—— An orange pigmentation crept from the corners of his eye, irises, once that boyish blue hue of summer skies and reckless dreams, bled outward into liquid amber — shades of sunrise, along with pupils thinning vertically,
reptilian. This wasn’t the fox’s moment.

This was nature’s.

—— eyes, it’s back again. Like before. That emptiness, like you already made peace with dying alone. I chased you halfway across the world to drag that look out of your eyes. I’ll do it again, in my last … 𝐃𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇. ” ——

—— but to glide it and wrest control. Naruto grimaced, In one fluid, desperate motion —locking the hand that sought to claim his last breath. Naruto’s twist was a masterstroke of judo and shinobi grappling, the perfect blend of technique and raw will. “ You think I don’t see it? That look in your ——

—— was smooth but fractionally late just as he’d been baited to and Sasuke read it instantly. Bracing the wound at the cost of his lifespan, the sensation was sharp, grounding — but his legs held. Pain had rewritten his reflexes into something more primitive, more automatic ——

—— its color a violent bloom across the greyed stone beneath him.

Naruto, even on one knee and spitting sanguine, still held a center of gravity that threatened retaliation. His face remained angled down, Each second spent motionless was a second his body wasn’t rebelling against him.

“ Damn…”

—— Sasuke’s temple closed in angular, and absolutely committed. Sasuke’s equilibrium, still staggered from the liver-shot, couldn’t fully realign. He saw the blur, not the foot, the absence of space it carved — just as it delivered into the side of his jaw ——

—— An anchor — he used it to reel himself in. A fist guided by familiarity with his opponent’s anatomy — angled not for spectacle but to collapse the ribcage inward. A punch meant not to knock down, just to disrupt balance, to steal breath, restructuring momentum ——

—— A quiet inhale. Then — a fluid displacement of his upper torso, not so much dodging as unthreading himself from the vector of attack. His eyes, once gentle, now narrowed to slits of calculating clarity, in this borrowed second — fire was returned ——

They called him 𝒔𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒐𝒓,
but he was always just a boy
who couldn’t let others 𝙨𝙪𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧
the way ʜᴇ ᴅɪᴅ.

(七代目火影 :
Tʜᴇ Tᴀʟᴇ Oғ Nᴀʀᴜᴛᴏ Uᴢᴜᴍᴀᴋɪ.