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Naruto and Sasuke lie together at the Valley of the End. Eyes closed, side by side on the ground, beaten and bruised. Naruto wakes up and wonders how much time has passed since they fell asleep after the fight. The sun begins to shine over the mountains, casting an ethereal golden glow over the two of them.
He glances over at Sasuke, and memories flood in. From their time together in Team 7, to all the time he has spent chasing after him, just wishing he would return back to Konoha. Back to Naruto. His eyes linger, looking at Sasuke’s deep black hair, fair skin, chest peeking through the front of his open tunic. Searching for all the tiny details that define Sasuke Uchiha. He would know those features anywhere. Of course he would, he sees them in every moment of every dream.
His eyes are closed. Must still be sleeping, Naruto thinks.
“Where are we? Don’t tell me it’s really heaven this time?”
After a few seconds of not getting a response Naruto rolls over toward Sasuke and winces from the pain of putting pressure on the amputated arm.
“Sasuke? Are you awake?”
“…Sasuke?”
Naruto doesn’t know how much time has passed since that day. Seconds, hours, days, months, maybe even years. Time doesn’t matter to him, it stopped the same moment Sasuke stopped living. Every day is a vicious cycle of waking up, being alive, and going to sleep again. People come into his house without asking permission. They want him to eat, they want him to go outside. All they do is want. He can hear their muffled voices speaking to him, but the words fall on deaf ears. It can never be anything worth listening to anyway.
Naruto gets called to fight in war. He doesn’t know why, or what for. He just agreed without giving it a second thought. A fatal injury to the abdomen leaves him bleeding out on the battlefield. He stares up at the clear sky, it really isn’t very blue. The muscles in his neck relax and his head falls to the side, the grass really isn’t very green. He coughs up blood, and it starts to fall out of his mouth, down the side of his cheek.
I messed up. It was an accident…..
His eyes close, and his lips form a slight smile. Naruto has only one thought as his body dies and his soul leaves.
A familiar warmth envelopes his soul, it feels like air to the lungs, blood to the heart. Something that can’t be described, something he felt like should have been there all along. Like life itself.
Sasuke?…
You idiot…
As two plump caterpillars in the dirt,
two birds perched on a tree branch,
the last two petals on a sunflower,
two deer running through the hay field,
two raindrops on the warm concrete in summer,
they are together forever. In every lifetime.