Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Birthright	By : sadfascist Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 3579 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own NARUTO, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
- 20
BIRTHRIGHT
CHAPTER NINETEEN: “Hereafter, Part Two”
Rain lashed down upon Uchiha Castle in the night, washing away the blood of the dead. It ran in black rivers across the ruined temple grounds, down the steep rocky bluffs to the Endless Sea. Angry waves crashed against the rocks, dashing burning warships into little pieces. The sound they made was louder than the howling wind, louder than even the thunder in the sky. Storm clouds churned above the castle, red and white in the smoke of a thousand fires. Naruto could smell the ash even through the sharp cold rain.
The living seemed not much different than the dead. Naruto felt like a ghost, there on the battlefield, knee-deep in muddy corpses. Pockets of soldiers still stood, but none of them fought.
They all looked toward the bluffs.
The Warlord of Blood was a white statue, glistening in the rain. He could have been made of marble, he was so motionless. Only by the voice that rang out in the night did Naruto know that his master was still alive.
“Fools,” said Uchiha Itachi. “I am invincible. I am the Emperor of Birthright!”
“I won’t let you,” said a raw voice. A child, a ragged ninja shivering before the Warlord. So small, so desperate. “I’ll kill you!” Sasuke slashed at the Warlord’s face and chest and groin. Blades of blue lightning screeched as they struck the bone, again and again.
“I am God!” Itachi declared.
The Kusanagi sword was in his right hand, a spear of bone in his left. As Naruto watched more bones crawled up the Kusanagi like entangling vines. The vines sprouted white thorns, until the sword was a silver mace with a thousand bladed edges. The bone in his right hand grew longer. Soon it was longer than any spear, and then it was longer than the mast of a great warship.
It spiraled into the cinder sky, as if to pierce the moon hidden behind the clouds.
“Run!” someone shouted.
Naruto did not know who it was, what side had taken up the call. It made no difference. As one the soldiers threw down their weapons and ran, Blood and Kiyome alike. They were running for their lives.
They did not get very far.
The tower of bone exploded. It burst like a seedpod, insides scattering to the wind. And everything inside was a long white spear. The spikes of bone rammed in the ground, rammed into rocks and into the backs of the fleeing soldiers. One came straight for Naruto. He threw himself to the side, and was almost impaled by another spike just in front of his head.
Naruto staggered to his feet. The numbness was leaving him at last, but that only made him aware of his wounds. His face was badly bruised, and he had lost much blood from the deep cut on his back. I cannot just stand here. He was his master’s right arm, he had to help him. Abruptly Naruto realized that he had no sword. He pulled one from the throat of a passing corpse as he ran toward the cliffs where Sasuke and the Warlord fought.
“I am the Emperor,” Uchiha Itachi was saying again.
“No,” Sasuke said, “no, you’re a murderer.” He was sprawled on the ground, an earthen barrier curved around his body like a shield. A hundred spears of bone stuck through it, they pierced it and broke the front of the barrier into rubble. One of the spears had sliced through the edge of Sasuke’s calf. The hamstring, black blood welling from the wound. He tried to stand up, but stumbled backwards onto his side. “You’re a murderer!”
“The false god Hagoromo shall fall before me. I am the true master of fate.”
“Master Itachi!” Naruto said. He dodged around the bones that littered the battlefield and came to a stop next to his master. “Master—”
“Where is he, little fox?” the Warlord asked. He did not seem to know that Naruto was even there. “Where is Senju Hagoromo?”
Sasuke raised his head to stare at them, eyes wide. The bandana on his forehead had been torn away, revealing the black twisted slaveseal underneath. Rain dripped from his silver hair and across the slaveseal and then over his eyes and down his bloody cheeks. It almost looked like tears. “The Sage of Six Paths would crush you like a maggot,” he said. A noise came from his throat, bitter jagged laughter. “I made him promise. I made promise to stay away, so I could have my revenge to myself. And I will, you traitor bastard. Katon!”
Fire flew from his mouth. In an instant the Warlord was swathed in an furnace of orange-red flames. The blast was so powerful that Naruto was knocked back hard in the air.
“Die!” Sasuke screamed.
Even before the fireball faded he was already casting more jutsu. He threw exploding tags. Shuriken disappeared into the inferno and exploded, roaring shockwaves that shook the rocky bluffs. “Die, die, die!” he screamed. Sasuke threw all the shuriken he had. Then he threw lightning, he called down arrows of ripping wind, and maws of churning mud, and then jutsu Naruto did not even know, could not even describe in their ferocity. Naruto wanted to stop Sasuke, to protect his master, but he could scarcely even stumble to his feet. He held his katana before the onslaught and tried to hold on.
When it was finally done, Sasuke collapsed, falling to his knees and sucking down gulps of air.
Uchiha Itachi stood there as if nothing had happened.
“Master!” Naruto shouted.
Naruto scrambled toward the Warlord. His master was a fog of gray, threads of smoke that coiled from sharp curving bones, too hot to touch. Yet there was not a scratch on them. “Master, are you all right?”
“Naruto,” said the Warlord. “My dear loyal slave.”
“Master. Let me help you.” The words were hollow even as they left his lips. How can I help Master? He is invincible, he cannot be hurt! Up close, Naruto could see exactly what had happened to the Warlord. It was not that he was covered in bones, as Naruto had thought.
He was made of bone.
Shikkasaimyaku, the Warlord had called his bloodline. Dead Bone Pulse. Somehow he had kept it a secret all these years, had never used it in battle until now. Perhaps he did not want his subjects to know that he had such powers. Inhuman powers. The Warlord seemed no longer a man, but a grotesque statue of skeletal spikes.
He seemed like a demon. The bones had replaced his entire body. It was like a snake that had shed its skin, only instead of scales underneath, it was hard cold bone. The skin of bone sheathed his hulking frame, his limbs and groin and chest. And his face. It was the same face, a mask of grim chiseled rage, luminous green eyes sharp as swords.
Only the scar was gone. The top of the Warlord’s head was like an egg, as smooth and white as ice.
“You cannot help me,” said his master. “No one has ever helped me. Not once in my cursed life.”
“Liar!” Sasuke gasped, rising to his feet. “You damn liar, Itachi was your best friend! He would’ve freed you! And Sakura, and mother! They trusted you and you killed them!”
“You cannot comprehend it, little boy. Do you think I fight against you? Your army? Even against Senju Hagoromo? You are nothing more than swine before me. I was conceived in the womb of anguish. I was shaped from the flesh of the devil himself.”
Itachi brought down the Kusanagi, a thousand refracted edges. Sasuke leaped back, evading Itachi’s strike. The Warlord was so fast. Each stroke of his sword was as furious as the storm, as brutal as the crashing waves, the paper and wood ash of burning Sawara. The Kusanagi ripped at Sasuke’s shoulder, bony blades tearing at his flesh. Sasuke fell in the mud. “No!” he cried. “No, I won’t lose!”
Itachi raised the Kusanagi for the killing blow. For a second he almost seemed to hesitate. He made a strangled sound in his throat, and Naruto thought it was a coughing spasm, until the sound grew, became a peal of roaring laughter. The Warlord’s laughter rang through the air and into the ghostly remains of Uchiha Castle. It seemed to shake the very storm.
“My life was cursed from the day of my tormented birth. Yet it only made me stronger. The wheel of fate turns, but I stand unbroken. Destiny causes the suffering of mankind, but I shall bring justice. To each, what is owed. Am I not owed the world? Am I not owed that which I have taken with my own hands? I am the Emperor of Birthright! I have become God! And you, all of you, my worshipping subjects. You shall all kneel before me!”
“Never!” Sasuke screamed.
Bones shot out of the ground behind him. Bones everywhere, grinding and ripping and wailing from the muddy stones. A forest of bones, tall as trees, as twisted as a spiderweb, drinking up all the rain from the sky.
Naruto reeled back, a pylon of bone spurting out of the ground by his feet. He staggered around in the deafening confusion, and found himself face to face with Sasuke. There were bones between them. They surrounded Sasuke, enclosing him in a cage of glistening white. “Naruto!” Sasuke cried. He tried to cut the bones with his kunai, but it was like cutting steel bars with a blade of grass. Naruto could see the fear in his glittering jade eyes, he could feel the other boy’s hot frantic breath. “Naruto, please. Help me.”
Spears of bone erupted beneath Sasuke and stabbed through the palm of his hands. He screamed, dropping his kunai. The bones retracted gradually, forcing him toward the ground, forcing his knees to bend. “Never!” Sasuke screamed again.
“I am Justice.” The Warlord walked through the cage of bones. It merged into his body as he passed, as if there was no difference between them, as if the bone was just an extension of himself. Then he was before Sasuke, a white giant towering over a defeated, broken child. “I am God. I am your Master! And you… shall… kneel!”
Sasuke knelt.
Sasuke sagged, and then all the fight went out of him. It went out like the blood flowing from the gashes all over his body. He bowed his head, fettered by unyielding bones.
He started to cry.
Uchiha Itachi laughed. “Now that’s a good boy. Stay like that, while I mutilate you, and perhaps if you scream piteously enough, Hagoromo will be so good as to show his ugly wooden face, so I might carve a slaveseal into it.”
Bones grew from his torso, snaking spikes that divided again and again, like the branches on a tree. The canopy of barbs slithered towards Sasuke, towards his neck and armpits and nipples and the place between Sasuke’s legs. Where they made contact, Sasuke shrieked.
Sasuke’s chest shook up and down with wracking sobs. “Naruto,” he whispered. “Naruto, help me!”
“Sasuke,” said Naruto. He tried to look away, to close his throbbing eyes, but he could not shut his ears.
“Naruto. I love you! Please, don’t you love me?”
I never wanted to. Sasuke was wrong about that, so very wrong. Loving you was the last bloody thing I would’ve ever done.
But love was not a choice.
It was fate.
And fate was the only real thing in the world.
“Master,” the slaveboy whispered. “Master, please.”
The canopy of bones stopped moving. The Warlord turned, dark eyes in a white face.
“Please, master. Don’t kill him.”
The Warlord’s voice was very soft. “And why, my little slave, would I do that?"
“He can’t hurt you. Let him go. Please.”
“Do you dare defy my command?”
“Master… I…”
Suddenly the Warlord coughed. He brought a hand to his mouth, and red blood slipped through the bone-crusted fingers. He coughed again and the ground shook. The forest of bones vibrated, swayed as if in a divine wind. Cracks slithered up the white pillars, breaking. Bones fell off the rocky cliff in pieces, a grating screeching noise. The Warlord stumbled back, both hands clawing at his own throat.
The bones holding Sasuke snapped in half.
Naruto saw his chance. He rushed forward and grabbed Sasuke, tugging him to his feet. Sasuke tried to stagger toward the Warlord but Naruto dragged him back. “No, we can’t, run, run!” he shouted, and then leaped through an opening in the cage of crumbling bones.
They ran.
Uchiha Itachi roared from behind. He was screaming something. Naruto did not know what was happening, he could not hear his master’s words. The sound of the bones was too loud. They were growing again, tearing upwards from the rocks, rows of enormous pointed teeth.
“We’ve got to fight!” Sasuke was shouting.
“I can’t fight my master!”
“Damnit, Naruto!”
“You’ll die. Save your life, please! I beg you.”
Bones erupted in front of them, all around them. Like the fangs of a wild animal, the jaws snapping shut as they tried to climb out of the mouth. Naruto skidded to a stop just before a dozen white lances burst from a stone wall ahead. The bones towered into the cinder-red sky, growing, curling inwards until they were stitched all together, like a ghostly carcass, like the skeleton of the castle that had once been there. Naruto scrambled for his life, dodging sharp fanged bones in every direction. In the chaos he could not see anything, only rain and wind and shining white bone.
“Sasuke!” he screamed.
“I’m here.”
Then Naruto knew where they were.
Sasuke was standing on the ruins of a great stone dais, the black marble so splintered that a hundred kinds of grass grew from the cracks. Once the Uchiha Shoguns had ruled the city of Sawara from this place, plotting life and death from the iron height of the Shogun Throne. But now the Shogun Throne was gone, and all of Sawara was in flames. Even across the length of Fire Fan Bay he could see it, a torch of raging orange smoke. It was eerily beautiful, somehow. Orange light threw white bones in black shadows. Under the dais, pillars of bone arched overhead like huge skeletal ribs, like dead hollow things.
They were back in the throne room of Uchiha Castle.
“We’ve got to fight!” Sasuke said again.
“You’re hurt,” Naruto told him.
Sasuke could barely stand. His legs buckled, and Naruto had to catch him by the waist. There were bloody holes in the palms of Sasuke’s hands, wide enough that Naruto could put his tongue through.
“I don’t care. He’s hurt too.” Sasuke hugged Naruto tightly. “The Warlord was coughing blood, you saw it as well as me. I must’ve injured him on the inside, even if he pretended I didn’t. We can kill him. Naruto, please, we can do this!”
“I can’t.”
“If we don’t fight him, he’ll kill us both. Naruto, you’ve got to choose. It’s either me or him!”
“I can’t.”
“You have to!”
“I can’t! Sasuke—agh—” Naruto’s eyes were churning, they were ablaze with throbbing blood. It was as if they had turned into daggers, stabbing him from inside.
Sasuke’s mouth widened. “Your eyes—”
“Traitors,” a voice boomed.
Uchiha Itachi walked toward them from the beach. White bones curved around him like bladed armor. They jutted out from his body, sharp jagged spikes, from everywhere except his face.
He was hideous. He was a monster.
He was Naruto’s master.
“My perfect weapon,” Itachi said. “So you are not so perfect after all.”
Naruto bowed his head. “Master. I’m sorry.”
“At every turn, fate has conspired against me. Again and again I have overcome all odds.” Uchiha Itachi held the Kusanagi straight before his chest. “And what are you, Naruto, but one more betrayal?”
“You made him a slave!” Sasuke shouted. “You tortured him. He doesn’t owe anything to you. He’s just your tool, you don’t love him!”
“Love is a weakness. Didn’t I tell you, little fox?” The Warlord swung the Kusanagi in a slashing arc. “Hate makes you strong."
The two boys were still locked in embrace. Sasuke dodged in one direction, Naruto in the other. The Kusanagi came down between them, smashing the marble dais into rubble.
Sasuke’s hands were glowing with blue chakra. “Raiton!” he shouted. A lightning bolt struck out at Itachi, hitting him in the chest. Sasuke did not stop. His fingers moved in a blur, hurling more jutsu. Fireballs, arrows of wind, explosions of churning stones. Uchiha Itachi stalked forward, hacking at Sasuke with the Kusanagi.
“Sasuke!” Naruto shouted. “Master! Stop, please.”
Chakra blades crackled from the center of Sasuke’s fists. He met Itachi blow for blow, parrying all his attacks. Bones grew from Itachi’s left hand, gouging at Sasuke’s exposed flank. Bones were growing from the mud too. They rose from the stones of the ruined throne room, twisting everywhere. Naruto tried to block one with his borrowed katana, but the blade broke in half. He would’ve been impaled, if he had not summoned fire from the sword stump, just in time. More bones came for him.
“Naruto, he’s trying to kill you!” Sasuke said. “You’ve got to fight back!”
“I saved you,” said the Warlord. “I brought you up. I made you what you are. And how do you repay me for all I have done?”
“Master—”
“I foresaw your betrayal. Yes, it could not be otherwise. For I war against destiny itself, and the treachery of fate knows no bounds. Fate sent you to me, Naruto. It fired you like an arrow into my heart. So be it! I have ripped the arrow out, and I still stand. I am the Emperor of Birthright, and I stand alone!”
The Warlord coughed.
Blood spilled from his mouth, dribbling in dark rivulets down his white chin. Forests of bones shook in the storm, in the cold pouring rain.
“Die!” Sasuke shouted, slashing at the Warlord’s front. A fissure ran up Itachi’s chest, the sound of a tree trunk snapping in two. As Itachi weakened, so his bones weakened as well. Vulnerable to attack. Sasuke struck with blades of lightning, and the Kusanagi broke off from Itachi’s hand. It clattered against the black dais, and the bones that were wrapped around the metal core crumbled like chalk.
“You shall kneel before me!” the Warlord yelled. New bones exploded from his chest, from his arms, strong and hard. “I stand alone!” His smooth pale face was warped in fury. “I am the master of fate!”
“Naruto, damnit! It’s either me or him.” Sasuke dove at the Warlord. “You’ve got to choose, Naruto!”
“I can’t!” The two Uchiha clashed beneath the storm. Naruto could only watch, paralyzed by indecision. The pain in his eyes flared up again. The world was spinning before him, not colors or shapes now, but something more, something radiant with golden light. He tried to look closer, and the light was as scalding hot as the sun. Naruto screamed in agony.
“Naruto!” Sasuke called, turning his head.
The Warlord hit Sasuke with a mace of bone. The heavy hammer slammed into Sasuke’s stomach and smashed him up against one of the collapsed stone walls.
“Sasuke!” Naruto yelled. He tried to run toward the fallen boy, but the immense pressure in his eyes made him reel. He sunk to his knees, and suddenly his master was standing there in front of him. Naruto’s shifting vision made the Warlord look like a golden effigy, made the Warlord’s green eyes dance with kaleidoscope sparks.
“Naruto,” said his master. “My beautiful boy. Any last words?”
I am about to die. Naruto’s entire life flashed before him, fifteen years of existence on this demented earth. He wanted to say so much, so many fine things, but when he opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was the truth.
“I don’t hate you,” he whispered. “I love you, Master Itachi. I always loved you.”
“That makes one of us.” And then the Warlord thrust his sword of bone towards Naruto’s heart.
“No!” a voice cried.
Sasuke leaped between Naruto and Itachi.
He took the sword in Naruto’s place.
“Sasuke!” Naruto shrieked.
A bloody bone protruded out of Sasuke’s chest. It had been driven right through the heart. Real, he was real, not a bunshin. Steaming blood poured out of the hole and onto Naruto’s face. “Sasuke!”
“The Kitsune is no more,” declared the Warlord. “I am the last Uchiha.”
Naruto raised his trembling hands to touch Sasuke’s chest, his fingers staining red, and then to cradle Sasuke’s face. The ninja dangled on the sword of bone, head bowed. “Sasuke!” he choked. “Sasuke, why?”
Ashen rain flowed down Sasuke’s cheeks. He smiled weakly.
“Because… I choose you…”
Naruto went blind.
Something broke inside him. Pain seared from his eyeballs, washed in a tidal flood over the rest of his body. He tried to scream but it hurt too much. Naruto was drowning in a sea of darkness. He clawed at his face, as if to tear the darkness away like a veil. Only the veil grew more suffocating, pressing into him from all sides, jabbing his heart and his mind and at his eyes. Naruto’s head seemed to shatter, exploded into a thousand mirror shards, reforming, exploding again. His entire life seemed to coalesce into this one moment, this single point. All his pain, all his grief and regret. It passed away from him into nothing and from that black nothingness, finally, at long last, his birthright was unleashed.
And then Naruto saw.
He saw everything.
He saw the world. It was as if he had never seen it before, until this moment. So clear, so incredibly sharp. He could see the wind as it moved in the air, he could see each drop of rain as it fell from the sky. He could see Sasuke, flung away a dozen feet to splay by the marble dais, so very cold, so very gray, and he could see his master.
Uchiha Itachi was raking his fingers into his ribs, coughing.
Naruto lifted his head, and then they saw face to face.
He beheld his own reflection—
The irises of Naruto’s eyes burned crimson red.
“Impossible!” the Warlord gasped, blood frothing from his lips. “You… a bloodline child…”
Naruto knew the truth of it. He felt it in his eyes, in the black shape that formed itself within the red pupils, a shape like a birthmark, three overlapping twisted crosses in a wheel. Unfathomable power radiated from their piercing depths. How could he describe it? It was more than sight, more than just the surface of things. He could see the truth of what lay underneath. Even something so simple as a blade of grass contained multitudes of possibility. Energy, motion, chakra. He could see them all.
He could see souls.
“Master,” Naruto said. “You’re dying.”
“I am Uchiha Itachi!” his master cried.
But even as he said it the life was leaking out of him. Cold stiff chakra crawled through the Warlord’s body, the color of urine, so slow, too slow. When it reached his lungs the chakra curled up like so many dying insects. Like looking beneath a rotten log, seeing the truth that had lay hidden for so long. So many truths, so many secrets. The Warlord’s lungs had not been damaged by any of Sasuke’s attacks.
No. They had shriveled away long ago, two broken sacs full of diseased holes.
“The wasting sickness,” Naruto said. “How many years?”
“I am strong!” his master tried to shout, but every breath was a struggle, a wheezing cough. “I am the Emperor of all the world.” Bones sprung from the man’s limbs, whirled towards Naruto with deadly intent. Just a few seconds ago they would have been a blur, too fast to see, yet now they seemed to move no faster than a snail. Naruto could predict their exact movements.
“I shall defeat the Whore of Fate!”
Naruto did not think. He only did, and by sheer instinct raised the stump of his sword before the attacking bones. Then his red eyes pulsed, and black fire shot out of the stump and devoured everything in its path. Invincible Shikkasaimyaku bones burned in the black flames like pieces of paper, evaporating into smoke.
“No one can stand before me!” the man screamed.
“Why, master?” Naruto asked. “Why did you fight, if you were dying? You used up too much chakra, there is none left to sustain your life.”
The Warlord of Blood began to laugh.
He could not breathe, yet still he laughed, gold scarlet blood spewing from inside his lungs. “Do you think you know me, Naruto?” Around him columns of bones spiraled skyward, as far as the edge of the Endless Sea, as far as the distant burning horizon. They were no longer white, not in Naruto’s eyes, but the color of the sun, infused with the Warlord’s glowing chakra. “Little slave, do you dare to pity me?”
Bones struck at Naruto, attacking from every angle. It was too much to block with a single sword, but Naruto acted on instinct once more. A shield of red chakra erupted around his body, and all the Warlord’s bones together could not pierce it. They clattered against the chakra armor uselessly, and then the black flames in Naruto’s hand seared them all away into smoke. The flames shone in the night with unholy darkness, the chakra armor rose and stretched in the storm like a living being, reaching with swirling ruby arms toward a lightning-streaked sky. Naruto could feel his own burning power, too much for any man.
Even for his master. The Warlord coughed, laughing, peals of cracking noise. Bones trembled and crumbled into pieces, their gold color fading as the Warlord faded, shards of bone falling to the ground like scattered eggshells. Fractures appeared across his body, splitting open the white skeletal skin. Yet the man’s voice only became stronger.
“I shall overcome you all.” His laughter rang out in the beating rain like a funeral drum, again and again, louder and louder, a crescendo of deafening rage. With each ringing thud it felt as if the world would snap. “I am the last Uchiha! I am the before and the hereafter. And none—none—”
The man was silent.
The last yellow threads of chakra gathered in his chest, in his heart. Naruto could see it. Naruto could see the little orb of golden light, everything that his master had ever been, his soul. And then the light faded, leaving behind only a lifeless object.
Naruto stared into the face of the man born thirty years ago in the dungeons of Uchiha Castle, as a slaveboy without a bloodname. How far he had come since then, betraying and backstabbing, scheming and slaughtering, clutching and clawing, reaching with desperate greedy hands towards the chalice of power, drinking great gulps yet always thirstier than he had started, until at last he had drunk so much that even the seat of heaven itself could not have quenched his parched and gasping throat. In the end, he had been undone by the same insatiable thirst that had carried him to such distance and exalted shores. And yet—how he had dreamed, and acted his dream with such cruel, frozen eyes!
It was just fate.
“Master Itachi,” Naruto whispered. “Let your will be done.”
And then in one motion the slaveboy had thrust his sword into the man’s heart, and twisted.
The black flames consumed the remains of Uchiha Itachi in an flash. White bones disintegrated into gray ash. Demonic fire snaked in a great pyre, black tongues that licked up Itachi’s body and jumped from bone to bone, burning the entire skeletal carcass that hung across the ruins of Uchiha Castle. Naruto poured as much of his chakra into the pyre as he could. He poured it all out until his chakra armor was gone, his black fire was gone. He did not stop until only his crimson eyes were left.
Then Naruto went to find Sasuke.
Sasuke was lying on the broken dais, flecks of black marble littered around him. Beneath the storming sky, the boy’s face was as pale and delicate as frost. One hand was pressed up to his chest, staunching the gaping wound. A faint sigh escaped him, bringing a froth of golden blood to his lips. “Naruto,” he whispered in a soft voice. “Naruto…is…”
“The Warlord is dead.”
“That’s good.” He stretched out his hand to grab Naruto’s robe. Blood spurted from the hole in his chest where the hand had been. Chakra smoked from the wound, shining light that grew dimmer with each passing instant.
“Sasuke,” Naruto said. “Sasuke, what are you doing?”
“Dying,” he whispered back.
“No,” Naruto said, “no, you must live.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.” Sasuke shivered. “I’ll die if… if it pleases me…”
“It was my fault! All my fault.”
“No.” Sasuke pulled Naruto close with a final, desperate strength. “Naruto… listen…”
The boy’s voice was an echo, so faint that Naruto thought he was dreaming it. Naruto leaned next to Sasuke’s mouth, and the boy spoke his last wish into Naruto’s ear.
“Do you promise?” Sasuke whispered.
“I promise.”
Sasuke smiled. “Don’t leave me… Naruto…”
And then the light went out of his green, green eyes, just as it had faded from the Warlord’s.
Uchiha Sasuke died in the arms of the boy he loved.
Next: CHAPTER TWENTY: “The Promise”
- 18
- 19
- 20
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Birthright