Chapter Text
The rain came down in sheets, plastering Sasuke’s dark hair to his pale face. He stood atop the crest of a broken ridge, the skeletal remains of what had once been a towering tree clawing at the stormy sky behind him. His Sharingan was dormant, for once, no need to see chakra when the scene below was painted in such stark, brutal clarity.
The valley was a ruin. Cratered earth, splintered rock, and the acrid smell of ozone and blood hung heavy in the air. And there, in the center of it all, was him.
Naruto.
He wasn't moving.
Sasuke had come looking for a fight. That was the deal, the silent, unbreakable pact between them. He’d traveled for three days, tracking the faint, infuriatingly bright chakra signature that was his best friend and his worst enemy. He’d imagined it a dozen ways, how he’d find Naruto, how he’d push him, how those blue eyes would blaze with that stupid, stubborn resolve right before Sasuke drove a Chidori through his chest. He’d kill the bond. He’d cut out his own heart if he had to. That was the only path to his vengeance. His salvation.
But this…
This wasn't his work.
Naruto laid crumpled at the bottom of a fresh crater, his orange jacket shredded, soaked through with a colour that made Sasuke’s stomach turn to lead. Crimson. And way too much of it. It pooled beneath him, mixing with the mud, spreading in a lazy, horrifying halo. One of Naruto’s arms was bent at an angle that made joints scream in protest. His face was slack, unnaturally pale, and half-submerged in a puddle. Eyes closed. Chest… still.
No rise and fall.
No defiant yell.
No idiotic grin.
The world didn't just go quiet for Sasuke, it ringed. The hiss of rain became a distant, underwater murmur. The lightning that forked across the sky above was silent. All that existed was the impossible, grotesque stillness of the boy who was never, ever still.
Sasuke’s feet moved before his mind caught up. He slid down the muddy slope, almost falling, his sandals skidding on loose rocks. He dropped to his knees beside Naruto, not caring that the cold mud soaked through his pants, not caring that the rain was plastering his own vision. His hands hovered over Naruto’s body, trembling. Trembling. Uchiha Sasuke, the last of his clan, the avenger forged in fire and blood but his hands were shaking like a leaf.
“Naruto.” His voice was a rasp, torn from a throat that felt filled with glass. Louder, sharper, “Naruto!”
Nothing.
With a surge of desperate, clumsy panic, he grabbed Naruto’s shoulder and heaved, rolling him out of the puddle. The boy’s head lolled back, and Sasuke caught it before it could thunk against the stone, his fingers sinking into wet, matted blond hair. So cold. Naruto was freezing.
“Hey,” Sasuke hissed, shaking him. A little harder. “Don’t you dare. Wake up!”
He looked at the wound. A deep, jagged gash across Naruto’s ribs, the kind made by a blade serrated with chakra. It had been meant to disembowel him. Another wound, a punctured lung by the way Naruto’s breath (if he was even breathing, was he breathing?) gurgled. And the worst was a blow to the back of the skull, hard enough to crack bone. The Fox’s healing wasn't working. Was it suppressed? Overwhelmed? Or had Naruto just… run out of time?
Someone else did this.
The thought hit Sasuke like a physical blow, and something dark and ancient stirred in his chest. Not the Curse Mark, no, this was deeper. Much older. A possessive, violent fury that had no name.
His Sharingan blazed to life, spinning into the Mangekyō without his conscious will. The world sharpened into cruel detail. He could see the faintest, flickering ember of Naruto’s chakra, guttering like a candle in a hurricane. Not dead yet. But so close. So impossibly close.
“You idiot,” Sasuke breathed, pressing his palm flat over the wound on Naruto’s ribs as if he could force it to close by will alone. Blood welled between his fingers, hot and slick. “You’re supposed to be the one who stops me. That’s the whole point. You don’t get to die. Not to them. Not to anyone but me.”
His voice broke on the last word. A ragged, ugly sound that he would deny to his dying day.
For years, he had told himself he wanted Naruto dead. That killing him would sever the final thread tying him to his old life, to weakness, to sentiment. He had imagined the act a thousand times, the look in Naruto’s eyes, the weight of the body going limp, the hollow freedom after. But not like this. Never like this. This was a theft. Someone had reached into Sasuke’s chest, into the one place he had sworn was inviolable, and ripped out the only thing that still made him feel.
Because that was the sick truth, wasn't it? Naruto wasn't just his best friend. Naruto was his mirror. His rival. The only person who had ever looked at the abyss inside Sasuke and refused to flinch or walk away. The only one strong enough to matter. And now some nameless, faceless thing had tried to take him away.
Sasuke’s jaw clenched so hard he felt a tooth crack. He pulled his hand back, looked at the blood coating his palm, and for one long, terrible moment, he understood the men who had slaughtered his clan. The urge to burn the world down until nothing was left but ash and screaming, it sang in his veins.
He leaned down, his forehead pressing against Naruto’s cold one. Their breaths mingled. One ragged and desperate, one almost gone.
“You don’t get to leave,” Sasuke whispered, and it was not a plea. It was a command. An oath. “I haven’t killed you yet. So you hold on, you hear me? You hold on, you stubborn, dead-last idiot. And when you wake up, you and I are going to have a very long conversation about why you let someone else land a hit like this.”
He pulled back, his Sharingan tracing the faint, fading trail of foreign chakra residue, a signature he would memorise, hunt, and obliterate. He didn't care if it was a rogue ninja, a Kage, or a God. They had touched what was his to destroy. And for that, they would learn a new definition of pain.
Gently, with a tenderness he would never have shown a conscious Naruto, Sasuke slid one arm under Naruto’s shoulders and the other under his knees to lift him. Naruto’s head fell against Sasuke’s shoulder, his breath a ghost of warmth against Sasuke’s neck. Alive.
“I’ll fix you first,” Sasuke murmured, already moving, already charting a course to the nearest safe house, to the medical kit he never traveled without, to the desperate, foolish hope that he could reverse this. “And then I’ll find them. And then…” His lips curled back from his teeth, and the Mangekyō spun faster. “And then they’ll wish they’d never heard your name.”
The rain kept falling, washing the blood from Sasuke’s hands even as he carried his greatest bond closer to his chest, holding on like a man drowning in the one person who had always been his anchor.
Naruto didn't stir. But his heart, faint as a whisper, kept beating against Sasuke’s ribs where they pressed together.
And that was enough. For now, that was enough to stop Sasuke from turning around and burning the entire valley to cinders in search of a ghost.
But later? Later, there would be hell.