A note to my readers; the story does not finish here.
So this was the end.
Mangled where he lay back between blood-slicked branches and ashes, the Union soldier understood with the pain and the slow fading of his vision that this was the way he was going to go out.
Taking in a smoke-tinged, agonised breath, he was almost convinced he must be in hell already as he lifted his bleary gaze upward: the skies were on fire. The gods fought across the stars, raining their destruction down upon the burning landscape where he and so many others were crumpled with mortal injuries. Only the mortal pain of his sheared shoulder and oozing stomach gash told him that this was not yet the afterlife.
Gods at war, and the soldier himself just a man, forgotten among the rest of the dead and the wounded. Even while dying it was impossible not to watch: the ripple of frightening power as the legendary Uchiha Madara slashed through the heavens, the attacks thrown by those below like pebbles as he met in battle against the remainder of the great Team Seven. It felt like the whole of the atmosphere itself trembled in his wake, and the surges of light resulting from his clash against them was a firestorm twice as potent and a hundredfold more intimidating.
The ground shook with their opposing forces finally meeting, the resultant destruction thundering down and smashing the war-torn land even more. The soldier could barely breathe through the smoke and steam billowing across the harsh wooden jungle of chaos around him; embers flecked the air in hot glowing flakes, the taste of blood and ash and steel mixing with the roars of ongoing battles and the thunderous devastation coming down from above. Beneath his aching back he could feel the seeping, bitter cold of the winter earth beneath the Wood-Style madness that had smothered the world around him, and he flinched with every boom of colliding might above, knowing the chaos could crush him in any passing second. Nothing in any direction was safe or stable; not beneath fire-seared heavens torn apart in the battle between such gods.
With the sheer scale and destructive power of how they fought, he'd forgotten how they, too, were just mortals. How could he not see them as gods, as gigantic spherical meteors the size of moons began to thunder down from the stars at Madara's roaring command?
The whole breadth of the sky from horizon to horizon filled with them in the echoes of his harsh shout. It was as if he'd forced a hundred moons to hurtle down from space to obliterate his enemies below: each was easily the size of a whole village or larger, and the darkness that choked the land in their many shadows made the already stifling clouds of smoke all the more blinding. Formerly unafraid squadrons of soldiers from both sides were struck with fight or flight as they saw their doom raining down from above, with some standing still in awestruck horror and others fleeing in a futile attempt to find unthreatened ground.
Fresh flashes of light cut across the skies as Sasuke in a perfect Susano'o of his own soared up from the destruction. The soldier watched in pained, continuous awe as the Susano'o's lightning-fast precise strikes broke through dozens of meteors at once, his great wings beating hard enough to create a swirl of smoky winds through the skies, and the more he slashed through the falling meteors the more the resulting rock rubble rained down upon the already devastated warscape in shudders of heavy destruction.
The screams below faltered slightly with the bright searing of light that Naruto was as he blurred across the skies, his own hurled Rasenshuriken multiplied into countless attacks that shattered falling rubble before they could crush the people below. While Sasuke continued to smash through Madara's skyfield of meteors, Naruto kept up with pulverising the rain of destruction, preventing the total annihilation of both armies.
Clouds of stone dust from the blasted bits of rubble joined with the steam and the smoke, and the thick, stifling fog whetted by the fires burning high from the warscape grew ever thicker, obscuring the thousands still fighting as well as the fallen while their gods continued to fight up in the skies. It was like a gray snow mixed with ash, the soldier coughing hard and then gasping with pain, clutching over his wounded stomach in a fresh wave of agony.
He had to brace himself once more as suddenly the whole of the landscape beneath him responded as if in offense to such destruction from above, thrumming and groaning like a vast living beast.
Creaks echoed through the smoke, all across the horizon, as the Wood-Style ground responded to another roar from Madara soaring high above. The soldier held on for dear life, eyes wide in terrified awe as the already intimidating branches the width of houses that wound over the landscape shifted as one. Like great, unnatural arms they began to pull upwards, reaching up into the firelit skies, tendrils like fingers unfurling; swathes of the great Wood-Style branches continued to burn, their dimensions so thick that the forest fire of flames seemed to barely damage them at all. The soldier was insignificant and small in such madness, like a tiny beetle at the roots of ancient trees that were writhing and alive, responding to Madara's commands and his precise, exacting control over them.
Madara gestured from somewhere high up, somehow afloat, as the soldier expected his god might be able to do. He could barely see him now, visible still through the smoke from the sheer power and might that emanated in a visible glow around his soaring silhouette, contrasted against the light of the moon. The mismatched glitter of his eyes could be seen from far below as he commanded destruction and chaos with manic rigour, an entire new fleet of meteors forming above him at the twisting gesticulation of his raised hands.
Naruto and Sasuke both had to spiral across the skies as the vast expanse of raised branches like motile ancient trees undulated in a ripple of response. A wave of panic rippled below as the great wooden arms reaching into the heavens made a synchronous grab into the skies as if to snatch at the stars, their arrays of smaller branches like bizarre fingers, still burning from the fights on the ground.
Each gigantic branch caught hold of a falling meteor, and in a display of Madara's absurd control and power, the meteors became projectiles.
It had been chaos before; it became something even worse than that now as the land and the sky twisted and fought in unhinged madness. The earth shook under the weight of the armlike Wood-Style landscape that hurled meteors where Naruto and Sasuke wove through the skies to avoid being struck. The horizons roared with devastation, disproportionate power, destruction, and a level of pandemonium overwhelming for those without such power below, and every passing hour seemed to bring deepening degrees of havoc.
The soldier sunk back further, awed and afraid. Never had the blade dropped somewhere by his side felt more insignificant. He and the rest of the army were just particles of dust compared to the momentous battle going on above. Even his great squadron leader Sasaki was nothing compared to them, though he hoped she would live through this.
He could no longer watch the ravaged skies. Clutching at his stomach with another raw hiss of breath, the soldier hunched over, breathing harder. A slow death was the most painful, and the agony in his midsection was increasingly unbearable. If the gods saw fit to take his life, why did he have to suffer for so long first?
He stiffened instinctively even in his pain as he sensed someone nearby, the survival instincts drilled and honed in him from Sasaki's months of training igniting regardless of his condition. Turning his head, the soldier spotted one among his enemy fallen nearby, marked in the Allied headband's symbol she wore.
She was also smeared in the red of another dying soldier. Collapsed against the unforgiving Wood-Style mess of ground just as he was, she was breathing raggedly. While the symbol she bore flagged her as Allied, the olive colours of her vest indicated she was of Konoha. Violet hair brushed over her eyes, her breathing cadence painful and uneven. She didn't seem to notice the Union soldier just out of reach, watching her blearily, warily, reaching for his blade with agonised efforts just in case she might yet throw an attack his way.
The roaring noise of battle overhead nearly masked the soft voice entirely, the soldier only just able to catch it. "Anko. Hold on."
He watched with horror as the biggest slug he had ever seen — perhaps the size of a cat — oozed over onto the Allied kunoichi. White eyestalks waved as the slug appeared to assess her, and there was a soft glow almost invisible to the eye. What was it doing to her?
The soldier looked around. He could see a few other shinobi fallen through the smoke; someone from the Union, likely dead, and two others from the Allied forces; but something not human was atop those, too, their eyestalks just visible through the winds thick with stone dust and smoke.
More slugs. The Union soldier hunched back, even more afraid in his confusion. Each slug was identical, and all were the size of housecats, white with bluish patterns on their backs. Were the slugs consuming or healing the injured? He realised that in his and the others' wounded and vulnerable states, a hungry creature could find easy meals, and panic began to blind him as he continued to look around, fearing an even worse end to his life. It escaped his notice that the woman the slug had called Anko had begun to relax, the wound across her side beginning to seal and cease bleeding, the slug's healing doing its work.
It was now that he spotted her, craning his neck in his search for answers beyond the ravaged skies. Far up beyond the destruction and chaos, on a distant peak; Haruno Sakura, the last of Team Seven. The soldier forgot about the slugs entirely for a moment as he tried to get a better view, squinting through wisps of smoke.
That remarkable pink hair, toned arms, and poise of power — it was really her, and she glowed with strength and unleashed chakra just as the other legends clashing through the heavens did; but one of a different kind. Poised in a position that was meditative, the ferocity of her presence and the rippling potency from what she was doing could be felt from miles off.
The soldier ignored his mortal pain for a moment longer as he began to understand it. Sakura was illuminated in green, a glow that permeated beyond where she perched down into the battlefield, and when he looked again to the fallen Allied soldier he saw it was the same as the one surrounding the creature on her.
Sakura was commanding the multitudes of slugs. It was her chakra that burned across what he was recognising was hundreds, if not thousands of the same summoning creature, seeking out every fallen Allied shinobi and healing their wounds.
It was certainly healing. Knowing Sakura was the mastermind of single-handedly mending the whole of the Allied's many wounded made sense to him; though it indicated her true loyalties, in the end.
The soldier shut his eyes, laying back.
The sight of her triggered a memory that floated over him as he waited to die. Having been in the room when it happened, he had known then as he did now that he could never forget it; and whispers of that day had trickled down through the Union's ranks ever since, circling eternally like a newborn legend.
He'd nearly watched two of their three head generals be executed at once, helpless but to cower and watch. Their lord Madara had held a dark rage that day that they'd never seen before. It was worse than when they'd reported previous failures to find Sakura's original; worse than any of his previous receptions to bad news they'd carried to him, and none had known the reason for his fury other than at their single continued inability to find her. Death incarnate would not have been as frightening to behold as Uchiha Madara had been.
It had been a judgment day that had become a day of victory when the double-doors to the hall had burst open in an interruption no one else alive would have dared to do, but for her. It had also been the generals Hayashi and Isamu's saving grace, preventing their imminent, gory executions by a moment's worth.
Sakura had been a streak of pink through the sea of Union soldiers. With their rapid recognition of who she was, they'd willingly parted to let her through. They had also known that they would have been thrown aside if they hadn't gotten out of her way. Her resolve had been as dangerous and fiery as Madara's rage had been.
The soldier almost chuckled, in his pain-bound state, remembering. There had already been so much talk of her among the generals' ranks and in all the ones below. Bets, even, on whether there was any truth to the whispers of the illicit relationship between her and their great, frightening god. The majority had been in favour of there not being one, as of course it had been a ridiculous concept few could bring themselves to believe. Sakura was civilian-born, after all, her roots from peasants without prestige or power; she was also incredibly young, and being a woman, she was even more underestimated regardless of her tutelage by Konoha's great Hokage.
Madara was powerful, ancient, and stubbornly independent, as well as being on a godly tier in all the soldiers' minds. While Sakura was widely rumoured to be unlikely to have anything to do with him in that sense, such talk wasn't from vindictive intent. Madara was a god. There wasn't anyone alive worthy of him. In black and white, their possible pairing just wasn't plausible to the majority who discussed them, and those who bet in favour of the idea were ridiculed.
Reality was never so simple as that. The vision created when Sakura had pulled him to her like more than a familiar had been not only a gray area in contrast to the black and white whispers, but a colourful ceasefire of any doubt about what they were. Their paired image was a study of contrasts, melding into a visible truth of opposites attracting, and any further uncertainty about what was between the unlikely two was struck dead when he chose against killing her even in his former rage.
It had been a rare sight when all of Madara's jagged edges had eased, the aura of death incarnate around him temporarily fading as he chose to spare and accept Sakura instead, inclining his head and shutting his eyes in a single almost reverent moment the rest had been allowed to witness. It was poetic; a reminder of how light was the balancer of the dark, how one could not exist without the other.
The rest of what the soldier remembered was being shooed like a child from the hall with the rest, Sasaki corralling the awed onlookers with firmness tempered by patience. While all would have preferred to continue gawking, it was probably for the best that she'd made them leave; Madara was the sort of god to change moods capriciously, and he might have ended up deciding to smite his onlookers anyway after emerging from his peaceable moment.
They'd snuck another look at the confirmed couple anyway a small time later, posting as extra guards along the nearby corridor and waiting with bated breath for them to emerge. The image of them as a powerful pair striding together after they had emerged from the hall had been their reward, and it was one never forgotten and much discussed by everyone in the Union in the weeks following. Any previous talk of Sakura being unworthy, weak, or lacking power ceased entirely after seeing not only her effect on Madara, but her bravery as well.
The soldier, like all the rest of his fellows, admired Sakura. Her and her tenacity, her fervent resolve; how she was so powerful without needing to be born from a noble clan like the Uchihas. She had managed to rise so far as to be something like an equal at Madara's side, even with her humble origins. Admired for that, she was revered too, for how her requited love of their frightening god made him even slightly more merciful; enough to spare lives that day, and enough to spare more in the ones after. He would never be kind, but Sakura tempered him where he might have culled the whole of his upper ranks without her intervention.
If only she was officially their Union queen, declared on their side. They would win without a doubt. Even in death, the soldier knew he'd remember her, just as he would remember his lost loved ones and his revered god. Perhaps he might dream an ideal life in the afterlife, since he would never get to taste of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. They'd reign in that dream just as they would reign in this life.
He was mostly faded, now. He barely felt the tugging and shifting along his leg, and it took great effort to open his eyes once more.
The Union soldier no longer saw skies afire: his view was two strange grey eyes atop waving white stalks.
"Hang in there." He blinked a few times, dazed with pain and additionally confused on how a slug was able to talk. "Stay calm," she was instructing as he breathed harder, feeling the weight of the slug oozing up over his abdomen where blood continued to stream out from his stomach wound. "I'll have you healed soon. Hold still as much as you can."
The pain already began to ease as cool, potent chakra alien to his own began to knit over his midsection with fine, skilled control, as if there was a medic-nin bent over him rather than a huge slug.
The soldier released a tremulous breath. He almost voiced a why; why would the Allied side's powerful healer of a summoning creature help him, one among their enemy?
But he could see that the amount of slugs had multiplied in what was visible through the smoky, destroyed warscape: now, there was one for each fallen soldier, regardless of the colours or the symbols they wore. Vaguely he recalled hearing of Konoha's Hokage having done a feat like this for the whole of her village, years ago, saving lives in giving all the chakra she had to her summoning slug Katsuyu so she could divide into clones to heal every fallen individual… The Slug Queen, she was dubbed, long even before that.
This must be the same slug, but a different summoner, somehow outgrowing Tsunade who was a legend herself; someone who had now managed a new feat at a level just as incredible and absurdly powerful as the ones who fought across the skies.
The soldier shuddered with a deep, unfurling relief as he realised it. There were easily a thousand fallen here in sum from both sides. She now had a slug clone saving every single one from their deaths. She hadn't chosen only her original side of the war… she had chosen to save both. While lord Madara was the god of death, dreams, and chaos, she was the goddess of preserving life.
"Sakura," the soldier managed in an exhale of awe and relief, the slug eyeing him with mild surprise and visible confirmation before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
"But what if she's right?" Naruto was shouting as he dodged another gigantic hunk of broken meteor rock, thrown his way by kraken-like branches below. He was a searing of bright yellow-white light as he darted with Sasuke throughout the minefield of rubble falling through the sky, keeping Madara's distant, power-blazed figure in their peripheral vision at all times.
Sasuke took a while to answer, twisting and dodging while attacking with grace in his Susano'o form. He landed atop a mountainous crest of collapsing rocks to turn to Naruto, plummeting to the ground at his side and scrabbling to keep a perch there. Smoke swirled around them in the chaos, flecked with ash and glowing embers; crumbling, pulverised rock slid in avalanches down from the writhing landscape of Wood-Style branches that creaked as they turned to aim at them.
Naruto reverted to his normal form in a shimmer of light. His revealed face was twisted with doubt as he caught Sasuke's eye. "Sasuke," he said, but nothing more, his expression tight.
Sasuke paused, noticing how Naruto was sickened with his doubt, even beneath his battle-hardened exterior and quick reflexes that had kept them both alive while fighting against Madara all throughout the night. It was significant, enough to have Naruto expressing his inner turmoil, almost like a request for reassurance he didn't know how to voice correctly.
Sasuke leapt down from his Susano'o form, allowing it to crumble behind him both from his abrupt exit and from the shower of rubble that cast down upon it moments after he abandoned it. Standing tall beside Naruto, he took the time to understand, knowing instinctively that this was important. Naruto wouldn't stop mid-battle to speak with him if it wasn't vital; not when they were up against the strongest enemy either of them would ever face.
Her name and her words stretched between the both of their minds, and Sasuke narrowed his eyes at Naruto, gesturing out towards the warscape with a cutting shift of his hand. "Look out there," he said quickly, well aware they had very little time to talk.
The skies undulated with fire, wind, and rubble, a chaos of falling rock and devastation spattered with the white swirls of an incoming winter storm. Below, the torn up landscape smothered with Madara's endless tangle of Wood-Style branches burned in all cardinal directions. Soldiers weren't fighting as much as they were trying to survive the madness; Water-Style users had become focused on putting out the flames, and others were pulling dead and fallen from the tangled ground before they were burned away into cinders. High above, Madara was the king of the chaos, untouchable by attacks thrown his way. He reigned among the meteors like falling stars under his command, and again his mismatched eyes turned to where Naruto and Sasuke briefly paused amidst the rubble, his focus bladed and intense.
Sasuke returned his attention to Naruto, his gesturing hand clasping into a fist. "I know that what Sakura has said and done still haunts you. You think she might be right." He clenched his teeth with a tch. "Forget all of it, Naruto. Madara hasn't changed, and he never will. The fact that he's out here still seeking us out for the eye makes that so obvious. Don't you see it by now?" His grimace flashed in the light, his dark hair shifting over his burning mismatched eyes. "We're right back to where we started a year ago — fighting for our lives against him, while he tries to take my eye and everything else away from us."
Naruto inhaled quickly, then coughed the dusty, smoky air back out with a wince, flexing his fists uncertainly at his sides. Even while he burned bright with strength and chakra shared between himself and Kurama, ready to keep fighting, he was still suspended within the reemergence of his doubts, visible within the stressed carve of his features.
Glancing aside with drawn brows, Sasuke briefly dismissed his anger: he couldn't judge Naruto too harshly for this. Even though it frustrated him that Naruto was tangled in his doubts at such a vital time, Madara's choosing of Sakura over the Rinnegan earlier had been a powerful psychological play, enough of a false affectionate gesture to touch Naruto's much too big heart. It was enough to create this pause… Naruto's culminated guilt over thinking he might be choosing wrong and betraying a friend enough to make him hesitate here, which could end up deadly.
It's why he turned to Sasuke for this. Sasuke turned back to Naruto with a fiercely resolved look on his face, determined anew. He was level-headed; he could see the truth clearly and without emotion. He knew how to help Naruto out of his inner turmoil, and he had to do it quickly, or this sojourn here would get them both killed.
"He's strong, too—" They both leapt out of the way of a hunk of falling rock, Sasuke's words calm but quick, "but don't get discouraged. We don't have to kill him. We just have to hold out a little longer, and when everyone converges, we'll finish this for good."
They both flipped out of the way of a barrage of Truth-Seeker orbs. The mountainous peak of rubble beneath them exploded in a cloud of rock shards.
Snow billowed in the chaotic winds as Naruto and Sasuke landed in tandem in the heart of the battlefield. This time, they stood tall, holding their ground.
There was a vast clearing around them where those who could walk had retreated, and those who had fallen had been pulled from the aftermath, as if in preparation for this showdown. Devastation from every element and nature had spattered the warscape in every colour; blood red across broken branches, steel flashing with moonlight silver from lost blades, snow flecking among embers in the ongoing smoke from the fires in every direction, and the bizarre living element of the Wood-Style branches creaking into the skies above, finally curving back down and returning to a more inert state as Madara changed his focus.
He landed far across from them with further destruction in his wake. The skies groaned and cried with the flames and rock finishing their continuous fall, thundering into new craters, crashing against the curves and creaking valleys of Wood-Style branches. Wild white hair fell around his blood-spattered face, and he stood tall with power and grace.
Madara only showed some signs of damage from the battle he'd just fought throughout a long stretch of the night. His untamed mane was ragged at the edges, scuffs and singes down across his cracked black armour and somewhat tattered robes. Confidence was the power flowing from his frame, undiminished by injury — even while blood continued to flow from his wounds where glass shards were embedded across his body, peppered through his sides and torso, visible in sharply-reflected pieces along his face.
The constant plume of steam continued to rise around Madara as his body kept up its cycle of attempted regeneration around puncture wounds unable to heal around all the shards still embedded deeply in skin, muscle and bone. As always, he ignored this with ease, the blood mist he emitted almost unnoticeable among the drifting clouds of smoky, dusty fog borne from the chaos around him; just as he ignored the spreading pool of blood beneath his feet, the wounds across his jagged figure ever-seeping.
A few more bloodied bits of glass fell around Madara's boots as he looked to where Naruto and Sasuke stood, his mismatched glare levelled and dangerous. The skies had slowly cleared above him, and the moon poured silver over the serrated outline of his tall frame, washing out the red that oozed in gory hues across his robes.
Naruto and Sasuke were in similar states, excepting the glass. They were winded somewhat, their clothes fire-scorched and somewhat torn, much of their visible skin bruised and cut; but they were very much alive, and just as determined, other than the doubt that wrought Naruto's face once more.
"I just don't know," he was saying to Sasuke, the both of their eyes warily affixed to Madara. They prickled with awareness they did not show as they sensed what they knew would come from all sides of the clearing.
From east and west, north and south, the squadrons from Konoha made their way closer: Guy and Tenten with her squad, approaching with Lee and a battalion of soldiers he had helped train in taijutsu; Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji at their flank, battered but ready to fight still; Hinata, Shino, Kiba, led by Yamato and so many more of Konoha's best shinobi in a widespread approach. Because of their tenacity and due to Sakura's healing through Katsuyu, they had made their arrival here at the final standoff as they'd long planned. The Union's ranks had retreated from them, focusing on other village's battalions that still fought around the fringes of the warscape, fighting tooth and nail to their ends.
A hush settled across the clearing as each refreshed battalion of teams on all sides tensed, readied and awaiting their cue. Though he was certainly aware of them, Madara showed no sign that he acknowledged them, keeping his dangerous eyes narrowed upon the two relevant to his goal across the clearing. A weakening wind blew aloft with smoke across the void between them, slightly aglow with the embers of undying fires.
Sasuke held Madara's glare, seething with his hatred. Though his words were directed to Naruto at his side, he didn't shift his attention as he spoke; his voice was as cold as the winter that the war had cast aside in its chaos. "It's because, in the end; he and I really are alike. But—" he felt Naruto's wide eyes upon him as he spoke, "he never had someone like you, Naruto."
Sasuke readied his hands, his black hair shifting over his shadowed eyes. Madara's expression had twitched, slightly; he'd heard, and Sasuke didn't care, finishing what he had to say to Naruto to quell his doubts; admitting a truth he no longer cared to hide. "And because of that, the only way he can be saved from his corruption is by finishing this, here and now. I know, because that would have been me…" Sasuke looked to Naruto then, and there was the slightest spark of warmth in his expression, a crack in the ice of his features meant only for him. "If you hadn't been there for me, even through everything. You never gave up on me."
Naruto's eyes were wide, his hands uncertain and stance open, until Sasuke's tone hardened again. "There's no hope for Madara. He chose himself over everything and everyone else; he left her behind no matter her sacrifices, because it's far too late for him to be able to change from the selfish, manipulative bastard that he is. Let's end his and everyone else's suffering at last, Naruto. Let's end this war."
Sasuke's utter conviction was undeniable in his expression, burning in the cold dark of his mismatched eyes so much like Madara's. He rarely showed sentiment of any kind, and the significance of his words rang deeply with Naruto; as his friend, as in a sense as his brother.
The doubt eased slowly from Naruto's face as he paled, nodding to Sasuke with respect and admiration. With a bitter resolve firming his features, he and Sasuke slowly turned back towards where Madara stood, finally twinned with the same resolve as they prepared to end this the way they had been meant to from the beginning of the war long ago.
They paused as the observation they had been waiting for throughout the grievous hours finally made its subtle appearance. While the tense, anxious battalions lying in wait around the clearing generally didn't notice such a finer detail, Naruto and Sasuke did, and it sent a flicker of brief uncertainty across their faces until they recognised that it meant what they hoped.
The steam around Madara had begun to slow until it had all but disappeared into wisps. Before, the ceasing of steam had meant he was healed; but now, where his skin had been trying to mend around hundreds of severe punctures over the hours of fighting, releasing clouds of steam tainted red with blood, they were fading away instead. His regeneration had, in the least, become extremely slow; it had perhaps begun to fail entirely from his constant, prolonged blood loss over such an extended period of time.
Madara had noticed this, as well, in a single glance down at his body; but the stress in his face was not over this new development. His eyes had stopped upon Sasuke, having heard every word he said.
The steam around him ceased entirely. The pool of red spread wider beneath his feet, creeping slow in a deep crimson, seeping into the ground.
The ranks around the clearing shifted forward with a shuffling of silent feet. Every shinobi at hand was silent and tense from head to toe, ready to move and to fight with everything they had. They poised for the attack, waiting for Naruto and Sasuke; waiting for the final clash between them and Madara that would determine the results of this war.
Madara's already pale face had become a deathly shade; and while weakness or fear would never cross the threshold of his being, the doubt that had once faltered Naruto had taken hold across his expression now. It was subtle for others to see, but within him it was like a forest fire, burning away his previous resolve, clearing the way for him to realise it now — as the reinvigorated rest of the shinobi world bore down on him in a final attack, as his regenerative body began to slowly shut down and fail after many hours of bleeding away what had become life's blood. But it was not them nor his wounds that had him halted, creating a single, lethal hesitation; it was in the deep regret burning across his eyes.
Naruto and Sasuke waited no longer. They surged forward in a blur of power and light, voices roaring. The forces from all sides lying in wait did the same, every attack, jutsu, blade, and fighter ready to throw down their lives in the chance they could help end this war for good. Every ounce of chakra Naruto and Sasuke possessed burned around them in this final attack, the winds, smoke and snow whipping around them in gale-force winds in a hurricane of movement and power.
In the moment this happened, even with the reactive powerful counters he slung within instants upon their attacks, Madara turned towards a distant call of his name — his attention snared by something beyond the chaos, extending his hesitation for a single heartbeat longer.
It was enough.
Before the smoke cleared, the jutsu was already cast, rock forming around the center of the chaos in a fast-forming sphere. Everyone dove backwards as it rose in a whirlwind of ember-flecked smoke and snow.
Naruto and Sasuke landed hard a safe space back, breathing heavily, ragged from Madara's powerful countering attacks he'd reactively slung in split seconds before they'd closed in. All who had joined the fight stood back now, watching, recovering from new wounds, the clearing devastated once more with destruction and a gory red splattering of blood that he had left behind.
Swirling, dusty fog made it hard to see what was happening, but the fact that all had stopped attacking was enough for one of them to crack a smile. Lee glanced around at his solemn teammates with joy and disbelief. "They did it?! We did it. We've won!" He threw a fist into the air.
No one was looking at him. There was no joy in any other expression, not even Guy at his side, and he quickly faded as he realised the severity in their faces over their exhaustion. A deep hush settled over those present as the sphere of rock gained mass and rose higher into the sky above the ruined clearing, the smoke and snow spiralling around it. Breaths caught as it was seen by more and more of the shinobi still alive on the battlefield, each starting to realise what it was.
The tense hush was shattered by a cracked, furious roar: a streak of pink slashing down into the settling chaos, Sakura skidded to a halt beneath the rising rock mass, the soles of her sandals red with blood. In a fiery panic, she swerved towards where Sasuke and Naruto had gotten to their feet, facing her; she was before them in an instant, her hair wild around her stricken expression, her voice a hoarse shout through the hush that the rest sunk through. "Show me your hands! Now!"
They each flinched as Sakura forcibly snatched up their arms, wasting no time. She turned their bruised and scuffed palms upwards, where the moonlight could illuminate them.
The sun and moon symbols upon their hands were rapidly fading. By the time Sakura laid eyes on them, they faded into nothing, their abilities spent and finished.
She stared at their bared palms for a second as it felt like time stood still.
"He's been…"
The snow spiralled past Sakura's face, cold and bitter. Her eyes widened with complete and utter horror. No. It wasn't possible. She couldn't breathe.
She was unable to comprehend either the image of their unmarked palms in her grip, or what she knew it meant. She couldn't breathe, and she could barely say the word, lips numb with the cold, a shadow casting over her as the sky darkened above with every passing fraction of a second. "...Sealed?"
Sakura swerved once more, looking up to the rising meteor of rock that was rapidly ascending into the sky, her quickened, harshly-spoken words directed at her teammates behind her. "Uncast it. Now. Release the seal before it's too late."
Sasuke stared at Sakura with hidden guilt, paused beside her with tensed, uncertain hands he snatched back from her like he'd been burned. "We can't—"
"You will."
"It's too late, Sakura."
"Release it now!" came Sakura's feral roar that ripped through the skies. She burned with a rage visibly smouldering around her lithe figure, the rising sphere's shadow casting her into darkness as she turned to them with tangible, agonised rage. Her hands were illuminated with the last of her chakra left after reviving thousands of fallen through the night, and black ribbons streamed like tears down her cheeks as she released her seal. Whatever she could do to stop this, she would burn the rest of her life force to do. Whatever she had to say to make them reverse this, she would.
But the way Sasuke looked at her was both solemn and resigned, his haunting mismatched eyes cast away from her; and the sheer, boundless guilt in Naruto's expression in turn had Sakura realising that they truly couldn't undo what they had just done.
A heartbeat more, as Sakura was struck with this understanding. Another, as she recognised again the spreading dark of the shadow enveloping the world around her was from the prison Madara was now sealed into; and increasing in mass, a multitude of rubble rising from the battlefield as it formed around the meteor moving higher into the sky, further out of her reach.
And that was his blood, soaking her feet.
She could not breathe.
"I'm sorry," Naruto started to try to say. He looked like he was about to throw up, one arm clutched around his stomach and one extended towards Sakura in the beginning of a sickened, realised need to apologise as he, too, realised what they had done. "It was what we had to do. There was no other way. We—"
Sakura's ragged scream shook the warscape around them. They stumbled back from her as she clambored up a blood-slicked slope in a desperate race to stop the rocky sphere's ascent, but she halted once more at its peak, realising immediately it was impossible. It crumbled beneath her, and she fell back against the clearing where Madara had once stood, his life's blood seeping through her clothes, smearing her palms — her stricken face turned towards the stars and her eyes dulling with the repeated realisation that there was nothing she could do to stop this now. Not anymore.
"No." The first time she said it, it was a plea, a hoarse request that this wasn't possible.
It was well into the atmosphere now, a speck in the sky rising among the stars, and Sakura was beginning to lose all remaining fragments of her composure as the reality of this hit her again, again, and again. Madara was not dead; it was worse than that. He had been sealed.
"No," and she was collapsed on her knees, her tears streaming down her cheeks where the ribbons of her seal had been. Her voice was torn, her words desperate and lost, her anger having sundered into a raw, bleeding grief. "This isn't real. This can't be possible. He can't be…"
Naruto landed at Sakura's side, followed quickly by Ino and several others. A rush of figures appeared around her, hands slipping over her shoulders, their shadows blocking out the light of the untainted moon whose fate they had successfully determined. Wih voices soft with rushed, almost panicked comfort, they attempted to make some kind of amends for a crime committed against Sakura they'd only just begun to recognise.
All had to retreat from Sakura's swiping, lethal fist. "Don't touch me. Don't touch me! Don't come near me, any of you." Her tears were lit red like blood from the fires in the hellscape around them, and as she fell back amidst the devastation, she lifted her head, her gaze returning to the new moon beginning to rise beside the other high into the skies. Light touched over its rocky surface, so far from reach now that it was surely impossible to stop, and as her heart broke in her chest she sunk further against the ground that was soaked with his blood; all that there was of him left.
His name left Sakura's mouth in a trickling whisper, then again in a pained hiss as she hunched forward, her hands pressed into the blood-smeared ground. Silent figures stood back from her at a safe distance, their heads bowed and their silence respectful, regretful, painful.
All fighting had ceased. The war was over: and the fires that had burned through the night had faded with the slow return of the deep, bitter cold of winter, casting an unfeeling chill over where bodies and carnage were revealed in the wake of chaos.
Sakura called for him once more as she looked to the ravaged skies, her heartbroken gaze bleeding silver in the light of the second moon. Her agonised wail echoed outwards like the settling of a curse into the desolated land around her.
She fully collapsed, descending into immeasurable grief.
As Naruto stood back from Sakura, the smoky fog began to clear. He saw the bodies strewn across the devastation; he saw the Union armies decimated, and now those who remained stood blank-faced in the near-distance, their weapons dropped and jaws slack with horror and grief as they began to realise what had happened. They lifted their heads, pale and lifeless even as they stood with hearts beating slow in their chests. Hope died in their faces as they looked between the sky and Sakura sobbing in the heart of the destruction.
Out of forceful habit instilled from their missing generals the cultists had used mostly nonlethal attacks on the Allied forces, leaving few of their enemies dead; but lacking that resolve to avoid killing, the Allied side had not done the cultists such a favour in turn. Most of the dead bore Union colours. Gore and ruin swept in all directions around where Naruto stood, drenched gray in the pale light of the new second moon and standing in the wake of sheer devastation; the symbol on his palm long gone with his year-long goal finally completed in spite of his doubts, roiling again in his gut with the nauseous recognition that he should have listened to them.
Naruto realised, as he stared with numb horror around him, that this wasn't what the good side looked like. This — was not a victory.