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Chapter 7 - Diamond : Clarity, innocence, virtue, faith, success, end of evil thoughts
Sasuke had died with his eyes open.
I'm not sure why that bothered me so much. I cradled Sasuke's corpse in my arms, brushing his deep indigo hair out of his eyes. His eyes were wide open and were staring at me. Both of his eyes were bright red, the pretty sharingan, and there was a small smile on his lips. Even as a corpse, Sasuke really was pretty. I pressed my hand against Sasuke's eyes to ease them closed, and kissed both of the eyelids. Then I worked on wiping off the blood on Sasuke's face, because blood was bad. Why was Sasuke so soaked in blood? And blood was still trickling out from the wound on his chest.
I ripped off my shirtsleeve and bandaged up the puncture in Sasuke's chest. Maybe Sasuke was so pale because he lost so much blood. I had to stop the blood from coming out. Even though Sasuke was my older brother, it was so weird how we were so different. The only thing that we had in common, as far as I could see, was that we had the sharingan. Mine was only half, though. I lifted Sasuke's hand against my lips and kissed each digit. His skin felt cold. Why was he so cold? Sasuke always felt warm. Sasuke, if you're cold like this, it won't feel good when you kiss me... Why are you sleeping for so long? Aren't you going to open your eyes?
"Naruto?"
I looked up. I was confused. What was Gaara doing here? He's not supposed to come back yet... I frowned and clutched Sasuke's corpse closer to my chest. "Don't take him away."
Gaara kneeled down and put his arms around me. He kissed my cheek, even though my cheek must be covered with blood. "Naruto, you're strong enough to face the reality. Please don't hide. I'm here for you, remember?"
I nodded. Shards of memories emerged back to the surface. I remembered I had asked Gaara to wait outside while I talked to Kakashi. I thought it wouldn't take a long time. I wasn't sure how long I made him wait, but it must have been a long time for him to come find me like this. What happened? I touched my eye with my bloody hand. "Gaara... I have a sharingan..."
"Because you killed Uchiha?" Gaara softly asked, patting my hair. "Why did you kill him, Naruto? You don't like death, remember?"
"I know..." I shuddered and pulled Sasuke closer. Sasuke was so cold and stiff. I had to warm him up with my body. And why the fuck won't he wake up, damn it? "Sasuke... and I... We have the same father. We're half brothers... And Kakashi-sensei is our cousin, and... Kakashi killed himself, and I killed Sasuke because... I thought… But… Oh, gods, Sasuke died."
At the edge of insanity, I heard Gaara's voice. His voice was clear and strong, penetrating through the confusion and hurt and darkness. "But that's the past. You cannot change the past. The important thing is how you live from now on, right?"
And then I was finally able to break down and cry. I placed my cheek against Gaara's chest, sobbing, and it was strange how incredibly warm he was, while Sasuke felt so cold. Gaara's heart beat strongly, while Sasuke's heart had stopped beating. And it was all my fault, but Gaara was right. I couldn't escape with death; that would be too easy. I had to live for Sasuke and Kakashi. I had to live.
"The sharingan is cursed, isn't it?" I quietly asked, running my hand through Sasuke's hair. I continued to sob quietly. It was amazing how tears washed all the blood off of Sasuke's face. I was glad for the tears. Sasuke looked dead enough without all that blood on his face. I didn't want Sasuke to look dead. I didn't want Sasuke to be dead. Why was I alive? "It's all these eyes' fault... I'm the last Uchiha now..."
"It's not the eyes' fault. It's the people's fault," Gaara murmured against the top of my head. " 'Wrong' is just societal definition of anything that does not fit into their expectations..."
I lifted up my eyes to look at Gaara's eyes. They were such a pretty shade of green, almost transparent with their clarity. Even though Gaara looked older than the Gaara I knew at childhood, he still had the childish quality about his features. Gaara would always remain in my mind this way. I reached out with trembling fingers to touch Gaara's cheeks, then left a gentle kiss against his lips.
"Sorry..."
It was amazing how Gaara seemed to be able to read my mind, even if I don't convey my thoughts in words. "If you feel that you must do so, then I will not stop you," Gaara replied. His smile was sad. He returned my kiss to reassure me. I smiled back at him, my eyes still full of tears.
"These eyes that can not see the truth- I don't need them."
I picked up the kunai that had taken Sasuke's life away and quickly plunged it into my eye before doing the same to the other. Something popped underneath the thin eyelids. Warm liquid rapidly traveled down my face, and I knew I would never see again. But I would never be deceived by surface appearance again. I blindly reached out for Gaara, and felt strong grip of Gaara's hand clutching my hand. Gaara kissed the back of my hand softly.
"It's all over now, right?"
"Yeah..." I carefully lowered Sasuke's corpse to the ground and stood up with Gaara. I felt him wiping the blood and fluid away from my face with something soft. I think it was his shirt. "It's all over now... The curse of the Uchiha blood ends with me."
"Naruto."
Calloused fingertips danced across my cheeks before a finger dug into my cheek. The finger started to poke me. It was irritating. I swatted the hand away and tried to bury myself deeper into the blankets, but the blankets were pushed aside.
"Come on, Naruto. Aren't you going to make me anything?"
"You can make your own damned food, Gaara… Now leave me alone," I grumbled. I tried to get my blanket back, but my hands closed around the silken fabric of Gaara's sleeping clothes instead. I tugged at the cloth, and I felt a weight settle on the bed. Gaara was lying next to me. His arms slung around my shoulders. "Get off."
"If you're not going to wake up, I'm sleeping with you. It's no fun without you," Gaara said, his forehead resting against the side of my neck. I could almost hear the pouting in his voice. I sighed and patted along his back until I reached his hair. I messed up his hair.
"You're such a baby." But I wrapped my arms around him anyway. We didn't talk for a while. We just listened to each other's heartbeats, feeling steady rise and fall of our chest as we breathed, the sound of our breath. Alive. We were both so alive…
Gaara, who was probably watching my face, quietly asked, "What's wrong? You have a really weird expression on your face."
I turned my sightless eyes towards the direction of his voice. It was more of scarred eyelids than eyes, but… "What are you going to do from now on, Gaara? You can't just stay here with me for the rest of your life."
"Why not?" Gaara asked. He was serious. I didn't like that serious tone. I didn't want Gaara to stay with me here. We were at the outskirts of the town, in a small cottage by a stream. No one came here. Gaara worked and brought food and other necessities for both of us. It had been exactly a hundred days now that we lived together. They were the happiest hundred days I have lived through thus far. Gaara loved me, and I loved him return. And in that feeling of returned love, I wanted to drown in Gaara's kindness, to never remember and think and feel guilty again, but I wasn't a child anymore.
"Gaara… You can't just live like a hermit for the rest of your life. You need other people, the society—"
Gaara's hold on me tightened. "I do not need the society. I only need you."
"What about your family? You have siblings," I argued. I didn't want Gaara to leave me. I knew Gaara's family would not approve of me, that we'll be separated if Gaara chose to return to his family. But I didn't want to take away from Gaara what I had been craving for all my life—a family to return to.
Gaara actually laughed. "Family? Siblings? Bullshit. They just view me as a tool, Naruto. A potential danger, a machine to exploit. Or rather, an uncontrollable wild beast. Just because you share blood with someone does not mean that you become his family. You are my only family, Naruto."
I bit into my bottom lip. I felt Gaara loosening his grip on me. He pressed his cheek against mine, one of his hands pressing against my neck to bring me closer towards him. "What is the meaning of family, Gaara? I'm so confused… Sasuke was hurt so much because we were 'brothers', and it's wrong for 'siblings' to fall in love. But it's also wrong for people of same gender to fall in love. Hell, it's wrong for a human being to fall in love with me in the first place because I'm a 'demon', a whole different species from 'human beings'." I felt frustrated. I wanted to cry. "I wanted to be loved, Gaara… I was so happy when Sasuke loved me. But it was also wrong of me to accept his love when I didn't love him back. His feelings for me were wrong because that would be incest. But why? We didn't even know each other that well for most of our lives!"
Gaara patted my back soothingly. It was a while before he spoke again. "Humans enjoy classifying others, Naruto. It makes them feel superior to label others as inferior. If others are wrong, they must be in the right. That way, they can deny their own faults and shield themselves away from the truth. Which is an utter shit, because no human is perfect. We're humans because we're not perfect." He lightly sighed. "Family, same gender, it really doesn't matter. Incest is not encouraged because children born out of incest tend to have many genetic disorders, and same gender relationship is not encouraged because no children are produced in such a mating and we are, according to Darwinian theory, evolutionarily unfit. We will not pass our genes to our offspring. We die out."
I clutched harder at Gaara's shirt. That was what sucked most about being in love with another guy. We won't ever have babies. No matter how much I loved Gaara, no matter how many times we make love, a baby will never result from our love…
"But we don't exist solely to reproduce, Naruto. We're not concerned about inseminating as many healthy, fertile females as possible and fathering as many children as our life would permit. Neither are we interested in perverted hobbies of having sex only for physical pleasure of it, the thrill of conquering another human being, to get over our insecurities. We don't rape. We don't molest. We love. I'm sure Uchiha felt the same way I did. Incest, homosexuality, it doesn't matter if one truly loves another, because the feeling of love cannot be controlled. What is wrong is to force your love upon another person or demand another person to satisfy your physical lusts."
Gaara's voice was warm and affectionate. Gaara was always so sweet, so kind, so very gentle. "I love you, Naruto. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So you're my family. My spouse. Mate. It doesn't matter what others say."
"Gaara…"
I still didn't understand everything, why humans must hate and segregate and patronize, but what Gaara said comforted me a lot. For the first time since Sasuke's death, I felt a small smile on my lips. I felt for Gaara's hand and brought it to my lips. I sank my teeth into what must be his index finger. Gaara didn't utter a sound as I drew blood from his skin. I took my free hand to my mouth and did the same. I pressed my bleeding finger against Gaara's finger, allowing our blood to intermingle.
"Naruto?" Gaara finally asked. I turned my face towards the direction of his voice, smiling a little wider.
"Blood upon one's hands can simply be washed off, you know." I felt the bed shaking a little, and knew Gaara was nodding. "The blood-colored eyes, the sharingan, can simply be gouged out. Such blood can easily be forgotten. But what of blood within one's veins? What do I do about the Uchiha blood flowing in my body?"
Gaara remained silent. I started to laugh. I finally felt free. The key to the puzzle had been found, and the lock fell away from my shoulders. I felt tears running down my cheeks, but I was happy. My precious best friend Sasuke, my most beloved Gaara. One my half-brother, the other the person I would spend the rest of my life with. Family? That was just the societal definition. What was important was my own life, my own decisions. If I could only live on with my chest wide open in pride, if I can only continue to live on smiling, if only I can continue to live strongly, trivial thing as my bloodline didn't even matter. Being a demon didn't matter. Being alive was all that was important.
"I just accept it, of course! I can't change the past, and I can't deny it and live in ignorance, either! I have to be strong, face my true self, and live as I am. Because it is not my past that is important, but it is my present that is most important!"
I yelped when Gaara suddenly stood up, his arms around me to bring me up as well. Gaara kissed me deeply, his lips overlapping mine fiercely, his arms tightly wrapped around my body. He pulled away and lifted me up into the air, swinging me around like a child.
"Let's go on a journey, Naruto! Where no one was before, where no one will recognize us! We'll cross the mountains, the oceans, anywhere and everywhere! We have each other, right? As long as we're not alone, we can continue to make our future with our own two hands!"
I burst into laughter. I clung to Gaara, burying my tear-wet face into his neck, crying and laughing. Yes, the future hasn't been decided. No matter how much blood tainted our past, no matter what kind of blood flowed through us right now, we still could create the future.
"Sure!"
Finis
The ending actually surprised me. [laughs] My stories kind of write themselves at certain points, despite all my outlines and notes and plans. But I guess that's a good thing. That means the story has a life of its own after absorbing a piece of my soul, right? A story that has no emotion from the author will, I think, fail to reach the reader. How could you hope to communicate with the readers if you hide yourself from them? I get hurt when my stories get rejected because part of myself gets rejected, but writing and reading is, essentially, conversation between two people. I think it's amazing how many different people I can meet just by something I have written.
I'm so happy that this story is finished. Ahaha. I loved writing it, but it was personally really painful for me to write. When I killed my favorite character—Sasurin—I felt so emotionally drained that I couldn't do anything for a while after writing that chapter. I'm such an idiot. .o
It was a pleasure meeting you! I was happy that we crossed our paths together! And Shirohane readers who indiscriminately read anything written by him can continue to follow Shiro to the next fan fiction, 'Ookami to Kitsune no Monogatari'. [laughs] See you!
