyes and summoned his Mangeyko Sharingan.

The world turned black around him, for about a three feet radius all around him before spreading fast towards Sakura, like a swarm of shadows. However, the instant the darkness touched her, it stopped moving. It twitched and flailed, like a hard piece of unmalleable plastic being bent out of its natural shape.

Then it shattered, like shards of opaque black glass that dissipated before it could fall more than a few centimeters.

Sasuke's eyes widened at the breaking of his genjutsu; he tried again to summon it but the air around him suddenly felt stifling, like there was only an eighth of the oxygen there usually was to breathe.

The Uchiha found his Mangekyo eyes transforming back to their normal form against his will.

In a second, Sasuke was thrown backwards by an invisible force. His back slammed against a tree's trunk hard.

Real Sakura shrieked in horror as her body rushed forward still, sword poised straight for the Uchiha. It impaled right pass his stomach, nailing him into the trunk.

Her hand came out to choke Sasuke's throat.

The Uchiha gasped and sputtered as she slowly suffocated him while he tried to unhinge her merciless grip.

On the inside, Real Sakura could only watch on in horror. She was trapped in what looked like a completely empty black room with nothing but a wide screened TV in front of her, mounted against the wall. It showed exactly what her possessed eyes were seeing.

Suddenly, appearing right in between her and the screen was her evil twin, a small part of the main whole that continued choking Sasuke.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to kill him, Sakura," the Third Myael spoke through her lips, as well as to Sakura inside her mind. "You love him, after all."

Real Sakura didn't react. Couldn't think of how to react. She could only stare in astonishment at the insanity of her old self.

"I'll just torture him within an inch of his life!" After saying that her doppelganger changed her katana into a kunai and slashed Sasuke's face with it.

"AHH!" the man screamed as a large obtrusive red gash appeared across his once beautiful face, running from the height of his left cheekbone down to the right corner of his jaw. In a second, blood started pouring out, dripping down Sasuke's face in a diagonal line.

Sakura laughed in satisfaction as she threw another slash down diagonally, in the other direction at his face. Now a large angry red x showed across his completely bloodied face.

The pain was so bad Sasuke accidentally bit his own tongue.

Sakura still wasn't satisfied. In a second, she threw another slash with her kunai.

This one running right across his eyes, blinding him.

Real Sakura finally broke out of her shocked stupor trapped as she was inside her own body. She ran up to the tv screen-

-or tried to: the part of her evil twin staying in this mental room with her, stopped her by a strong grip around her shoulders, laughing maniacally as Sakura screamed: "STOP!"

"What? Finally owning up to your feelings?" The Third Myael gloated contemptuously.

Real Sakura shook her head, eyes turning adamantly to the woman. "What you're doing is inhuman!"

Her twin laughed. "You avoided the question."

Sakura scrunched her eyebrows. "I can't take pity on the man? I can't just be outraged at the atrocity you're committing?"

She threw her evil twin's grip off.

"If you're really me you wouldn't do this," she stated firmly. "You would know this is wrong."

The doppelganger narrowed her eyes in agitation. "Raping you was also wrong. So was locking you away and abusing you."

Sakura blinked at each of the emphasized words but she refused to back down. Behind the two of them, depicted across the tv screen: Sasuke was gripping his bleeding eyes and writhing in agony at the loss of his most precious power.

"I don't care!" Sakura shouted, finally accepting that she couldn't find it in herself to hate Sasuke. "This isn't justice! This is-"

She was caught off as a vicious slap suddenly struck her across the cheek. The force sent her reeling, body collapsing straight onto the dark floor. Real Sakura cradled her cheek as she turned back facing her twin. The Third Myael towered above her, seething in absolute rage.

"This IS justice, you ignoramus," her evil twin intoned, stepping up to her while Sakura scrambled on the ground to get away. She wasn't able to get too far however because the Third Myael suddenly pounced on her on the ground, caging her in on all sides. "He is a pitiful excuse for a human being. HE destroyed your life. HE has abused you since the first day you set eyes on him and has never stopped."

Real Sakura screamed as a fierce grip came to grip her pink locks by the hairline of her forehead. "HE is a whining little bitch that rages whenever he doesn't get what he wants."

The grip was so tight, a bit of Sakura's hair was wrenched out. "HE deserves this."

Her twin forced her head to the side so that she could have a full view of the screen once again. In real life, Sakura's body had made so many slashes against Sasuke's face that the man was no longer recognizable. He was just a bloody mess of bleeding flesh with only his mouth still intact so he could breathe.

The Third Myael didn't want him to die just yet.

With no more room across his face, Sakura's body sent her kunai into Sasuke's shoulder, causing the man to scream out in agony again. She left the weapon buried in his flesh and once again pinned into the tree.

Out of thin air, Sakura's body summoned kunai after kunai into her palms before sending them burying into Sasuke's flesh. She pierced every joint outlet on his body, each time stabbing through his body and pinning his body farther into the trunk.

Blood seeped out from every puncture in his body, dripping and soaking his dark clothes through, by now Sasuke had lost the strength to even scream.

Even though that was the only ability the Third Myael had left functioning in him.

She had slashed every tendon on his body that connected his skeletal joints to his muscles. He could no longer move. His chakra reservoirs had also been pierced during her barrage of kunais, preventing him from ever using chakra again.

Both Fake and Real Sakura knew this, the latter only able to watch in horror as Sasuke suffered the fate she'd literally given up her life to prevent, the punishment Raikage A had wanted so badly to bestow.

Despite all his injuries, Sasuke was still breathing somehow, his chest rose up and down laboriously. Real Sakura knew the Third Myael must have been using her powers to keep the man alive until she was done with him.

Sasuke's head sagged forward, losing consciousness from his severe blood loss.

Sakura's body suddenly extended a hand out to grip his bloody neck, squeezing it just the right amount to prevent him from falling asleep. She poured chakra into his body to force him to stay attentive, the single still intact ear picking up what she said next.

"You treat people badly," her twin intoned while digging her nails into his neck. "But everyone always forgives you."

Another slash, this time with a long dagger that Real Sakura hadn't noticed she'd been holding until now. This time the slash was aimed at Sasuke's left arm, hacking it right off at the shoulder. The bloody limb dropped right onto the ground.

"You hurt people and they always still help you!" the Third Myael's voice had never sounded more like Original Sakura's voice than it did now. She threw another slash at Sasuke, this time chopping off the right arm as well.

Sasuke had no energy left whatsoever in what was left of his body. The only way he knew he was still alive was by the fact that he could still hear her.

"Everyone ALWAYS helps you!" Original Sakura screamed as she hacked off his left leg and then immediately after, the right one as well. Now only his center torso was pinned onto the tree by the katana through his stomach and still somehow Sasuke found himself alive, though just barely so, only a conscious mind that could do nothing but listen as he'd never done before now.

Sakura had at one point given him back use of his body…but now she was taking everything back.

Original Sakura's next words came out low and quiet "Even I…gave you things…up till my death, I gave you anything you wanted from me."

She raised her dagger again and poised it to line right over Sasuke's still pounding heart, kept tethered here by nothing except her own power.

"But now I'm giving you these final words…GO TO HELL."

Her blade went down-

Time seemed to freeze in that split second, at least in Real Sakura's mind it did, as she stared at the glinting movement of steel. Everything was immobilized in her sight.

The bleeding pulp of flesh that was all that was left of the once great Sasuke Uchiha.

Her twin's murderous eyes that both stared down at her from inside the black room of her mind and looked onto Sasuke simultaneously. Those eyes that showed nothing but the cruelty beget from callous ingratitude and endless selfishness.

Sakura could understand all of the Third Myael's emotions because they were her emotions.

She had felt that anger before, that self-loathing misery at one point that made her think she was wasting her life on someone like Sasuke. The despair of wanting to change her feelings and never being able to…

…but why?

Why had she always been so attached to him?

Why she had she never been able to sever her ties to him no matter how badly he treated her?

Even now, after all the denials she'd thrown at him, Sakura could still feel her heart reaching out to him.

Was it masochism?

Was it sympathy?

"You won't dissuade me, sensai." Sakura intoned. "I'm doing this, no matter what."

"Why?"

"Because I love him," the kunoichi answered simply. "And he needs me."

He needed her.

It was that simple.

She pitied him.

She'd always pitied him, from the first day he'd abandoned Konoha and forsaken everything he'd ever known…because he couldn't understand the love people had for him.

In Sasuke's mind there was only black and white; bad deeds were repaid with punishment, good deeds with repayment. People always did everything for a reason. There was no line in between. He could never understand that people sometimes did things just to see others happy.

That's why he'd been so determined to pay her back after she'd restored his chakra. Why his infatuation had developed: because he felt like he owed her.

The inability to compensate her had driven him to obsession because he couldn't comprehend that she'd helped him just for the sake of helping him. That she'd never expected nor wanted anything from him.

That blindness-

That simple ignorance-

Made her pity him more than anything else.

That reason had tethered Sakura to Sasuke for every moment of their existence together.

Even now, she still pitied him.

It was ironic…how Sasuke had always looked down on her, and she'd even let him…

-but in reality, she'd looked down on him too.

Because his entire life, he'd never let anyone love him.

Too blinded by his pride, by his ego, some sense of entitlement or the fear of seeming vulnerable…Sasuke had lived his whole life like this. And that was a very sad existence, whether or not he knew about it.

Gaara loved her but Sasuke needed her.

She wasn't sure if she still loved him but Sakura knew that she couldn't abandon him.

She could never do that.

The real Sakura, having been immobilized from shock and horror this entire time inside her mind finally regained her composure now as she saw the flashing of blood stained steel. It touched Sasuke's chest right as she screamed: "STOP!"

A bright white light suddenly emitted from the wrist band that Itachi had given her, erupting across possessed Sakura's eyes. The light grew and encapsulated everyone in its luminescence.

So I know a lot of my readers will be angry that I still did this to Sasuke, that was part of the reason why I originally wanted to rewrite this but...honestly speaking, in my heart, Sasuke deserves this in this fic. After everything he's done, after everything he's committed in the anime, he barely got any comeuppance at the end of Naruto (okay he lost his arm but I mean, really? That's it? After EVERYTHING HE DID and SAID to Sakura? To Naruto? To the village?)

That being said, I do at the same time understand Sasuke is a very pitiful, sympathy-summoning character, especially the way I've portrayed him in this story, so I can understand why so many people still want him to end up with Sakura in this story. It wasn't easy deciding to post this chapter again but in the end I had to it. It was just where this story was headed.

Now, the next half...