Cherry Blossoms

By Kitsune Yarisha

A/N: "A promise is something to be kept, and it's only too bad that it took us so long to keep ours, huh, Sasuke?" Moments of surrender, persistence, defiance, confusion, and love blur the images of life into an endless stream. Sometimes, it is necessary to stop and merely observe life's script.

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Dialogue One: Cherry Blossoms

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Naruto: "We should come back again next year, when the cherry blossoms are first blooming!"

Sasuke: "Dobe, that's completely naïve."

Naruto: "What! Naïve, why?"

Sasuke: "We don't have a clue as to where we will be in a year from now."

(I should have taken the hint, then, and merely left the discussion alone, but back then I was young and stupid. I sped right on, determined.)

Naruto: "Well. I know where I want to be!"

Sasuke: "Where is that, dobe?"

Naruto: "Here! I want to come back here as the Hokage. And…and… I want you here, too, as the Anbu Captain! Yeah."

Sasuke: "All of this at fourteen?"

Naruto: "Yep. Why not?"

Sasuke: "You really are the king of the idiots."

Naruto: "That's not nice, Sasuke! Take it back!"

(A companionable silence is what was experience for those seven minutes that felt like an eternity. We didn't say anything, not a word.)

Sasuke: "Naruto?"

Naruto: "Yes, Sasuke?"

Sasuke: "Let's come back again next year."

(Yet, there was never a next year, was there?

And even though there was a promise

Scratched into the bottom of that cherry blossom…

We never really kept it.)

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To Be Continued.