Work Text:
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor any of the characters. I also do not own any songs by Avril Lavigne.
Song Link: Hello Heartache
Hello Heartache
I threw the bottle with a choked scream, the tears just wouldn’t stop coming. Even after I thought I couldn’t cry anymore, I would see something that would remind me o-of…and suddenly my vision would blur and the tears would start again. I was spiraling down fast into such darkness that I don’t think I’ll ever find my way out of it.
And not only did he have the gall to die, but we lost Sasuke too. That bastard. By the time we arrived, there was no trace of either of them and I don’t know if Sasuke left and took him with him or if someone else came and took them both. When that weird man suddenly appeared and announced that Sasuke had done it, had actually done it and killed…oh gods, the teme fucking k-killed...
An agonizing sob escaped me as I crumpled to the floor, burying my face into my hands as my nails dug painfully into my scalp. Losing Sasuke hurt and knowing that if I hadn’t called back my shadow clone we’d probably have retrieved him, but it was like a minor flesh wound to the gaping hole in my chest that he left. How dare he leave me!
And with that thought came the deep wracking guilt of not being there. I sent a fucking clone after my lover and could do nothing for him. If I had gone myself, if I had insisted on following him would things have been different? Could I have stopped them before either one of them got hurt? Finding out from that freak that my lover, my everything was dead only to call back my clone and be suddenly flooded with the memories of watching him die while not actually being there to kiss him goodbye left me with such excruciating regret and guilt. He had died with a fucking clone by his side, believing it was me. If I had been there with all my strength instead of half of it…would he still be alive? Would Sasuke be coming home instead of still missing? Would he have been coming home too…?
There was a knock at my door, but I couldn’t find the energy or care to answer it. Everyone else knew to avoid me right now, so who would be stupid enough to try now? We had crashed at an inn after it was obvious that our team was mentally and physically exhausted and that Sakura and I were falling apart, though for much different reasons. I think Kakashi knew more than he admitted to because he assigned me to my own room and bought me sake, his eyes full of sorrow and understanding as he patted my shoulder before retreating down the hall. If only he knew that sake was what he and I drank when we…
Yet whoever it was knocked again, this time harder and more incessantly.
“Go ‘way!” I yell hoarsely, my voice fucked from my irrepressible sobbing and the sake I’ve practically guzzled in the last hour to try and dull the pain. It wasn’t helping and I had just thrown my last bottle at the wall.
Suddenly the door opened—damn it, I hadn’t locked it—and Sakura enters, her pink hair dirty and lackluster as she looks at me with doleful dull eyes. “Naruto.” She whispers, staring at my disheveled and drunk ass kneeling on the ground surrounded by sake bottles and broken items that I had thrown in rage.
“Whaddaya want, Sak-ra?” I slur, glaring at her but I know there’s more anguished sorrow there than anger. “I said go’way.”
“No.” She says, taking another step towards me. “I-I know you’re upset—”
Upset? Ha! I’m fucking destroyed.
“—and you’re hurting, but I’m here for you, Naruto. Let me help you.”
She reaches for me and I let her drag me to the bed, the two of us clumsily collapsing onto it and I am immediately crying again, deep gasping breaths between the wails. She wraps her arms around me and quietly rubs my back, confusion evident on her face as she had no idea why I am grieving so deeply. “It hurts.” I whisper gruffly, tears running undeterred down my cheeks and dripping onto the bed cover, changing the light green a darker shade.
“I know.” She soothes, her tone gentle and even as if she is afraid I’ll bolt from the room. “But we’ll get him back.”
Get him back? There’s no getting him back, because he’s dead and there’s no reversing it this time. I pull away as understanding floods my body, anger suddenly taking over my features and I glower at my teammate and first crush. “Fuck Sasuke.” My voice is venomous and wrathful and I see her pale.
Sakura gasps, shocked at my words, her hands gripping my shoulders tightly. “W-what?”
“I said fuck Sasuke! The bastard can go to hell for all I care!” I yell, my face contorting with uncontrollable rage as sudden clarity overcomes me and erases any vestiges of drunkenness.
“You don’t mean that!” She yells back at me, standing up as she glares down at me still on the bed. “Everything you’ve been doing and training for has been to bring him back home.”
“Not anymore.” I seethe, feeling Kurama’s chakra dangerously welling up in me. “He abandoned us, ran from us, attacked us and tried to kill us and did k-kill—” My voice falters as claret eyes framed by ebony locks flash before my eyes and I feel my heart break, the fox's chakra suddenly dispelling before the chasm of pain within me.
“Take that back, Naruto!” Sakura demands, but her words just infuriate me once more and I grab her arm harshly, dragging her towards the door.
“Get out.” I hiss and she looks up at me for the first time with a touch of fear. Any other time I would have felt guilty for causing such a reaction, but now I just wanted her gone and away from me. “Just leave me the hell alone, Sakura. You want Sasuke back so bad, you go fetch him because as far as I’m concerned, he can go fucking kill himself, I don’t care.”
I shove her out into the hall and am about to close the door when Sakura stops it, tears collecting in her green eyes. I used to think they were pretty, but now nothing compares to his eyes as they watch me go down on him, cuddle next to him, writhe beneath him— “Naruto, you’re obviously drunk and struggling. I’m going to ignore what you said because I know Sasuke-kun is your best friend and you love him. Try to get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning, okay?” She gives me a watery smile, but I only stare at her suddenly devoid of any emotion as I slam and lock the door in her face.
I walk back to the bed in a stupor, my foot kicking aside one of the empty bottles of sake and I stare down at the small white bottle. Porcelain, like his skin, his perfect unmarred beautiful skin and I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m vomiting into the toilet. How can he really be gone? This has to be some kind of nightmare that I will wake up from and find myself pressed into his side as the cloying scent of cigarettes and musk, forest and death surround me.
“I-Itachi.” I gasp, my voice cracking as I finally say his name. Oh gods, this isn’t some demented nightmare. He’s gone, he’s fucking dead and I couldn’t stop it! I couldn’t even be there with him when… I’m vomiting again, his bloodied and battered face flashing before my eyes and refusing to leave as I empty the meager contents of my stomach, which consisted mainly of sake.
I crawl to the bed once all I can do is dry heave and slide beneath the covers as I pull the second pillow to me and hug it tightly, but its cold and only a reminder of how cold I am inside. I just don’t…understand. How could he die? Itachi was perfect in every way, excelled at everything in ways no one else ever did and had been my heart’s constant despite sometimes not seeing him for months at a time. I was the unpredictable one, I was the one who was supposed to do something so unforeseen as dying, not Itachi!
Tears tracked down my cheeks, soaking into the pillow that I hugged tighter to my chest. All the sneaking around we had done, the years of being lovers beneath everyone’s noses and knowing if we were caught it would be our deaths…oh gods it was more than it worth it, but it certainly wasn’t very sensible, was it Itachi?
Young and foolish, that’s what Kakashi-sensei had told me I was once. That seemed to be the way I’ve always lived my life and obviously I still am because I was stupid enough to think that I could stay… stay by your side forever. I wanted to, I wanted to remain with you and in your arms for the rest of our lives, but you weren’t supposed to die so suddenly! We were supposed to grow old together, or at least older than this.
And Sasuke, the bastard, just thinking of my best friend caused my blood to boil with rage. Well, he’s no longer a friend of mine. No, when he killed my lover, he killed our friendship. Even if he didn’t know Itachi was mine, he was still Sasuke’s brother. I know Sasuke had sworn to kill him…I knew that, but I never thought he actually would do it. Itachi was supposed to be stronger, I know he was stronger, and yet somehow still Sasuke did it and ripped my heart out in the same instance.
Oh gods, my heart truly does feel like it has been ripped out. The agonizing pain left there as my heart clenches in my chest is the only proof that it is still there because I feel like I am dead. My soul has been torn asunder and I just want to curl up on this bed and die so I can be with you, Itachi. Wherever you are, I want to be there too…
“Live your life, Naruto, be happy, n-no regrets.”
His voice echoes in my mind, the memory of my clone now mine as if I had truly been there myself to kiss his bloodied lips and push back those inky locks from his rain soaked face. As if it had been me hugging him to me as I heard his fleeting heartbeat come to a stuttering stop and listening to the death rattle in his chest as he breathed his last, his hand limply falling from mine. Those claret eyes I love are gone forever, his elegant fingers would never leave a scorching trail down my body as he kissed me as if I were the only air on earth and I would never feel his love even if he never said the words. How I wish I could have heard him say the words, just once…I heard them once in a dream and I know he loved me by his actions, but I still wish I could have heard the inflection in his voice as he told me.
“I love you, kareshi.”
I close my eyes, swallowing thickly, and I can see your small, soft smile and your fingers threading through my hair. I can almost pretend you are really here, almost feel you and hear your low chuckle, but the illusion is broken as my eyes open and I am faced with the empty bed and the finality of your death. A choking sob wells up within me and I scream into the pillow, the dense material muffling it as I let free my pain and fury into it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Itachi! Why is it like this?
I was the bubbly one, wasn’t I? The happy one, always smiling and laughing and making you smile and even laugh a few times. Those laughs would always make me so elated because you deserved so much more happiness than you were given. You were like the sake—smooth, fiery and heating my very blood to where I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. And yet we went so well together, balancing each other and everything we did was so much fun, especially the bad things we did. So many would have condemned us for our ages, for our parentage, for our outcast positions within Konoha and yet I would do it all again, risk everything just to have you here with me once more. No, not once more, forever, but even if it was just for one more day, I would still do it and go through hell itself for you.
You let me see your best side and I will always treasure seeing it. Your amusing, sweet and caring side, a side I doubt many knew you even had. You always hid behind that emotionless mask you wore—damn Uchihas and their need to pretend they don’t feel, but you did feel and felt so deeply. I saw the way under your guard, your eyes, those beautiful sharingan eyes that I fell in love with always betrayed your feelings for me and I could see within them just how much you cared and loved me. Eyes I will never be able to see again.
And you got to see my worst. That night you appeared at my window, standing before me with an unreadable expression on your face as I offered you a stupid trade—a night of passion, of feeling wanted and loved, for my life. And yet it was the best offer I ever made because instead of trading my life, I found it and discovered for the first time what love actually was and feeling it. Of course, I guess now is my worst…this pain is so much fucking worse and I know there is no silver lining I can find this time.
It’s not the first time I’ve lost someone important to me, I lost my parents before I even knew them, I lost the Sandaime, one of the few people who had been kind to me and had shown me some semblance of concern for my wellbeing. I thought it hurt when he died. And while we were able to revive Gaara, it had cut deeply when I thought he was dead too. But this…losing him, losing Itachi it…
Gods, it hurts!
Did you know, Itachi? Did you know you were going to die? Does it even matter? Either way you’re gone and I will never see you again, never hold you again or run my fingers through your hair. Never taste you again as I kiss you deeply, never smell your scent or the way it would mix with the cloying smell of cigarettes. N-never feel you within me, never see how your cheeks would flush and your eyes would flutter as you came, my name a breathy whisper on your red lips. But I’m telling you now, no matter where you are, this isn’t the end, no this is just goodbye for now. One day I’ll join you, Itachi, and then we’ll never be separated again.
No, this won’t be the end, Itachi, it will never be the same now that you are gone and I wish with everything in me it didn’t have to be this way, but… you will always mean the world to me, love. And for you, only for you, will I drag your stubborn, foolish little brother home to Konoha. We won’t be friends, not anymore, but because I know why you had to murder your clan and just how much you loved Sasuke, I will drag his sorry ass home for you and then wash my hands of him.
There is nothing left for me here except this excruciating heartache…
Dhampir
Page 5
11/12/2020
Note: So I originally wrote this to happen back at Naruto's apartment, but the more I thought about it, with them arriving so late to the Uchiha Hideout (which from what I can gather is not close to Konoha), it made more sense for them to crash somewhere. Add to it all the filler episodes where they obviously don't go straight home, it just made more sense to work this into the series as not being home.
So Naruto does not know Jiraiya's dead yet. I originally wrote Jiraiya's death in, but it just didn't feel right. I hope this conveys well, it's another angst fest one, but that's hopefully to be expected considering Itachi died, but while this has been tumbling in my mind for weeks now, I ended up writing this all in one go late last night.