A/N: Sometimes even a loss can be win.

Well Played

"You are... quite the resilient one, aren't you?"

The question was hollow, almost ethereal in its haunting tone, yet the man sat up against the wall didn't hear it. He was struggling to remain conscious, a battle he had been fighting for the better half of a day. Blood pooled underneath him, soiling his clothes beyond repair, steadily dripping from the mangled stump that used to be his leg, now reduced to rinds of jagged flesh.

"Using a tourniquet was quick thinking, I'll give you that. Even if you are only prolonging the inevitable."

Again, that voice that seemed to echo from everywhere at once didn't reach the man. His chest was heaving, struggling to keep as calm as possible, but he could feel his heart rate slowing... the blood underneath him felt so numbingly cold...

"How long can you last?"

The voice had asked, but the man was thinking it, too. Over and over again in his tired mind. Which haggard breath would be his last? Would heart failure take him first? Or blood loss? He was shivering uncontrollably, vision kept blurring—

"It's okay to let go. You've done well, really. You've no prior training in chakra control and yet you've been subconsciously using the entire time. Your tenacity for life is to be admired, but eventually... you will sleep."

The man wanted to sleep more than anything but the fear that he would not wake up if he blinked for too long kept him awake through terror alone. He needed something to focus on, to keep his mind off the looming prospect of death... his bleary eyes zoned in on the bloodstained serrated knife he had used to cut through his leg—his stomach instantly curdled, but it was empty... everything within had already been violently expelled into a puddle near that boulder a few meters away.

"It was nobody's fault," the voice said casually, watching as the man's face contorted with a half-fueled anger. "Unless you feel it just to blame time itself. The construction of this cave had been perilous for a long while now... it was just misfortune you chose to traverse it when you did."

The man remembered traveling between villages by map, and this cavern was indicated as a short-cut... and it was until the structural integrity gave way. The next thing he knew, when he regained consciousness, he was trapped under a boulder... his left leg, crushed, he couldn't feel anything...

Hours later, he could still see the hacked remains of his leg trapped underneath, along with the thick blood trail that would let anyone see where he had crawled from.

"Poor soul, you screamed for help for so long, you lost your voice..."

The man grunted, applying further pressure to his leg. Even when the tears came, his throat was too raw to make a sound other than a few strangled inhales. In the depths of his heart, he knew he was going to die. The darkness that bubbled up from his dread nulled the agony pulsating in his leg, that throbbed with each waning beat of his heart; there was no escaping it. Nobody would find him in time, no one even knew where he was. This cold, damp cavern would be where he died... alone, scared, and soaked in his own blood...

"Nobu Hitagaki. Twenty-four years old. Budding kunai craftsman..." The voice sighed grievously. "It's always a shame to see life cut down in its prime, isn't it?"

The man, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, continued to cry even as he fought against the fate locked into his mind; his trembling fingers fumbled over tightening the knot in his tourniquet and he nearly bit his tongue off at the new chasm of pain he tore open. He slumped back against the wall, arms falling limply to either side while those glassy, dark brown eyes drifted toward the cavern roof.

"Have you finally relinquished hope?"

No answer was forthcoming as Nobu couldn't hear the voice, nor could he see the creature who spoke, the creature that had been standing next to him for the better part of nine hours. This creature had the visage of a teenager, one with dark, raven-esque hair and piercing eyes that bled eternal sorrow and saw things that transcended time and space. No one with eyes strong enough to see this creature in human form could say he was ugly, no... his radiance was beyond breath-taking from the sharp, angular features of his face to the vast, pearlescent darkness of the wings jutting from his shoulders. His chest was bare, glistening where there was very little light, and he wore a pair of dark lavender hakama bottoms.

"Do you have no more fight left in you, Nobu?"

The look over Nobu's face showed he had enough fight left within for ten men: his red-rimmed eyes were clearly begging to blink for the last time, but he refused to give in, and his mouth was twisted into a disobedient snarl. An endless bout of violent convulsions shook him to the core and he struggled to clench the ground, to keep himself centered. His muscles burned in protest, every tremor that rocked his spine almost made him pitch forward, almost caused him to dry heave, but he squeezed harder, dug deeper—

"I'm sorry, Nobu, but... it's time."

Gently, the dark-haired specter reached out a hand.

"It's time, you say," said another voice playfully, and a different hand touched down over Nobu's shoulder, "but you never really cared for time, did you?"

A second creature had fluttered down, phasing cleanly through the dripping cavern ceiling to land noiselessly next to Nobu, who audibly gasped the moment they laid hand on him, his eyes flying open. Like the first creature, this one was also human, also looked to be the age of a teenage... except his hair was a warm, golden yellow and ridiculously spiky, and his smile was toothy, like he was constantly on the verge of laughing. Wings of an eye-searing white flapped teasingly behind him, almost as if to mock his counterpart, and he also wore only hakama bottoms, except his were a bright orange.

The darker one stared, mystified for only a second, before a smile colder than death touched his lip. "Ah. And I was so close, too," he said, withdrawing his hand.

"C'mon, c'mon, don't even try to lie, Sasuke," the lively blonde replied, kneeling down next to Nobu and intermittently giving his shoulder comforting squeezes. "You wasted all that time on purpose, didn't you?"

With each pulse of the blonde's hand, Nobu felt a burning lance of chakra that was not his own surge through his veins. He gasped, clutching at his heart, wondering if he was about to go into cardiac arrest.

"Now you know I'm not one to waste time," Sasuke replied quaintly, giving his wings a large, accepting swish. "I had to make sure I had the right soul. It would be a shame to take the life of someone not yet on the cusp of their mortal coil, Naruto."

Continuing to give Nobu those empowering shoulder squeezes, Naruto's grin grew wider. "Riiiight, 'cause it'd be a shame for something that's literally never happened before to suddenly happen, right?"

Now Sasuke was smirking, watching in mild fascination as the look of bubbling agony over Nobu's face began to lessen, as his breathing began to even itself out. "What are you doing here, Naruto?"

Looking left, then right, Naruto stared up at Sasuke with eyes of endless blue and offered a little shrug. "Where even is here?"

"Here would be what Nobu thought to be a safe shortcut, but as you can see"—Sasuke stood aside, indicating toward the shimmering streak of blood—"clearly, it wasn't."

The grisly sight of so much blood, of Nobu's severed leg still crushed under the boulder, it did nothing to lower Naruto's smile. "How long have we been saying they needed to do some renovation in here?" he asked almost pityingly, and Sasuke shrugged.

"Years? Decades? I forget," Sasuke said before turning back to see Nobu still gripping his chest while using the other hand to grip his thigh. It was a useless endeavor from where he stood... Naruto was only delaying the inevitable.

"Well, it would probably help future souls from suffering the same fate if they caught the message from someone on their plane, don't you think?" Naruto reasoned. "Someone able to interact with them?"

"I suppose it might..." Sasuke dropped down until he was balanced on his tippy-toes before Nobu. "He's struggling so hard."

Naruto nodded, and surprisingly gave Nobu a firm slap over the back, which caused him to suddenly start coughing. "I would, if I were him. Some sorta blacksmith?"

"How'd you guess?"

"I can tell from how gnarled his hands are. Look at 'em, he's pretty young and you can practically see the dedication lining every callous and bruise along his fingers. No doubt a blacksmith is what he's gonna be in life."

"What he was going to be," Sasuke corrected softly, without taking those cold eyes off the human before him. "You can keep doing what you're doing," he added, indicating to the hand Naruto had moved to rubbing soothing circles in Nobu's lower back, "I'm certainly not going to stop you. I wish his death didn't have to be so painful... but he's still slated to die."

To those words, Naruto fixed Sasuke with an almost challenging stare. "According to whom?"

"According to the fact that he's lost a lot of blood; he's very near to hypovolemic shock. You actually prevented that for a few minutes, don't think I didn't notice," Sasuke remarked stoically, trouncing Naruto's stare with a burning leer. "You can delay, but you can't heal, Naruto, we've been through this many... many... times. It's your destiny to guide them to me in the end."

"In the end," Naruto repeated slowly, ignoring Nobu who was recovering from his coughing fit and wiping speckles of blood from his bottom lip. "Don't you think twenty-four is a bit too young to meet such an end?"

"I do." There was hardly time for Naruto to finish his question before Sasuke had responded, and strongly at that. "I think it's far too young... but the die has long been cast, Naruto."

"Then why not bump the table a little?"

That suggestion was so childish that Sasuke found a moment to chuckle somewhat. "You've been bumping the table for so long, and to no avail. When are you going to learn?"

"Oh, I dunno," Naruto replied whimsically, "I guess we're both the same in that respect."

When Sasuke's eyebrows flipped up, Nobu shuddered, nearly doubling over. His throat was on fire, the chakra pulsing through his veins was almost unbearable—he wanted to cry out, but the moment he tried, he was bowled over by a darkness so festering that it made him nauseous and he dry-heaved.

"And how are we the same?" Sasuke wondered genuinely, swaying back and forth with every little tussle of his wings. "Last I checked, unlike a certain little nuisance, I don't run around everywhere trying to change fate."

"Really?" Naruto perked up, ruffling Nobu's damp, grimy hair with deft fingers. "I find that odd... 'cause why did you wait for me to get here, then?" He leaned forward with a mischievous grin. "Don't tell me Mr. Big Bad Lonely just wanted some company? You could have just come found me, Sasuke. You always know where I am, same as I always know where you are."

There was no hiding the pleasant surprise that surfaced over Sasuke's face. Not that he made any effort to hide it; his gleefully smiling counterpart was partially right in a way. It was extremely rare that he deigned to wait... or hesitate. "No, it wasn't... it wasn't because I wanted company, you're like ten souls mashed into one—"

"I'll take the compliment."

"—I just... ha. I guess even a being as lost as I can believe in hope every once in awhile..."

"...Really?"

"Yeah... I suppose so. Hope that one day maybe you'll show up and..."

It was against Sasuke's very nature to speak the words that curdled and died on his tongue, but to Naruto, the one who had been by his side for centuries, he understood his old friend perfectly.

"Funnily enough, that's exactly what keeps me coming back to you, back to them, these damned souls... time and time again, knowing I'll surely fail, that you'll 'win' as you always do," Naruto admitted, scoffing as he proceeded to lean his head against Nobu's shoulder in such a way that his golden hair hair fell, obscuring his eyes. "I keep telling myself, one day I'll find a way to be on even ground with him, that this time he won't win."

"And I wish it could be today, Naruto, I really wish it could," and the longing in Sasuke's voice could have broken a hundred hearts it was so defeated, and he once more reached out for Nobu. "Unfortunately, this is also one that I w—"

An almighty shudder shook the cavern floor, followed by the sound of a multitude of footsteps. The tip of Sasuke's ring finger paused less than a hair's width away from Nobu's hand; his eyes grew wide with disbelief, but across from him, Naruto's smile only grew.

"NOBU!"

Several voices began to ring out, echoing all through the dense cavern.

"EVERYONE FAN OUT, HE'S GOT TO BE HERE!"

"NOBU—WHERE ARE YOU?"

"SHOUT OUT! LET US HEAR YOU!"

There was no way that he could, though, as Sasuke already knew, and he firmed his jaw. Whatever Naruto had planned, it had been good for a surprise, but Nobu's throat was ruptured beyond—

"I'm... I-I'm..."

Disbelief bowled over Sasuke to such a degree that all he could do was stare as Nobu lifted a wavering hand, inhaled with all the strength that remained within, drawing upon the charka reservoirs gifted to him, and bellowed out, "I'M HERE!"

The response was immediate, surging through the darkness.

"DID YOU HEAR THAT?"

"OVER HERE!"

"THIS WAY, COME ON!"

"No, my old friend..." Rubbing under his nose, Naruto sat up, shifting his hair to reveal a pair of glistening iris pupils and a fiercely victorious smile spread through his lips. "For the first time, it's my win."

And, also for the first time, Sasuke smiled in such a way that it seemed to brighten the entire cavern, giving guidance to the voices growing louder, the footsteps drawing nearer. All he could do was chuckle. "Well played, my friend... well played indeed."

A/N: What'd you think?