Story Title: Full Circle
Rated: PG-13
Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke
Disclaimer: Naruto by Kishimoto Masashi
Summary: In the end, Naruto does what he must.
Steve's Notes: Please note that I really, really hope that this does not happen in the canon verse.
Warnings: Some violence/gore and a for-the-greater-good-Naruto
Sasuke's bones crunch like dried twigs underneath his clawed fingers, and the heat of his chest cavity is hotter than Naruto would have imagined. The deflated left lung squelches with the force of his blow, deep red blood instantly seeping into the innocent white of Sasuke's haori; the sensation sickens and enrages Naruto, and he wants to roar with the adrenaline that pulses through his brain, but Sasuke's eyes are dark and unfathomable.
"Will you kill him?" Itachi had asked. "If you needed to, would you kill him?"
Naruto had railed against the possibility--he would never, could never, kill his most precious person no matter the cost. And then when Jiraiya, his facial tattoos reminiscent of tear tracks, asked much the same thing, Naruto had smiled ferociously despite his irritation. "If I can't protect my best friend," he reasoned foolishly, "how can I protect Konoha when I'm the Hokage?"
Panting laboriously, Naruto stares into the calm of Sasuke's eyes and thinks back to all the promises he made--to Sakura, to Sasuke, to himself--and has broken. Of all the scenarios that have boiled in his mind, this is the one that he desperately and savagely hoped would never become reality. He wants to tell Sasuke that he never meant to put a hole in his chest and never meant to go back on all those things he ever said, because before that moment he always meant every word. He wants to cry, but the tears evaporate on his hot skin, and he wants to stop himself from delivering the fatal blow, but his hand is lodged in what used to be Sasuke's pleura.
"Na...to..." Sasuke mouths. His eyes remind Naruto of a starless night and Naruto wants to puke. Blood gurgles in the avenger's mouth, and trickles past his perfect pink lips. "I... I'm..."
Naruto feels his stomach bottom out as Sasuke's eyes roll backward, his long eyelashes fluttering against the slender crest of his cheeks. In three years Naruto has realized that he has so much to say, so many questions to ask, but there is an enormous, gaping void where all those things once were. He never thought that he wouldn't have the time to say everything he wanted to say--and he wants Sasuke to understand.
"I'm... home," Sasuke forces out, his body trembling. Naruto can feel his diaphragm shuddering and bile rises to the back his throat, acidic and painful. "Home..."
They stare at each other. Naruto has never thought that he would be able to kill his best friend--but, he realizes slowly, that killing Sasuke was only the way that there would ever be peace. The last of the Uchiha, ready to die at the hand of the last Senju, atoning for the sins of their prideful ancestors; Sasuke was willing to die, if Naruto was willing to let him.
"You... brought me... home..." Sasuke murmurs. His entire body quivers with the effort to remain alive. Naruto can feel his heartbeat slowing down, pumping uselessly as the blood empties from its chambers, leaving behind a hollowness that echoes in Naruto's own. He wants to howl at the ache it leaves behind, but his throat shudders and a keening whine escapes from his clenched teeth. "Naru... to..."
"Sasuke," he breathes, the stench of blood invading his nose--he will remember the haunting smell for the rest of his life. "Sa--you're home. You're home. You're home."
Sasuke smiles, faintly, beautifully, peacefully. Naruto barks out a humorless, destroyed, pathetic sound that may be a sob, and when Sasuke dies, and he gently cradles his most precious person to him for the first and last time, the blood still warm, he thinks that making foolish promises he can't keep are just as good as the ones that he can.
.end.