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How do you handle the knowledge that this is the last time? What do you do, what do you say?
Who are you? After.
When it is over, ended. Ultimately never again what it was, what I, You and I have been.
Who can I still be then?
The force of our collusion, the power of an attack executed in perfect synergy, smashes our energies into each other. Forces them against each other, presses them into each other, leaves them no room to evade each other till they are so similar they could be mistaken for one. Warm and bright, curiously familiar, it devours us in our battle. The one that is actually two.
In a place that doesn’t exist where seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling have meaning, that lies between. Between everything that is and is not.
There, for just an infinitely short moment, I am You. As much You as I will ever be.
I dissolve in You.
It passes, this moment where We are nothing I could describe with words. And it leaves something behind that throws me back without mercy, throws me back into myself, that makes me the individual I have always been until now. Suddenly, my bounds are drawn razor-sharp against the light wind. My skin is wound too tight around me, doesn’t leave me room to breathe.
Never before have I been less enough for myself.
Within my self, littered with so many uncountable ends, there is a knowledge trapped alongside me. You gave it to me in this world in between and it makes me feel my edges like fresh slash wounds. Outwardly I am a single burning, smoldering pain that hungrily finds nourishment in my inner warmth. In its blind haste to escape this confined prison, the fleeing warmth crushes me. It’s missing, even in the barely noticeable breeze.
I barely dare to look at You for You will see in every fiber of my being what this knowledge does to me. My eyes are burning suspiciously, but I refuse to let go of the tears gathering behind my eyelids. Far too many will force their way let though later.
Despite wanting to delay this moment for as long as possible, to halt time, I have to look at You, have to use what will still be given because…
Because…
Sasuke, You are still as unreadable as ever and yet… Your face doesn’t betray anything You don’t want it to. But your eyes are translucent to me, they see me and let me stumble into the labyrinth behind the dark windows. You don’t just look at me, maybe for the first time since we know each other, You see me.
You too were Me, as much Me as You will ever be.
And I gave you knowledge, just like You. You know the face I hide from the world, maybe even better than I do since You don’t try so hard to overlook it, to deny, and forget it. You are not speaking, don’t need to. Because We both were there, have fought, seen, and dissolved.
Now, just now, that I realize that words are no longer needed, I am certain that I should speak them. No, not should, have to! I have to voice it to You, have to drag it form the world in between into the rapidly chilling summer wind gusting over the dry, dusty brown desert pavement. You can’t just know. You have to hear it from me. That which, after years of wandering and searching, I finally recognized for what it has always been.
Once only You have to hear what I always missed to tell You until now. If I don’t speak them now, these words will die on my tongue and remain bitter till the very end.
My heart is in my mouth as I open my lips while You scream with your whole body: “Don’t do it!”.
You are coming closer, calm and nearly composed. Nearly. The hard lines of your tense shoulders betray You. Do You want to attack me, stop me with force, before I do something I regret later? But You are waiting a few steps away and I think We both want to hear them almost as much as We fear them. Maybe I’m wrong and the slight shake of your head is just imagination.
The words are stuck in my throat, want to choke me, yet can’t be swallowed again. They painfully push out while I yield to the treacherous hope that they can still change something. Anything. They walk across my lips quietly and sadly, carry fear upon their small shoulders. The hope that should accompany them is missing. A plea lies underneath them like the floor on which so heavy emotions walk that grief greedily grabs at them.
The worst of it is that they are true, these words. Through and through.
“Sasuke, I love you.”
Oh yes. There is a difference in speaking them out loud and clear. And what a difference it is!
The irrevocable fact that I love You becomes terrifyingly real on your face the moment my words reach You. I have dragged them out into the light of a slowly sinking sun and it is already impossible to bury them again, to hide them, and thus get closer to the illusion that what has to happen will thereby get easier. It is only my words that have written this love inextinguishably into your life too.
With the knowledge I received from You this love weighs on both of us heavy as lead. Where it should have given us wings, it now tears us down, shackles us so closely to the dry earth that even standing up becomes an insurmountable task.
Now You look sad. I haven’t seen this face on You in years. Your mask was impeccable, only letting through glimpses of unbridled anger and all-consuming hate. But I knew about the abyss just millimeters beneath the surface. I have seen the very depth of it and without hesitation I would have dived into it with You if You just would have let me.
You bridge the last distance between us and hold out a bruised hand, not to hurt me, not to beat me, attack me, or grab me. A reassuring but at the same time eerie calm rests on your fingertips. Gingerly, You place them on my chest directly above my painfully beating heart and I let it happen. I wish they would just melt into me for me to keep them, keep your warmth, directly in my heart.
Because…
Your eyes pull me in, speak to me, and despite wanting to, I can’t, can’t blind myself to what they so mutely confide. I don’t want to read more in them, don’t want to know more. I know enough already. Enough to never forget for the rest of my life.
Your long-missed voice follows in the footsteps of your eyes. You do as I did. You too have to write something into my life right at the end of all these endless chapters reserved for only You.
“I know,” You say. “I’ve seen it. Right here.”
Your palm burns on my chest.
Your empty hand takes my own and lays it above your heart, holds it there, as if You fear I would take it back. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.
And I am aware what this gesture means. Yes, I too have seen…
My eyes burn and the penetrating gaze in your unusually soft face blurs before my sight.
I’ve seen it. Right there.
“Naruto.”
No! Tears begin to gather in the corners of my eyes. They are ready to see the truth.
No, Sasuke, please don’t do it!
But your words continue to fall, flutter down on me and leave cold, tingling spots on my skin. Almost like rain but so much heavier.
“Naruto, I love you.”
The tears let loose and throw themselves down, just like me. We are falling at frantic speed although I didn’t move a millimeter. I beg You, stop it!
“Naruto, I love you. But…”
I refuse to accept the pain on your features. I don’t want to see that You are suffering too, that You are tormenting yourself, because I am burning, screaming, crying, falling, sinking, drowning.
I.
I beg You Sasuke, stop it!
My fingers claw into You, leave even more bloody scratches on your milky white skin. Stop! Stop! Please, stop it!
Don’t go on.
You go on. Because…
“… But it’s not enough.”
I lose the air to breathe, the ground beneath my feet, simply everything. Everything falls and falls into ruin. I disappear but still can’t dissolve in the void consuming me.
Because.
Because this is the last time.
You know it.
I know it.
This is the last time We can be what We were, what We are now and what We could have been. This is the last time that We are everything, everything in all its infinite, iridescent possibilities.
Because after, We are nothing. We.
We don’t exist anymore. Then there is only I. A single I, one without a You.
Without You.
Because this is the end.
In the moment We were as much We as We can ever be, We were both sure than an I will follow. A cold, lonely I. When We separate here today, We will take more knowledge with us and yet We will leave behind more than We came with or could ever receive, so much more.
We bury a future, a present, a past.
We both had to write this lonely certainty into the cold reality with our words. We both had to hurt and fight each other with these gentle, healing, warm words of love as We have always done. With words, weapons, fists, gazes, a perpetual race, a never-ending fight. Our rivalry, our fight… our love, something We shared.
Shared until We tore it apart with our words. A last flimsy wisp is still there, a single thread of the once tightly woven bond, but even that will bend and break.
No, not break. The ends will be carefully separated for them to never again touch, tangle, knot, or unite. Nothing will remain.
Nothing.
Nothing for me to link to, no hold, no path for hope, longing, affection, friendship, dreams. They are doomed to fall and blindly roam about, to search what does no longer exist, until they begin to forget what their goal looked like. They will acquire new faces, put on new robes, and come back to me.
Grief. Despair. Solitude.
Just one of them will remain lost, will forever wander the world in between and seek, seek, seek without hope and yet unable to forget. My love for You will remain there, in this place of ends, of ruptured and severed threads of our once so solid bond. It will not come back to me, will not fill the consuming void eating right through me this moment.
It will leave open this gaping hole, this wound, and not for one second of my life I will forget what should be there.
What is not there.
What will never again be there.
After what We have told and shown each other, I am sure You too will walk away with a wound. Another one in the vast grey crater landscape inside You, full of rifts and holes, chasms that slowly but surely fill with seething, thick, black hate while anger and rage float above like fog. The holes that others, that I, leave behind in You won’t remain as empty as mine. They consume You in seething black flames and leave You eternally burning, while mine hollow me out further and further until only an empty shell is left.
We both lost You.
You and I lost You to hate and revenge a long, long time ago. The darkness You have feared your lifetime, your once overwhelming tormentor, is now your home, your shelter. You have forced open your prison and made yourself guard. You embrace the darkness, accept it, and surrender yourself to it without hesitation.
It is yours and You are its.
I wanted to be your light in the dark hours, in mine and yours. I was your light, a small, flickering, and faint light, a tiny spot in the suffocating darkness. A spot You could always look back to, always there waiting for You and showing You the way back. Till today, till now.
But I am fading in your dark eyes.
The darkness needs no light, it has no light and it wants none. It will only be complete when even the last glimmer is smothered, has died down.
When I have vanished, You will be complete.
I see on You that your words are murderers, that You are choking, just like me. Your fingers burn on my chest, cling to my hand as if they never want to let go. Your gaze cuts me open and the only tear I have ever seen in your eyes tears me apart.
So, this is it.
This is actually the end?
I know that it is not easy for You since You too have searched for the light, have even grown fond of it.
You love Me.
And yet.
Yet, You are ready to inflict the wound, to sever the last thin thread, to close your eyes before the last glimmer of light and nothing, nothing I do, say, feel, am can still change anything about that. They are numbered, the minutes, seconds, breaths still connecting us, and they are fading. One after the other they dissolve, break away pieces of us. Of You and Me.
Ah, and they ache, they hurt, as if someone was tearing them directly out of me.
I can barely see You through the blur of tears, but I want to, have to see You. Have to look at You and burn your image into my retina, into my memory not to forget what I couldn’t forget anyway, not in a thousand lifetimes. I blink, angry, fearful, panicked.
Fear. Yes, I am terribly afraid that the day will come when your face fades away and blurs in my memory. I need more, more of You, need to save as much of You as possible.
Because this is the end.
Irrevocably.
I have to imbibe all of You I am yet able to grasp.
The way You are standing before me. The way your chest lifts and lowers beneath my hand, the way You breathe, You live before my eyes. How You smell. Even here amidst the dust and wind it’s there, your scent, like blood and sweat, a chilly summer rain, crackling lightning in a heavy nightly thunderstorm, and a bitter, heavy sweetness only You possess. How your pale but surprisingly soft and warm skin feels. Your heart beating against my fingers in a steady incessant rhythm, counting seconds that shouldn’t be allowed to pass. The hard grasp of your fingers around my trembling hand, the pressure of your palm above my frantic heart.
And your eyes…
There is so much I want to take with me, want to save, before it’s too late.
Everything, everything, everything.
There is nothing I can lose, forget, miss.
This can’t be the end!
I still haven’t got enough yet! I haven’t got enough of You yet!
Please, do not let this be the end.
Not…
You break the paralyzing rigidity, give time a push, and take another step towards me. You lower your head. Your face comes closer and it’s as if a dull pain screams at me, a mirror image of my inner self. But something lies beneath that, something I lack. The decision I won’t ever be able to make no matter how much time goes by for me.
Bit by bit You rob the space between us.
Your light, warm breath burns cold and sharp on my cheeks. Not how it should be, how I would have wished it. This should not be a moment of fear, of panic, of despair. No break. No strike. No cut. No closing chapter.
Not the tearing of a flimsy last thread.
Not…
You close the space between us with your lips. The time stands still, goes on, goes backwards. Everything and nothing happens. The world around me dissolves and at the same time becomes brutal reality. My heart, my head, I am full and simultaneously horrifyingly empty.
It is this moment that hammers home for me what I merely thought to understand, to feel, till now.
This.
Is.
The.
End.
This bittersweet kiss pulls on the last remnants of our bond until it is stretched to breaking point.
How do you handle the knowledge that this is the last time? What do you do, what do you say?
How do you go on when I is not enough and We is unattainable?
When you can never be again who you have been every second of your life till then?
How do you go forward when you had to bury the future?
When I begin to understand that You will be irrevocably, permanently gone, that there is no going back.
Not for You.
Not for Me.
Not for Us.
If someone asked me for the taste, the feel of your lips, I wouldn’t have an answer. The only thing real in this moment is the knowledge that this kiss can never end. If your lips now break away from mine, the bond will not withstand pull. Then it is truly irrevocable.
I fear nothing more than that.
Therefore, I throw everything I have at You, lay everything I am onto your lips, and send all the strength I am capable of to my arms holding You tight. Holding so tight as if my life depended on it. And it does, right this moment it really does.
I lay my life onto your lips. All my love for You, because it is all I can still give You of myself. Even if it’s not enough, even if We both know that it’s not enough. Not enough anymore, who knows, maybe it was never enough.
It’s not fair of You that You press me as tightly to yourself as I press You to myself. That so much of You lies on your lips too, that they burn like fire deep into myself, right through me.
In wild desperation our mouths press together, our cold fingers cling to the one thing We cannot dare to let go of, and our bodies crowd so firmly against each other that it hurts.
It’s not fair that You give your best to meld us together too. As if We could still do that now. As if it was still in our power.
If I could, I would dissolve right now and You could have me, completely and utterly. Even if nothing remains of Me but You. As if it was in my power.
As if it was in my power to halt the movement You already began. Our bond quivers as you begin to break away, to separate what belongs together, to sever what still binds us together.
The loss of your lips, hands, skin, hits me like a blow.
Your lips break away from mine and even the tiny distance between us is too much. Too much for the bond stretched to the breaking point.
Too much.
Too much.
Too much.
It does not hold.
I don’t know if it’s pain or numbness, if I forgot to feel or if there is too much to feel.
I cannot distinguish them.
I can… not.
Not feel, not cease to feel. Not scream, not cease to scream.
Not feel pain, not cease to writhe in pain.
It’s missing.
Simply everything is missing.
It’s already missing unbearably.
You.
You’re missing.
I want to reach out with my hand for You, for your slowly shrinking silhouette in the falling darkness, but it does not lift, does not move.
I lose You within the shadows in the distance and the moment You are one with them, You disappear until my eyes cannot distinguish You from them and them from You, it is certain.
It is irrevocable.
Irretrievable.
Irrefutably the end.
Our end.
How do you handle the knowledge that this has been the last time?
When I begin to understand that You are irrevocably, permanently gone, that there is no going back.
Not for You.
Not for Me.
Not for Us.
When the bond woven with love, friendship, and so many years will now forever have an end. An aching, bleeding, tearing, stabbing, drilling, burning, festering, consuming, cold, lonely, desolate, helpless, hapless, hopeless end.
One that will yearn for You until the end of my days.
How do you handle the knowledge that this has been the last time?
Who are you?
After.
When only I remain.
I, where it should be We.
The I from You and I.
From We.
Who can I still be?
When I don’t want to be Me.
Not without You.