Title: Asymmetry
Author: Ksuhi
Warnings: More character death

OoToO
Best Friend
OoToO

It was a painfully devastating thing, finally recovering your most precious person at the moment of their death.

Years of fighting, searching, yearning.

He had known the moment he had woken in that god-forsaken valley, Sasuke nowhere in sight, that it would be a deadly, nearly impossible task to tear his best friend from the darkness. In that moment, he had despaired.

For her sake, he had rallied. He had trained. He had found hope.

But even just holding onto that hope had been a terrible struggle.

Seeing the Uchiha again had proved a terrible blow. Here was Sasuke, but not his Sasuke.

There had been nothing but hate and cold in those eyes that he had held in his memory as heated and irritated and on rare occasion affectionate. And again he had despaired.

Had this new creature of only ice and ambition killed his Sasuke? Had he sacrificed Naruto's precious person for the sake of punishing Itachi for taking everything and leaving?

But at the start of this second, chance meeting, there had been such a fire, such a desperation burning beneath his friend's skin, he had began to truly hope again. Maybe his most precious friend was still in there. Pushed down by pain and a blind thirst for revenge.

He wished that he could have realized sooner that resting his hopes on someone so twisted by loss could only lead to pain and destruction.

That fact was crushingly clear as he watched Sakura take a sword to the chest that he knew she could have dodged. Watched as she quickly slipped away over a wound he knew she could have healed.

With her, the light that had helped him rally after the devastating betrayal of his first bond left him.

He was forced to engage the thing that wasn't his Sasuke, and he felt that he was drowning in the despair that his first precious person always seemed to bring with him in these last couple years.

But then, as they stood trembling locked together, for a moment he had seen his sweet Sasuke. And just like that time during their first mission, the Uchiha had confided his regret to Naruto before losing consciousness. But unlike that time, he was truly gone. Had truly left. And this time it was by Naruto's own hand.

OoToO

A/N: I was debating whether or not I should wait to update this until after the first chappie of this story's companion fic was finished, but in the end I was too impatient. So I hope that this was enjoyable and worth while!

Edit: Sorry! The order of Best Friend and Progress has been bugging me, so I switched 'em!