Naruto, nor any of its affiliates, belong to me. I only own the story below.

You clutch at the door, fingers tearing easily through the rice paper, and you’re trying to get a grip on something—on anything.

“You’re lying,” you accuse, and no one will meet your eyes and you start to think that maybe, just maybe they aren’t. And so you make your way into the room and you sit next to the futon and gently brush your fingers over those pale, pale cheeks that had just been so warm. He looks like he’s sleeping, but he’s not, and you know that it isn’t proper for you to look this way; he’s your brother, yes, but he’ll never be again. You clutch at his blanket and someone touches your shoulder and you shove them away—

Except you can’t seem to find the strength and instead you bury your face in their chest, wailing. You cry, and cry, but it doesn’t seem like anything will ever be okay again.

And seconds, moments, later, you finally force yourself to stop, but your chest is still shaking and you feel like you can’t breathe anymore. You look at him, face cleaned of blood you had put there and the slight tilt of his lips upwards, as if he’s happy, as if he’s at peace.

You hate it, because it can’t end like this, and he’ll wake up. He has to wake up because you’re not sure what to do anymore and you need him to wake up so you can have purpose in life and actually do something; you can’t hold on to him if he’s gone.

And everyone around you has gone silent, and you look around to see you’re alone, alone with his…his corpse and you can’t do anything but think about screaming, but you’ve done so much of that already, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to you. You know that already. You don’t need other people to tell you that.

But Itachi looks like he’s sleeping.

So maybe you start to think that this is all a dream, because there’s no way that your big brother would ever die like this, and surely you’ve been dreaming long enough, right? And any moment now Itachi will wake up and you’ll wake up and this will all make sense again.

Any moment now…