But in this heart of darkness
Our hope lies lost and torn;
All flame like love is fleeting
When there's no hope anymore

- 'Hope' by Apocalyptica

Kakashi woke as he felt Naruto's slight weight leave the bed, the door clicking shut behind him. He looked behind him and saw Gaara's eyes gleam in the darkness before the dawn.

Voices seeped through the door as he listened, rolling out of the bed and pulling on a pair of sweatpants. Gaara followed him, padding across the carpet to pull on his clothing.

Kakashi opened the door, immediately identifying the two ANBU who stood in the hallway. Neji and Sasuke glanced at him and Gaara, then looked back at Naruto, who leaned against the wall, his face expressionless. Kakashi crossed to Naruto and slung an arm around his shoulders, unwilling to leave him alone in the presence of two of his betrayers. Neji coughed and continued,

"The first reports have been coming in. The demons have been spotted on the outskirts of the woods; unfortunately, we lost Kizuko to Hachibi. The Nekomata apparently has an army of corpses with it-"

"Her," Gaara interrupted from the doorway, sand settling on his skin and beginning to harden into the beginnings of armor. Sasuke stared at him, his fingers clenching into the beginnings of a fist. Gaara sneered.

"Her. Yonbi's poisons are, as far as we can tell, incurable; all the animals caught in its path have died within minutes." Neji reached up and removed his mask; wearied white eyes stared at them both. "Your orders-" a long pause, as if he was struggling with what to say-

"Hokage?" Naruto closed his eyes and sighed, leaning into Kakashi's side for a moment, before he straightened.

"Move the children and all civilians into the cave system beneath the Hokage Mountain. Send the genin and their jounin-sensei to guard the cave entrance; Gaara, would you mind blocking the entrance and emergency exits with your sand until-" he swallowed, throat bobbing, "-until this is all over?"

"Done," Gaara said immediately. Naruto gave him a quick grin. "Thanks. Send out Hunter detachments to rescue as many of the surrounding towns as possible. I don't think many of them are still alive, so your best bets are Arata and Hokkai. The detachments must be back inside the gates before five-thirty, since that's when we'll close them.

Tell all the chuunin and jounin to be on the walls before five-thirty. Gaara and Kakashi will be with me, and-" he took a deep breath, "I want the former Rookie Nine and Team Gai guarding the main gates with me." Sasuke stiffened; Naruto didn't notice.

"That's all." He nodded, once more. "That's all." Neji bowed jerkily and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Sasuke removed his mask, Sharingan eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, as if he had been crying.

"Naruto, we're sorry, we're so-" Naruto shook his head, smiling. "Don't say anything, Sasuke. I'll talk to everyone when we're all together, okay?" Sasuke gazed at him in silence for a moment, bowed his head, and was gone.

"I'll go put on my armor," Naruto said, going back into the bedroom, blank smile fixed on his face. Kakashi followed Naruto and watched him, Naruto perching on the edge of the bed and slipping the armored shirt on. He reached for the fox mask, hesitated, fingertips caressing the blank white porcelain for a long minute, until he seemed to reach a decision and left it lying on the nightstand.

All three of them dressed in a strained silence, Kakashi's eyes flickering over to Naruto every few seconds. Naruto slumped forward, hand resting on the cloth covering the seal, lower lip shredding between his teeth.

"Hey, Gaara?" The former Shukaku vessel looked up from where he was strapping the gourd onto his back.

"Yes?" Naruto breathed in a long sigh,

"What's dying like?" Gaara paused, collecting his thoughts before answering,

"It was… quiet. Relieving." He blinked, thoughtful. "There was light." Naruto smiled. "But you are not going to die," Gaara said, turning, green gaze boring into Naruto's eyes. "You have two percent, and considering… well, who you are, that's more than enough."

"Yeah, guess so," Naruto agreed, standing up and opening the nightstand drawer with a clunk. He withdrew a small, plain white scroll, tied together with brown twine. Kakashi finished wrapping extra bandages around his thigh and reached up, pulling his headband down as he closed the Sharingan.

"You two ready?" Naruto said, sliding the scroll into one of his belt slots. He winced suddenly, a short hiss of pain escaping as his hand went to his belly, clenching in the cloth. "Goddamnit it, Kyuubi," he bit out, "I am going to do this, and no amount of tearing up my stomach is going to stop me!"

In the dim predawn light, his eyes flashed purple.

Kakashi did nothing, but bent down and picked up his ANBU katana, sliding it over Naruto's thin shoulders and buckling it.

Naruto gazed up at him, and then his lips curved in a blank, tired smile.

"Thank you, Kakashi," he said sincerely, a million little sharp edges of night humming behind every word, every thought and breath and syllable. Kakashi said nothing in reply, because here, in the end, there was nothing left to say.

Everything that had been said, everything that had been done-

It was over.

"We need to go," Gaara said, glancing out the window at the red line on the horizon. "The sun will rise soon."

Naruto smiled - faint, tiny, a martyr's smile on a mouth murdered by circumstance - and as one, their hands moved into the seals.

Sasuke crouched on the top of the gate, watching as the last Hunter team hurried down the path, dragging civilians with them, the families just woken from bed, children in pajamas and rubbing at their eyes with each dragging step.

'That's 50 civilians we've managed to save, ' he checked the list in his hands, 'but that leaves Hunter teams 5 and 10 still out there somewhere.'

"Damn!" he hissed through his teeth, checking his watch. It was five-thirty. He leaped off the gate, twisted in air, and landed on the ramparts, sliding through the milling shinobi to sidle up next to Naruto and speak- how hard it was to stay professional, to say nothing even though guilt was clawing a hole in his body!-

"It's five-thirty, and detachments five and ten have not returned. Shall we close the gate?" Naruto didn't look at him, his fingers clenched on the edge of the wall, but he could feel Gaara's poison-green gaze boring through his snake mask. Naruto did nothing, shoulders slumping.

"Yeah. Yeah, close the gate and bar it." Sasuke nodded to the two chuunin on the ground. The great wooden doors clanged shut, the bar dropping down into place with a final, fatal noise.

It sounded like a death knell.

"Naruto, you said you were going to speak to us?" he prodded. Naruto turned, blinking.

"Oh. Right. Meet me in… that building over there," he pointed to an evacuated restaurant. "Kakashi, come get me when you start hearing earth moving." Kakashi nodded. Naruto leaped off the ramparts and landed on the ground, Sasuke turning to collect the others, who stood in a quiet clump not too far from where he stood.

He nodded at them and jerked a thumb at the building. Sakura's face broke out in a relieved, tremulous grin, which he returned underneath the mask.

They all landed on the ground at once, heading for the building.

Naruto was sitting at one of the tables when they entered, his hand placed on his belly and tired eyes gazing at the tabletop without really seeing.

"N-Naruto?" Hinata forced out. He looked up at them, raked a hand through his hair.

"Huh, the gang's all here!" His attempt at humor fell flat in the silence. Hinata burst into tears, Kiba wrapping an arm around her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. Sakura broke the silence first, her voice watery and shaking,

"Naruto, we- we never meant for this to happen, I promise, we were stupid and we didn't think and I'm so, so sorry-"

Naruto shook his head, rising from his seat as he took a halting step towards them, hands outstretched in some sort of sad, terrible supplication,

"It's okay, really, it's okay, I know you didn't mean it, I know, I know-" his voice cracked, eyes gleaming with a film of tears, "I love you, and don't you see-" Sasuke stared at him, shame, terrible and heavy, rising inside him at the realization of Naruto's forgiveness, at the realization that he was not half as good a man as this man that he had scorned for so many years.

His best friend.

"You guys did what you did out of love, and what's done out of love is always beyond good and evil, so don't you see? I love you. I forgive you, and all that other sappy romantic bullshit."

The world was still for a long, shivering moment, and then Hinata broke the stillness, rushing into Naruto's open arms with a terrible sob. That did it, and all the rest of them surged forward, crowding around and trying to touch him, to apologize, to whisper that they loved him one last time-

"Naruto." Kakashi's silhouette appeared in the doorway, dark against the surrounding shadows of predawn, his thin face serious and pale. "The ground's shaking, and I think that's your cue." Sasuke looked back at Naruto, who stilled, then nodded.

"Okay." He broke free of the crowd and walked to Kakashi's side, leaping up to the ramparts with him. Sasuke followed, and paused at the tragic, sad sight before him.

Gaara stood beside Naruto on the ramparts, an insane, tormented smile etched on his face, like the one of the Chuunin Exams, but so much worse. Kakashi leaned on the wall next to Naruto with an arm around his shoulders, his leg vibrating against the ground in a horrid tapping like that of a heart just before it bursts.

And Naruto, beloved Naruto, stood illuminated in the red glow from just beyond the horizon, a glow as if the entire world was submerged in a cauldron, a furnace of pain, perfectly still, perfectly straight, and only the index finger of his left hand moved, a sad testament to the tide of fear washing through Konoha's streets.

Naruto had finally, Sasuke realized with an internal howl of pain and fury and agony, gone to a place where no one could follow.

The very air itself seemed to whisper, filled with the noises of the chuunin and jounin shifting back and forth restlessly, kunai whirling in the air, the ANBU still and silent, a few nervously polishing their swords. He turned and gestured for the rest of the former Rookies to spread out along the ramparts.

Mist boiled out from the trees, thick and white, moving quickly along the ground like a silent white ocean, shrouding the forest in nothingness, with only a bloody-red light humming above the treeline. Everyone stared out into the fog, searching, silent. Hands tightened on swords, fingers went into the first seals, thumbs were bitten and blood smeared on scrolls.

The whispering noises cut off as if a great curtain had dropped over them. A soft, ceaseless thudding seeped out from the trees.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Black forms melted into being, moving quick and low, boneless in their strange, loping movements.

"My god. My god," someone behind him moaned as the forms became clear. Corpses. Hundreds of them, gray and sickly, maggots writhing in open wounds, clothes rotting off their bodies, and black chakra-fire wreathing their every movement. As if from a great distance, he heard Gaara's murmur, "Nekomata is here."

The corpses formed a line in front of the treeline, their eyes- blue with decay, rotting- fixed on the Konoha shinobi. Sasuke could hear vomiting.

A green cloud seeped along the ground, just below the fog, churning like ocean whitecaps, its putrid luminescence identifying it more clearly than anything else ever could as poison, gas, terrible, like a soft jellyfish, undulating with each breeze.

The earth trembled- cracked, shivered- fissures ripping through the ground-

The stream just outside the walls roared upward, boiling and hissing, red like blood-

Nine shapes appeared from the mist, robed in black, embroidered red clouds stitched on every robe. Sasuke's fingers curled around the hilt of his katana, his body shaking, straining with the urge to let the blade scythe out from its sheath and savage that tall, black-haired body with whirling red Sharingan eyes.

His breath hissed out from between his teeth.

"Come to play, aniki?"

Gaara stood beside Naruto, their fingers interlaced at his side, Kakashi behind them both, a warm, solid presence, his hands on their shoulders.

"Gaara." He tightened his fingers around those terribly cold, thin fingers.

"Yes, Naruto?"

"Can you feel them?" He closed his eyes for a long moment, against the silent line of bodies, against the feeling of his sand straining to return to Shukaku.

"Yes." They shared that communion, the sense that they were the last, would forever be the last, the last jinchuuriki, the last sacrificial children burdened with mankind's sin.

He opened his eyes as he felt Shukaku's roar- silent, heard only by him- shiver through the air.

Someone screamed. Eight hulking forms appeared within the mist, their flaming, glowing eyes searing like the hottest fires of the sun.

He had eyes only for one. The Shukaku towered over the trees, wheezing for breath, clawed fingers flexing and tearing the trees to shreds, blue veins bulging from the gray-brown skin.

He felt the cross-shaped pupils burn a hole in him as pain exploded behind his eyelids, transformed into a quick indrawn breath of air. Naruto's hand squeezed his, Kakashi's grip tightening.

The Nekomata stalked forth, its gray skin slimy and glistening, black lines whirling over the skin, black chakra-fire sighing out from between its gaping jaws.

Isonade appeared from the river, blue-black skin gleaming with the hue of blood, the water changing to blood as it left the river behind to gaze at them with obsidian eyes.

Yonbi fluttered down from the trees, wreathed in poisonous gas, sulfur gas its breath, scales the sickening green of bile and rot and decaying things.

Hokou appeared, illusions of flame and death surrounding it, with all the defenders' faces reflected in all-too-prominent and open display.

Blue-white lightning heralded Rokubi, the weasel's tails sweeping out, silent as they passed through the air, the musty stench of ozone filling his nose.

A shadow passed overhead, Shichibi diving through the air to pull to a stop in front of them, blood-stained fangs exposed for all to see.

Hachibi's three heads appeared first, bronze eyes terrible in their fury, black scales sucking all the light from the surroundings like death itself.

And then the leader of Akatsuki spoke, breaking the unnatural silence - a flash of memory, then, of burning pain and eviscerating knives and torture - in his soft, terrible voice.

"Naruto Uzumaki. You have taken the demons from us and destroyed the containment statue with their escape. For that, you must die." Naruto said nothing, and finally, he raised his right hand and extended his middle finger.

Then… Hachibi spoke, its voice so deep that the air shivered with every syllable, that the Inuzukas fell to their knees with their hands clasped over their ears, whimpering.

"Kyuubi of the Nine Tails. You have called us. We have come."

Gaara felt that somehow, they were all trapped in the belly of a horrible machine, and the machine was- now, finally- bleeding to death.

Naruto's hand left his. He turned to look at Naruto once more, to etch the dearly beloved face into his eyelids so that he would see it with every breath, and slid his arms around Naruto's waist and pulled him close, mouth to mouth, hips to hips, sharing breath and life and all the love that remained unspoken.

Naruto rested his forehead on his and whispered, so soft that he wasn't sure if it was real, "I love you." Gaara kissed him again, before letting him go, watching as Naruto reached up and cupped Kakashi's face in his hands, the two embracing, Kakashi's hands running up and down Naruto's back in desperation, the kiss long and deep as if Kakashi was trying to memorize every little bit of who Naruto was.

He watched as Naruto pulled away, as he whispered an 'I love you,' to Kakashi, as he turned away from them and flicked open the scroll holder, withdrawing the plain, tired-looking scroll.

Naruto smeared blood across the scroll, rolled it back up and placed it in his belt once more.

His hands moved into the Dragon seal. The world was silent, without a breath, a whisper, a cry to disturb it. Naruto glanced back over his shoulder, and smiled, before he was gone and vaulting over the edge of the ramparts, falling through air.

Purple chakra flared out from his falling body in nine long streamers, whirling through the air with the power of a sandstorm, expanding in the rough shape of a fox. It wavered, shivered, cracked, and finally solidified into the form of the demon, its eyes closed, ears flat against its back.

The shinobi lining the ramparts tensed, hands going to weapons, at the sight of their old enemy.

They need not have worried, for when the demon's eyes opened, they were as blue as sky.

'Have I changed anything, even one tiny bit? Did I matter at all?' As Naruto opened his fox eyes and saw the world new-made, ageless and eternal, he felt the Kyuubi's last, fading whisper seep through the cracks in his patched and stitched-up soul.

'Yes, and I hate you for it. You were brave. You were good.' There was a pause like the moon's reflection in water, and then the words came, insult and benediction. 'You mattered.'

Naruto closed his eyes for a moment. Peace welled inside him, like shallow waters lapping at an unknown shore, and he breathed, 'Okay, then.' He felt himself move towards the massed demons, power crackling and rippling through him with each tiny movement. 'Okay, then.'

He closed his eyes and fell, slept in light.

Annotations

'…sharp edges of night…' – An allusion to the poem The Taxi by Amy Lowell.

'A martyr's smile on a mouth murdered by circumstance.' – An allusion to the poem The Young Soldier by Wilfred Owen.

'That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.' – A quote by Friedrich Nietszche from Beyond Good and Evil .

' Gaara felt that somehow, they were all trapped in the belly of a horrible machine, and the machine was- now, finally- bleeding to death.' – An allusion to the song Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

'…slept in light.' – An allusion to the title of the last episode of the TV show Babylon 5.