Promises

Bleak soil, brittle and cracked, as if fired in a great kiln. Dark with baked blood. Pocked with dead tree stumps, like blackened bones sticking from the earth’s skin, open fractures that bleed smoke and cinders.

Two left, on a battlefield turned mass crematorium.

One dream.

One nightmare.

The billowing flames of his cape snap in the stiff wind, white cloth marred by the greasy soot of dead soldiers, dead loved ones, dead precious people. Resurrected from their ashes. Painting him with their sacrifice.

Tears keep the smoke from burning his eyes.

The other is fallen. His arm a burnt, mangled leftover from channeling a lightning bolt straight through his own body. Still twitches with the aftershocks. Eyes wide, unblinking, shock so deep his lungs forgot how to breathe.

Then. A gasp. Black irises, dilated and outraged, swivel to him.

“Ro…ku…daime,” he wheezes, snarling the syllables like an ancient curse.

Naruto shakily bends to one knee, close enough that the crippled man could still attack. Could still wound him.

More than he already has.

“Yeah,” Naruto answers, smiling grimly, sadly, fondly. “That’s my name now. Don’t wear it out.”

Sasuke snorts. Blood flecks his chin, coats his teeth. “Still cracking…jok—” Violent coughing. “At a time…like…this.”

His breath sounds like a wet balloon, lungs filling with fluid.

Naruto tastes his own blood. He’s swallowed so much of it that he vomited earlier, right before Sasuke’s near suicidal attack. Well, suicidal actually.

Soon.

He doesn’t have much longer.

“I…” Naruto squeezes his eyes shut, less concerned about bodily safety than avoiding Sasuke’s haunted gaze, before forcing them open again. “…didn’t know you wanted to kill me so badly.”

Bitterness taints Sasuke’s smirk, reminds Naruto of how long it has been since they were friends. “I’ve only been…try…ing…for years…idiot.”

Naruto laughs at that, gore-covered face is severed by tear tracks. “I know,” he whispers. “I know.”

“You are su—” Sasuke breaks off, gurgles more blood down his chin. “a…baby.”

Naruto watches the lifeblood leaking out of him, pulsing weakly from the remnants of his arm, from the gaping wound in his abdomen, quenching the scorched ground. The smell of stomach acid is sharp in his nostrils.

“What…”

Naruto tilts his head closer to hear the fading voice.

“…was that…power?”

Blackbirds and red moons.

“A gift,” he intones solemnly. “From a…friend.”

“Konoha will fall,” Sasuke growls, confidence returning to his weakened voice.

“No,” Naruto says, not arguing, only a steadfast conviction. “My…our home is stronger than that.”

“Home,” Sasuke spits the words like poisoned darts, shaking with pain and tethered fury. “That village...is not...my home.”

Naruto’s eyes tighten, nails bite into his palms, more blood that he doesn’t have to lose drips from his tight fists. “You’re wrong,” he murmurs, bowing his head.

“There are tons of things I dislike, but I don’t really like anything.”

Charred soil needled with kunai.

“I don’t want to say ‘dream’, but I have an ambition–”

The sky is an orange miasma, a fiery sunset hazed by smoke.

“The resurrection of my clan and…”

The forest is black dust and white ash.

“…to kill a certain man.”

Naruto grins, but there is no victory in it, only certainty.

This is your home, Sasuke. I brought you back and…

“Kill me,” Sasuke demands, abrupt clarity in his eyes. Acceptance.

…I’ll save you.

“You’re already bleeding to death,” Naruto answers softly. “You call me an idiot.”

There is so much hatred in his glare that Naruto’s throat clenches shut until he thinks he’ll blackout. He concentrates on breathing, trying to ignore the coppery tang of blood and the electric scent of burnt ozone that still lingers in the air.

“Weakling,” Sasuke derides, a sick glee in his dark eyes.

“I won’t,” Naruto mumbles numbly. “You know I won’t.”

“Do it,” Sasuke hisses, but his eyes are losing focus, fading, less intense. “Now.”

“You still have…” Naruro kneels, forming seals even as he speaks. “…a dream to fulfill.”

Sasuke’s brow tightens. Grimaces with pain and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, they’re as hard and brittle as chipped obsidian. “I already...killed him,” he grits out, as if each word is a shard of glass he’s been forced to regurgitate.

“No,” Naruto replies, eyes shining with leaking tears. “The other one.”

Sasuke’s eyes widen, before his mouth contorts into a scowl. “A little late...for that, don’t you think?”

“Don’t worry! I’ll bring him back! Promise of a lifetime!”

“It’s never too late.”

“If that’s what it means to be wise, I’d be happier living as a fool.”

“And I have promises to keep.”

“I will protect Konoha, and find a way to stop Sasuke without killing him!”

“M-moron,” Sasuke flings at him angrily, but hesitation hovers in his gaze as he watches Naruto’s fingers flying through seals. “What are you…?”

“I won’t bend my words. That’s what being a ninja means to me.”

One more promise.

“At the very end…”

Last seal.

“…it seems I am able to do the right thing.”

Thank you, Chiyo.

The tensei jutsu flows bright green from his fingertips.

“You…learned…” Sasuke whispers warily, voice weak with prolonged blood loss, “…medical jutsu?”

Naruto barks with self-depreciating laughter. “Are you… kidding?” he pants breathlessly, already seeing blackness around the edge of his vision. Pain lances up his right arm. The sharp needles of chakra exhaustion creep down his spine.

Not enough chakra.

Their fight taxed even his stamina. He pulls the stops on Kyuubi’s chakra, draining it to the dregs.

“Have you seen…how big…Sakura’s textbooks are?”

Sasuke’s breaths are coming easier, his face blank with surprise as his strength returns and his lungs heal, as the skin of his arm regenerates until it’s only an angry, blistered red.

Coughing.

Blood spots Sasuke’s cheek, drips warm on his forehead.

Not enough.

Dawning comprehension lights Sasuke’s features. “What?” he gasps, alert. “You…can’t be…”

Naruto can still be surprising, even to a man who knows him better than his own shadow.

Almost there.

“Are you crazy!?” Sasuke cries, trying to sit up, a shrillness in his voice that Naruto has never heard.

I would have liked to see you be a dad, Sasuke, Naruto wishes even as his heart stutters painful against his ribcage. It would have been…nice…to be an uncle.

“Stop!”

Sasuke pushes him away fiercely, but the jutsu has already guttered out. Depleted. Naruto’s back thuds against the ground, but he can’t feel anything. The smell of blood and smoke and fire is gone. Everything is light and fuzzy. His limbs are weightless.

“Na-naruto?”

Naruto shivers.

It has been so long since Sasuke spoke his name like that.

“Goodbye…”

Terror twists Sasuke’s features into a morbid mask.

“Brother.”

Author’s Notes: This just had to be written: You know, plot bunny humping my brain and all. Please review. I’m concerned about the emotions not being FELT or seeming contrived, so if that’s your impression, do tell me and please explain WHY. I couldn’t decide if it had the feeling I wanted or not. Hope you enjoyed it, and that you now want to stab me with sharp objects.