I have way too many crack pairings.

king & lionheart

If only things had been different.

(for impromptumelody, and FloatOrSink)

"No one can go back and make a new beginning, but we can start here and make our own end."

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.

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Naruto stepped out of his apartment, breathing in the clean morning air. The sun had barely begun to amble its way into the sky, watery rays peeking above the mountains.

Today was May 13th.

For the past three years, he had been excitedly marking down every day in his calendar, awaiting the day when Sasuke would return from his training. The blonde wondered just how much stronger his best friend had gotten, or how much taller he'd grown, or whether or not he'd shaved his head. That last bit may have been Naruto's imagination going wild, but he had to entertain himself somehow. There was really nothing to stop his imagination from growing especially since, for some reason, Sasuke never sent him any pictures with the sporadic letters he would write. In one of them, the Uchiha had mentioned something about coming home on the 12th, leading Naruto to wait eagerly near the gate almost all day, but unfortunately he never showed.

Sasuke's not a liar, he thought. And he never breaks a promise.

Technically, Sasuke never "promised" to come home yesterday, but Naruto liked to think it was implied.

He was about to leave when he suddenly remembered something. Naruto turned around to re-enter his apartment, banging his head on the doorway. The blonde had grown almost a foot, and he was still getting used to having duck down every once in a while.

"There it is." He picked up his black hitai-ate, which was sitting right in front of the pictures of his mom and sister. He sighed. There had been a bad case of the flu going around a couple years back and, when his big sister got it, it'd quickly turned into pneumonia. She was only fifteen, exactly the same age Naruto was now. A few months after, his mom had been sent on a mission and she had died too, by the hand of an enemy nin. The tragic events had left Naruto heartbroken. He was better now, but sometimes it was hard to handle the pangs of grief that would hit him.

Naruto tied the black straps of the headband snugly around the back off his head, finally ready to start the day. He walked out and jumped over the balcony, landing safely in the road. By now, it was closer to 7 than the 6:30 time slot he would have liked.

"Hey, Naruto, you wanna see a dead body?"

The blonde was startled. What the hell kind of question was that? Yet, he was intrigued — who knows, it could have been an enemy nin. "Uh, whaddya mean?"

Konohamaru gave a sly smile. Moegi had a similar expression on her face, while Udon just sniffed. "Well, we were sneak — I mean, patrolling the entrance gates, and Udon was all like, 'Uh guys I think there's someone in the bushes' and then I whipped out my Sexy Jutsu to see if the guy he was talking about was pervy enough to get affected by it, but then nothing happened so Moegi got in closer and—"

"Whoa whoa whoa," said Naruto, holding up his hands. "You're talking really fast. Just tell me, using commas, what happened."

"Oh well, Moegi went up behind the bushes and saw someone just lying there. We poked him with a stick but he didn't move or anything, so we came to get you. So, you wanna see a dead body?"

Once again, a small bit of excitement glimmered inside Naruto. Sure, he might have "matured" a little over the years, but you could push down your inner child only so far. As nonchalantly as he could, he replied, "Uh, sure."

The trio of Genin led him to the gate. Quietly, Konohamaru and Naruto snuck behind the bushes where said dead body was supposed to be, and sure enough, there it was. Judging by the lack of curves and the overall size of the body, Naruto guessed it was a man. He had dark hair and was dressed in dark clothes. His face was buried in the ground, so the Chuunin couldn't quite see any of his features. However, on one of the sleeves of his shirt, Naruto could see a symbol that was quite familiar to him — a red and white uchiwa fan.

It took him a few moments to figure out where he'd seen something like that.

"Oh shit, Sasuke's dead."

"You loser." Sasuke huffed. He wiped off any remaining dirt from his face, silently cursing Naoki for throwing him on the ground outside the gate after he'd fallen asleep on the way there. He made a mental note to himself that the next time he saw him that the guy would be paid back in some way.

"Hey!" Naruto cried. "It's not my fault you sleep like a log and take insanely shallow breaths!" He really did think Sasuke was dead!

"It's perfectly common to do that kind of thing."

"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure whoever told you that is a liar."

"And did you really have to scream so loud?"

"I thought you were dead, you asshole!"

"Well, surprise, surprise!"

Naruto opened his mouth to make a snarky retort but closed it with a second thought. A large, dopey smile spread across his face right then as he threw one of his arms around Sasuke's shoulders. (He noticed that Sasuke was actually shorter than him now, but decided to look past it.)

"I missed you, teme."

"...Yeah."

Mmmmmm hello. Still filler-ish, but that shoud be over soon :) I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Please review!