The manga disappoints me as of late...

The problem, ironically, in the end of everything, was that they both cared too much.

Not that Naruto cared too much and Sasuke not at all. Not even close. Sasuke cared just as much, just as deeply, passionately, hot-blooded, and wildly as Naruto ever did and ever would. It was maybe that he just didn’t know what to do with it.

“This place is your home, Sasuke, your home! How could you ever think of destroying it!?”

It destroyed me, Sasuke wants to say, destroyed him and them and you and us.
Naruto’s throat is hot and it’s hard to swallow, he can’t catch his breath and his mouth is dry as the Sahara. For the first time in his life, he realizes that he and Sasuke are not equals, are not the same, are not anything even close; at this moment, they are opposing forces, light and dark and hope and hate and five thousand and one things more.

“I’ll never let you crush this place. I’ll kill you first,” Naruto says slowly, darkly calculating and about to wet his knickers because he knows he means it. He might actually, seriously, truly and for real, kill (murderslaughterbutcherhurt) his best friend.

But he might have to.

Sasuke smirks, squeezing his eyes shut to dam up the uncomfortably hot tears beginning to form, and then looks Naruto straight in the eye. “I’ll kill you if you get in my way.” He reaches back for his katana and knows with just as much newfound conviction that he means it, too.

“… is it really going to be like this?” shouts Naruto after some minutes of silence, his voice floating on a swell of wind across a divided, ravaged land over to Sasuke. And Sasuke doesn’t have to say anything to give Naruto his answer.

The sun is shining, wind is rushing and whipping with the same life of a hyper, happy four year old, and they both know that suddenly, they aren’t number one to each other anymore. Suddenly, there are other things and people and forces that mean more. And there’s nothing they can do to fix it, to make it how it was, to stop it from ever happening.

Naruto shuffles forward a little, toes dragging in the dirt and thin dust billowing all around, strongest and proudest warrior of Konoha. “I’m ready,” he says evenly. Sasuke’s eyes go red and he starts walking, too, strongest and proudest warrior of the Uchiha. They look at each other, gulp (though Sasuke is much more subtle about it, as usual), and then nod, never breaking eye contact.

“It’s time,” Sasuke says, and Naruto flinches. It’s time to fight, time to sever connections, time to fight him as if he were just another enemy ninja, not a best friend. It’s time to grow up and move on.

Let’s go.