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Sky-eyed Kitsune and Gomi-kun blab & Updates
Sky-eyed Kitsune: Blah new semester. Statistics? Noooooooo!
For those of you just joining the madness now, I have stopped replying to reviewers because I've got so many that it tends to take an hour to do so! X0 But please know that I treasure each review I get, and read them all. In fact when I read them they made me smile in the way that a writer does when they've realized that they have a reason to write! So sincerely, thank you all who take the time and read and review! I will though be answering questions if someone doesn't understand one part of the story or something along those lines. ^^
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Chapter Twenty One: Sound the Bugle
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Tsunade donned her Hokage robes once more, something she thought she'd never have to do as long as Naruto was wearing them. His scent wafted around her, rippling off the fabric, and she locked her jaw tightly to keep any tears at bay; she would not show her sadness in front of the entire village.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Naruto's death, and Konoha needed to say goodbye to yet another great Hokage.
Tsunade took a deep breath as she walked out of the building by the stage in the same square. She stood at the podium where Naruto had given his acceptance speech as Hokage not days before.
She stared out into the mass of inquisitive faces before her, and bowed her head down.
"Minna-san," she managed to choke, gathering herself quickly and raising her head once more. "Yesterday morning at sunrise, Uzumaki Naruto died." Tsunade closed her eyes as a wave of whispers and hushed remarks ran through the villagers. It took all of her strength to continue.
"He was not murdered, nor did he kill himself. Hokage-sama was destroyed by a seal…a seal that was made to keep the evil that we once all faced inside of him. Instead, it tore him apart. In his farewell letter he requested that I withhold the Hokage position until I find another person suitable for the job."
The murmurs among the crowd slowly grew in intensity, and Tsunade raised her voice over them.
"Hokage-sama's funeral will be held this evening outside of Konoha's forest. I placed these Hokage robes on Naruto, and I took them off of him. We will remain strong as he did in the face of these testing times, and pray that Konoha will continue to thrive."
The crowd was silent as Tsunade stepped down, a layer of shock and dismay shrouding them all.
Sasuke's body was stiff and tired as he sat in a chair in Konoha's hospital wing. His fingers were curled tightly around another pair of pale and lifeless ones.
Sasuke had not left Naruto's side all through the night and into the early dawn. He had remained in that chair waiting for Naruto's eyes to open, just a little, and call him a teme.
It didn't happen.
Sasuke didn't turn when he felt a presence behind him, and the tell-tale pads of footsteps against the white hospital tiles echoed through him.
Gaara stood at the end of Naruto's bed, staring at the blond with the same annoyingly blasé face. Sasuke felt contempt for that constant expression which he too always wore. Gaara and Naruto were best friends, and even during the reading of his goodbye letter Gaara had displayed nothing- no regret, sadness, anger, nothing.
Fucking nothing.
Sasuke stood abruptly and whirled his fist sideways at Gaara's face, and a wall of sand appeared immediately, shielding him from Sasuke's surprise attack.
Gaara shifted his jade eyes to look at the raven still trying to push his fist through the sand barrier.
Sasuke finally tore his fist away, glaring heatedly at the redhead.
"He was your best friend!!" he shouted, lips curled back in a snarl and teeth gritting against each other like sandpaper. "He was your fucking best friend! And you don't even care! You don't even care that he's—"
"Dead," Gaara filled in. "Yes, Naruto is dead and gone. But that's just it- he's dead, just like many other Hokages before him. What's the point of crying over another dead ninja?"
"He wasn't just a ninja! He was Naruto! Naruto the drop out, Naruto the loser, Naruto the number one unexpected ninja, Naruto the demon, Naruto the person that no one ever knew until he was gone!!!" Sasuke panted from all of his yelling as Gaara continued to analyze him with that same blank stare.
"Death comes to everyone and everything," Gaara said. "There is nothing that outlasts it but the sky. You are given life, and later you must give it back again, sometimes unwillingly. It's unfair that Naruto had to die this soon. Yes, I was his best friend, and yes, I care, but I withhold my emotions for the sake of my village."
Sasuke looked at Gaara calculatingly.
"If I relapse and mourn over this death, then my village will suffer from my inability to perform at my best, unhindered by any emotional weight." Gaara moved his eyes back to look at Naruto, his eyelids lowering a little.
"Naruto has been my greatest companion since the day he risked his life to save me from myself, but I could not return the favor and save him."
"Did you…"
Gaara looked over at Sasuke, head bent down to the floor and hand curled into a shaking fist at his side.
"…did you love him?"
Gaara was silent as he stared hard at Sasuke through dark shadowed eyes.
"Yes," he finally said. "And my feelings remain the same now."
Sasuke swallowed thickly. "But Naruto and Sai—"
"Sai was not even a possibility in Naruto's mind after he had given up on you for the final time," Gaara cut off. "Naruto didn't take interest in Sai until two years later. Doe his eighteenth year he was alone, and I couldn't stand to see him that way."
"So you offered to be together with him?" Sasuke asked, crossing his arms.
"No. I made sure to be there for Naruto when times were the hardest for him. I was too afraid of causing Naruto discomfort by asking him such a thing. I couldn't bear to risk my friendship on something I so selfishly wanted. Naruto was the one to take things to a new level."
"Naruto," Gaara said, approaching the blond. He was leaning his head against an old sycamore tree in Konoha forest, arms loose at his sides.
Gaara placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder and turned him around swiftly to face those wet, crystal blue eyes.
"Stop this, Naruto," Gaara said. "Stop thinking about him. There are others. It's been a year, and I can't stand to watch you suffer like this anymore."
Naurto took a step forward, and Gaara took one back, until Naruto had the redhead blocked in front of a tree.
Naruto gripped Gaara's lean shoulders tightly, squeezing the fabric of the redhead's Kazekage robes between his fingers. He dove forward, kissing Gaara's pale lips urgently and pressing him further against the tree.
"I'm not going to lie. I wanted it to happen," Gaara said, placing his hands in the pockets of his Kazakage robes. "I knew that I was just a substitute for you, but I didn't care. He was lost and didn't know what to do, and looked to me to be that 'other someone' to make it all better…" Gaara narrowed his eyes to the tiled floor. "But I couldn't. I wasn't satisfied. Naruto looked to me as a friend, even when we kissed or embraced. I wasn't his lover, I was the comfort he wanted."
"What happened?" Sasuke asked, genuinely curious now.
"Naruto lost himself completely," Gaara answered solemnly. "The walls he had built up crumbled, and everything in life seemed to escape him as he struggled to move on. I had never seen Naruto in so much pain anymore, and I couldn't help him. I let him go, and he met Sai. And finally Naruto's walls started to build up again."
Gaara looked at Sasuke.
"Then you came back and ruined the false peace that Naruto almost had." Gaara shook his head and smiled a little. "And somehow you made his walls come down again, but in the way that I had strived to do for a long time. It seems like a sin to have someone so pure die in their only moment of true happiness."
Gaara gave Sasuke a farewell nod, and left Naruto's room.
Sasuke looked back over to Naruto, and resigned himself once more to the chair he had been sitting all night in. He ran a hand over Naruto's pale but oh so smooth face, shielding another onset of tears to come.
"Naruto," he said, the name sifting through his lips like smoke.
He drew his hand back quickly as a sudden burning sensation pricked his fingertips, and Naruto's body glowed red.
Sasuke stood up as fast as he could and backed away, the chair clattering to the floor. The glow sent immense waves of heat outward toward him, and he shut his eyes from the fiery sting.
As the heat began to lessen, Sasuke opened his eyes as much as possible without the heat stinging them.
"Naruto…?" he whispered, hoping, praying, that the impossible had happened.
Sasuke gasped as the room suddenly became unbearably hotter, and the glowing heat of Naruto's body erupted into an explosion, sending Sasuke flying through the wall out into the hallway.
"Naruto!!!" he yelled as fire and smoke engulfed the room, and he scrambled to his feet, dashing into the flames and hot falling cinders.
He covered his eyes with his arm from the tremendous heat, and his mouth hung open slightly when he saw a figure approach him from the hissing flames.
He took a wavering step back, exposing his eyes. "Naruto?" Sasuke's teeth clenched in violent pressure. "No!" he shouted, clenching his eyes shut. "No!!!"
The figure doused the fire with a wave of his arm, and Sasuke sunk down to his knees under the clearing smoke, clutching strands of his hair fiercely. He didn't look up as the figure loomed over him.
"I'm sorry," Kyuubi said, his long red locks drifting around him in the wave of smoke. He reached out a clawed hand- Naruto's hand- but it was smacked away swiftly as Sasuke raised his teary and infuriated eyes to the demon.
Kyuubi narrowed his eyes, letting the supposed comforting hand drop to his side.
He looked up swiftly as rushed footsteps neared them, and Tsunade panted as she reached the rubble of the room. Her mouth wavered open slightly as she looked down from Sasuke to Kyuubi, and turned her head at the many footsteps hurrying up the stairway. Her eyes locked with Kyuubi, and with a pained expression, formed a hand seal quickly, closing the room off from all outsiders.
Kyuubi bowed his head as Tsunade urged all of the ANBU and other ninjas present out of the building, the shield obscuring Kyuubi and Sasuke from view.
Kyuubi's eyes drifted back down to Sasuke on his hands and knees now, nails scraping on the tiled floor as he searched for a point in which to anchor himself to the rest of the world.
"Did you expect Naruto to just rise from the dead and start walking?" Kyuubi asked bitterly, still mourning over the loss of the blond.
"Shut up!" Sasuke shouted, flinging his arm out haphazardly, not really expecting it to hit anything. "You did this!"
Kyuubi's eyes narrowed as he glared at the Uchiha. "Me? You think, really think that I would do this?" Kyuubi snarled a little. "How dare you say that! Naruto was like my brother, and I did everything in my power to try and save him! You think I wanted to take over his body? You think I wanted him to leave me here without a person in the world who understands me!?"
Sasuke stared down Kyuubi, his sharingan spinning as he locked eyes with the furious demon.
Kyuubi shut his eyes tightly and turned his head away from the Uchiha. He knew it was stupid- the both of them yelling and shouting over the person they both loved the most in the world. But Kyuubi knew it didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. Naruto was gone; he was really gone.
There was nothing left for Kyuubi, and he was well aware of that. He knew people didn't want him in this world, and he didn't want to be here in this body.
Kyuubi had made his whole purpose in life to become more powerful, and then he was sealed in Naruto. His newfound mission was to protect such a pure and innocent vessel, and he had failed. Power didn't matter anymore, and there was no pure soul left to protect.
He had no purpose in life, or for that matter, to live.
Kyuubi looked up as he heard footsteps, and the chakra barrier around them began to disappear. Tsunade clutched Naruto's hokage robes against her as she looked hopefully at Kyuubi.
Kyuubi couldn't look at those pleading eyes searching for a soul in the wrong body. He turned his body away from the woman, and disappeared as flames rose up from the ground and swallowed him.
Tsunade ran to Sasuke as the shield disappeared, kneeling by him.
"Well?" she asked a little too desperately. The light from her eyes faded as Sasuke didn't reply, and was gone in a wisp of smoke.
As ANBU arrived in the dilapidated room, they could only remain silent as their hokage crashed to her knees, hands over her eyes as tears escaped between them and pattered to the broken floor.
Sasuke sat on the roof of the Uchiha mansion, looking out over at the glowing orange lights illuminating the far east.
He couldn't attend Naruto's funeral—he just couldn't bring himself to face it.
Every soul in Konoha had fled to the eastern forest where Naruto's grave was being placed. The city had been blown out like a candle, doused with a hokage's tears.
Sasuke closed his eyes as the wind wove its nimble fingers through his hair, the wind chimes hanging below on the porch shivering at its chilly breath.
Sasuke couldn't seem to take his eyes off the lights in the distant forest- the hundreds of candles held by Konoha citizens in memory of their short-lived leader. The light didn't do Naruto justice. He was so much brighter, so much warmer, than those melting damp candles.
The light seemed to have been sucked from the sky, as the moon didn't even show its face, and the stars hid in their own unlit darkness.
As the wind chimes danced and tickled Sasuke's ears, he wanted to chop them down and pluck every last string those little delicate bells hung from. What right did they have to be cheerful? To even given the tiniest trickle of noise?
Naruto's laughter didn't sound like bells until Sasuke heard it knowing the real man who produced such a glorious noise.
Sasuke could still feel it- that gentle warmth seeping through him in the presence of Naruto's light.
…but how? How was it possible to feel that glowing, spreading warmth when its creator was absent from the world?
Sasuke stood on the roof.
What was he doing? Sitting there, mourning over Naruto? There had to be a reason that Sasuke could still feel Naruto's presence though he was gone, there had to be. Naruto wouldn't just give up so easily, not when he and Sasuke had finally reached, had finally touched each other.
Sasuke wasn't a quitter, and he certainly wasn't going to loose his grip on Naruto without a fight.
Go go Sasuke-baka! *o*
Sky-eyed Kitsune