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Blood Red by Ailetoile

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Hyuga Neji was a great believer in fate. In destiny. It was viewed by many of his peers and his elders as his greatest handicap; until his loss to Naruto in the third Chuunin exam, Neji had always believed that it was his greatest asset. He would not be blinded by possibility. By hope. He saw things as they were.

Neji was a white person if ever one existed. White eyes, white hot anger kept sharpened to a deadly and quivering point that just begged to strike, to lash out violently at the nearest target. White, blank future snuffed out just when it was finally beginning to show some potential. Destroyed, along with the beautiful, earthy brown that was Chouji for a traitor. For their duty to their village. To give one of their own another chance at life.

Red met blue in a battle of catastrophic proportions that day. Terrible and wonderful and eerily beautiful, it was a sight to behold as Kiba and Shikamaru bore terrified witness. Ripping through obstructing branches and enemies alike as though they weren’t even there, as if they didn’t even exist, good and evil collided again and again in a fight that both thought for certain would be to the death. And when red, red blood dripped from the leaves of a scarred and broken forest, when the red of a cursed mark receded and faded back into an inconspicuous bruise and when those nightmarish red eyes faded once more to an uneasy and exhausted and haunted black, blue prevailed. For now. In a way, such an outcome was inevitable. They had all known from the beginning. Light will always hold the darkness at bay until it is extinguished.

Through it all, Fate was in the background laughing her happy little ass off at the spectacular performance. Neji would have been proud to know that he had the right of it.

They brought Sasuke back and their mission was labeled a success. To Naruto, it was more than that. It was a promise made and a promise kept. The losses were great, but the result was greater, or so those whose opinions mattered claimed. Two ninjas exchanged for the price of one crazy, blood-red avenger. One brilliant, terrifying and terrified man. They all assumed that Sasuke was grateful he’d been brought back, but Naruto knew better. He knew that the exchange was an unfair one. Neji and Chouji should still be alive, should still be adding their short-lived, vibrant and unique colors to the tapestry that was Konoha village.

The entire village mourned their loss and hoped and prayed that the sacrifice that could not be taken back was not in vain. Two names, two children who had barely lived and who were now gone forever, were added to a list on a stone that served as a grave and a monument and a tribute.

Life went on. It always has and it always will and it always does. Days melted into weeks, months, years.

They were all changed. Teams, friendships, an entire damned generation of fresh-faced ninjas had been torn apart by one boy’s selfish actions. A few months or years might pass, but time cannot heal all wounds. Not the ones on the inside. Trust cannot be regained so easily.

Naruto kept his promise to Sakura at the cost of blood. Two enemy lives now stained his hands, but in his heart he knew that it was really twice that plus two teammates, comrades, people, FRIENDS if you counted the scarifies that Neji and Chouji had made. Naruto did. Shikamaru didn't; he took full responsibility for their deaths on himself, but Naruto would hear nothing of it.

It would be easy to mistake Naruto for an orange person. Loud, bright as the sun, obnoxious. On the inside, though, where nobody could ever see or find him out, Naruto was a blue person. Innocent and sympathetic in his own way and driven to a fault. Now his hands, his spirit, his very SOUL were stained red with blood. He had kept his promise though to the brilliant and oh-so-naive green girl that he worshipped. Green like her eyes and her loving and jealous heart that beat only for her Sasuke-kun. He held on to that promise like a drowning man grasping on to a fortunate piece of flotsam.

Through another abortive escape attempt which he once again foiled, he clung to that promise. Somehow, Naruto seemed to be the only one left who could see through the dull and unresponsive husk that Sasuke had become, who could see the scared, man-shaped boy who was trapped inside. Who even bothered to look. Who would take the time to watch over and protect his former teammate as Sasuke had done for Naruto when they were just children. The Uchiha prodigy, the genius that the entire village had publicly revered and secretly feared and pitied had been all but forgotten by his admirers. All but one scorned and scarred and marked boy who had somehow become a man as well.

After Naruto moved into or rather invaded and occupied the large and echo-y and profoundly cold and empty Uchiha residence, he held onto that crumbling promise that he had made to a green girl whose heart now beat only for a green boy with bushy eyebrows and a charming smile. A deserving boy whose enthusiasm had finally paid off to their mutual happiness. All that was left for Naruto the hero who was not really a hero was to be a glorified babysitter for a certifiably insane and absolutely conscientious and aware and perfect specimen of a man. Neither wanted or needed anyone or anything else. Neither would ever admit that.

Blue and black and a touch of red immediately washed over the whole damned mess and settled there to stay, cloaking everything it touched with the red of death and of blood and of vengeance and of hatred and of live, raw emotion that neither knew how to name, and they fought. They fought for freedom, they fought for themselves and they fought for each other, and still they fought because fighting was all they had left when everything else had abandoned them but themselves. And when brooding feelings finally found a home in each other, they fought the hardest of all.

It began and ended with a forbidden kiss. Forbidden but expected and anticipated by everyone but them. Forbidden and exchanged in the heat of anger and futility with the knowledge that there was no one and nowhere left for either one of them to go but to each other. Two cursed orphans, too powerful to turn loose and too close to that elusive brink of insanity to leave with any responsibility. Two not-quite-exiles who had won the pity and the absolute fear of everyone in Konoha village. They were treated with the same sort of terrified respect and the same cold, detesting hatred that that had slowly but surely eaten away at Naruto for his entire life. Sasuke couldn’t believe how much such scorn, such a lack of acknowledgement could hurt.

And still, life went on with Fate puttering around in the background, busily setting the stage for just one more performance by the infamous duo who had simultaneously captivated and frozen the hearts of their village together. They, who had unwillingly lived most of their lives in an uncomfortable spotlight were not quite out of the woods yet.

Somewhere in the tenuous grey area between captor and captive, between human and demon, the blue boy hiccupped and giggled in the sleep. The other boy, black this night, shifted and pulled his companion closer and hugged him more tightly. Neither boy was aware any longer of the blood-red blanket that lay, overshadowing their individual colors. It was there all the time, had been transforming from angry, violent streaks to a constant, hazy, cloak so subtly and slowly over the years that it had gone entirely unnoticed. There was no one else TO notice.

A giggle and a pulse of red and life went on.

It had begun.
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