Summary:
Some people don't ask questions because they want to hear answers; they ask questions because they want to hear questions. What are you? [AU] [Hinted SasuHina] [Non-Chronological Linked Drabbles]
General Disclaimer For The Entire Story:
I don't own Naruto. If I did, I would've done a reprint of Part I with cleaned-up art, and I would've filled in the glaring plot holes evident in some chapters. Oh, and the cover picture isn't mine, either. Should I change it? (Does anybody actually read this disclaimer?)
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(you do know what you have; you just don't appreciate it until it's gone)
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[Age ? ]
"I didn't mean for this to end like this, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it-"
Her mouth opens weakly to say something, only to slide shut again, now forever silenced, her last words unspoken.
Weakly...?
No, not weak.
Not weak, not feeble.
She'd been none of those things, had tried so hard, her entire life, to not be those things.
She'd tried so hard to be strong, and she had been strong, surely stronger than he had been before this whole mess began.
And now that life was gone, and for what?
Would people remember her as a strong person?
Or would they remember the weakness in that strength that had felled her in finality?
It's driving him crazy now, crazier than he was before anyway, because he had to be crazy to have- to have- to have done this and started this and considered this and not stopped.
Why had he not stopped like she'd asked him to?
Pleaded him to?
Why the fuck had he not stopped this?
If he had, then maybe she'd still be alive, his first mentor and first friend still alive!
He felt guilt now, and sorrow, and dozens of other emotions he thought he'd blocked away for good, kept away for good, killed for good.
She wasn't even his best friend, now he saw; Naruto was his best friend, best rival and enemy, too, but they'd been best friends, even though both had known her for years before meeting each other for real on the same team.
They'd just clicked, and though he still made time for her, that was that; it had to be made.
Before, it'd be natural: train and spar and talk with her for hours under the doubly-believed guise of 'recuperating with a meal after training'.
After, he'd convinced himself, consoled himself, that she was busy with her own team, and it was for the better that they cut down their one-on-one private training sessions and spars and lively if formal conversations later over bentos.
They'd drifted.
There was really no excuse after all, since Naruto had managed to stay close to her, had dedicated time to the person he saw adoringly as a big-sister idol of sorts, who intermittently mothered him with cool words that melted to positively lukewarm when addressing him.
By first name!
It'd taken 16 years of her life to call him by his first name.
He'd still remembered her, vivid, remembered her sound advice and practicality and barely-there hints of sly witticisms.
She was his first friend, and that was supposed to mean something, wasn't it?
Didn't it mean something that he'd never been able to forget her soft hair and always-changing scents and opalescent eyes and flawless fingers that could obliterate a person in milliseconds?
It had to mean something.
Even in his... darker days, his days of madness and revenge and blood that will stain him 'til his lonely grave, he'd never, never ever never forgotten her.
So yes, it meant something.
As Sasuke knelt there, in the war-torn wasteland, a cold corpse held desperately in his hands, that small significance gave him no comfort.
Because he had no idea what that something meant.
Which just rendered it into nothing.
When Naruto rode in on a blaze of glorious retribution and furious golden aura hours later, slit eyes flashing solid orange-red-balance-blood at the sight of the colder (coldest?) corpse, chakra-sharp claws swinging for a recklessly unrestrained blow, Sasuke half-contemplated letting him finish the deed and release him from this suddenly duller mortal plane.
Shwooooop-
Clang!
And the madness continues.
Such is the cycle.
Of hatred?
No.
Not just that.
Of life and death and the things achieved in-between.
Things lost in-between.
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Well, death scenes are always fun, aren't they?
It was the prompt; don't blame me.
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-Review.-
