chapitre 4: let me wake up or else -

From that moment of time, it seemed as if time had halted for Sasuke, while Naruto continued troddling towards the future, desperately trying to pull Sasuke with him; but Sasuke was stuck. Stuck in a nightmare void of hope.

One should not forget about their rivalry at this point of time, since no matter how curing their relationship is for both of them, I won't deny the fact that at the same point, it's also an extremely dysfunctional and disruptive, and most of all, unstable one.

Ever since they were children, Naruto had tried to catch up with Sasuke, but never was able to do so- thus he made Sasuke his rival, which just prodded Naruto even more to become stronger and gain attention. As time went by, however, Sasuke only seemed to increase the distance between them, again following his own path of emptiness towards revenge.

Exactly this rivalry was also one of the things, that pushed Sasuke in the direction he ultimately chose.

Without doubt, Sasuke has some sort of superiority complex and therefore he must have felt hemmed when Naruto was able to finally come closer and closer to him, especially during the fight with Gaara. Current feelings of acknowledgement and also amazement soon turned into feelings of constriction, falling behind and inferiority.

Sasuke was litteraly swamped by those emotions, which were released all at once after all the fights in which Naruto had proved how much he had grown - and in the end, the only thing left was the need to verify one's own self-worth and dignity, as well as predominance.

Naruto himself saw this immediately as the chance to show his growth and to gain once and for all the acceptance of the always admired teen. Both losing relatively fast their temper, they soon had forgetten their surroundings and the only thing that mattered was the fight– unrestricted and uninhibited. Sasuke was completely posessed by Itachi's words at that time, of not even being worth killing, while Naruto finally wanted to be treated as an equal. Both their minds spun with several emotions, which lead then to such a clash like the on in the Valley of the End.

The urge to overtrump the other one all the time is like a vicious cycle- one tries his best to finally catch up, while the other does his best not to let this distance close.

Sadly, this scheme had always dominated their interaction - which is on the one hand, not an entirely bad thing. As mentioned before, it also motivated each of them to get stronger- but on the other hand, it's also dangerous - with both of their feelings always getting pushed and pushed, there has to be a clash at some point. It seemed as if watching those two was like watching a ticking time bomb.

At last, the incident with Itachi was the trigger for Sasuke's ultimate decision - after his brother painfully reminded him of how huge the gulf between the two of them still is, Sasuke's feelings of not having reached anything so far, were almost natural, but at most understandable. As we know, even Naruto couldn't keep him from going, seeing how Sasuke was captured once again in the claws of the past, and so, the only thing left behind were two broken teenagers, who only suffered all the more due to their bond.