Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Aftermath - Death of a serpent ❯ Chapter 3

Later that night Guy was woken up by a small, metallic scrape and an uneven shuffling noise that gradually faded. Drifting back to sleep he woke with a start.

"Lee!" Dashing out the door he saw Lee in the moonlight, in the clearing just outside. Approaching slowly, he saw the gleam of light against the kunai-knife Lee must have somehow stole. Lee was slumped against a log, holding the kunai point to his wrist. He looked over at Guy, his face twisted in a wry grimace. Guy froze.

"Why is it, Guy-sense, that I faced death a hundred times as a ninja, but now that I am crippled I cannot do this one little thing?" He started weeping, tears coursing down his face. "A little cut, but my body twists against me! This body is the graveyard of all my dreams and hopes!" He was screaming now, hysterical. He abruptly looked back down at the stolen kunai. His knuckles whitened, preparing to slice. In an instant Guy had the knife out of Lee's hand, was sitting down next to him

"Listen to me, Lee! You are young and full of rash actions. Do not let the fount of despair drown your hope! With-"

"I tried hard work, Guy-sense! No one could have tried harder than me! But this is what I ended up with!" he slumped again, looking away. "Youth… I'm eighteen now, Guy-sense, going on three-hundred. I must have been young once, but I can't remember it. I've spent too long in the ashes of my dreams to be a child, anymore."

They sat in silence for awhile, watching the stars. After an hour or two Guy cleared his throat.

"Maybe you really can't achieve some dreams," he said, gaze still fixed on the points of light above. "Maybe some dreams are unattainable. But maybe you can help that girl achieve hers."

***

Upon returning home that night Sakura eventually found her way to Sasuke's old rooms. Upon opening the door she was shocked by the severity. White walls, a plain table with a tiny fridge and food-heater. There was an adjacent bedroom, with a pallet on the floor. And a small closet, also white. All parentless youths were provided a set of apartments and a sufficiently large allowance to decorate them with, but Sasuke's room was so bare as to be bleak.

Even Naruto had had accumulated a large number of jitsu-scrolls and had hung posters of various types of ramen. his whole home smelled like ramen and the fruit that Kakashi forced him to eat and which he usually hid.. He worked in his favorite ramen restraint for the free food, and was always experimenting with his own recipes at home, wasting his money on scrolls and cook-books as soon as he got it. All of Sasuke's allowance was in a glass jar on the one shelf he had bothered to put up, besides a cracked picture of presumably his parents and him. There was another boy in the picture but he had been largely ripped out.

Another room, that had supposed to be for recreation. It wasn't white, but burned black and pitted with numerous long gashes from Sasuke's secret rages. She closed the door quickly. Returning to the closet, she looked inside: two pairs of carefully mended pants, a black shirt, a blue one with his Uchiha family crest, a funeral shirt. A hysterical sob welled up in her at the sight of his funeral clothes that he would never need, now. There hadn't been enough left of his body to clothe before the burning, only a few limp scraps and bloody rags and bones. She held up his blue shirt to her face, feeling the snags and nicks that any ninja's clothes inevitably picked up. She curled up on his folded clothes; they still smelled like him. Then, finally, she let the tears come, and cried herself to sleep.