The Price of Love

The Price of True Love
By Iruka Umino

“What’s here? A cup, closed in my truelove’s hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end
O churl! Drunk all and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them
To make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm.”

Shikamaru Nara whispered softy, a quote from his favourite play, against the cheek of the man in his arms. The dead man in his arms.

The classical words of Juliet said to her beloved Romeo, as he lay dead in her arms. His life still to mirror the play nearly to a T. Star crossed lovers with death as the only possibility. One could not live without the other.

Just like Shikamaru could not live without one Naruto Uzumaki.

And as if fate felt it was necessary to teach humanity again how powerful love and loss could be, the scene that followed was an echo of the play’s closing act. So ironic, that Shikamaru could not help but give vent to a humourless chuckle, and utter the last two sentences of the play, the last two sentences of his life. It was time to pull the curtains down.

As the door was in the process of being forced open, he swiftly took the knife concealed the sole of his right shoe and said with all the choked up emotions of two long decades.

“Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy
dagger!
This is thy sheath, there rust, and let me die!”

With a loud bang, the people that had interfered with his love, entered, to be witness to a sight that could only be called tragic, as well as beautiful.

Simultaneous feminine cries of “Shikamaru!” and “Naruto” sound so loud in the quiet apartment, as six more powerful men stood at the door, shocked, rooted to the spot by the sight. Men that had seen everything, and thought that nothing could ever shock them again, stood stock still as statutes. On their face, frozen in place, a mask of dismay.

Dismay, mingled with self-loathing and guilt. Each knew full well the role they played in the deaths. Once they wanted to own both men, pushed them to a dead end, hoping again hope, they would surrender themselves, only for this to happen. Funny, how things never seem to go as you planned.

As the men became decapitated with their own inner emotions, Sakura and Ino pushed their way through the doors and was currently weeping over the cold bodies of their husbands, unsure if they should tear the two apart.

Both had known for some time, that the two men have never really loved them. They were passionately in love with each other however, and yes the two women knew that, even way back in high school.

In fact, the only reason why they were even married, was because the two boys, whom was then in University, was forced into it. The scheming women had managed to get them drunk at the Sakura’s 21st birthday, which was at her house. Each then led the man that she “loved”, but did not love back, up to a bedroom. The next morning, with the bedrooms’ door wide open (the girls had in the late of the night, open it.), Sakura’s parents, caught them in bed together.

And that was that. The weddings was organised for a month later, and the boys was trapped forever in a loveless marriage.

Yes, they were selfish, yes they were sneaky, devious and spoiled. But so f*cking what?

They were going to pay the man they loved back with a happy family, and a loving wife. They will be able make their reluctant husbands forget each other and love them only. Easy, right?

After all, they are beautiful, rich with powerful families.

Anything could be done if they were Sakura Haruno and Ino Yamanka, right?

Wrong!

Dead wrong!

They never did make Naruto nor Shikamaru forget each other. They never did managed to win their hearts or make them truly happy. Looks like happiness can not be won with cunning alone.

True, the men never once strayed from their families. Faithful to the end, to the point of dying to protect what they thought was important, to the ones they feel responsible for but could never love.

Sacrificing their happiness for someone else’s, seem to be their mottos. Always either playing the obedient husband or the role of a doting father, even as their heart whittled away, closed forever to the passions of true feelings.

Each had to thrown themselves into their work, to hide from their grief and pain, after all they get to see each other still …see but not touch…..Yet the wives intervened once more. Using their families’ influences, they forced the two into different police departments …You see, Naruto and Shikamaru was the best two detectives of Japan, also partners. Now separated across the nation, they were only half as effective.

But the wives was hoping that time and martial bliss would wear away the love between them.

And it seemed to work on the outside, till one fatal mission that once again made the two men cross paths yet again. Fate was a hard thing to beat after all.

The undercover project according to the new Police Commissioner Kakashi Hatake, needed his best agents: that meant reuniting the two detectives together as bodyguards for the aging head of the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza, Hiruzen Sarutobi.

That was where all the trouble started. But bear with me for that was a tale I would like to tell in detail.

They say leonards do not change their spot, it seems selfish has engraved itself too deeply into their DNA, for true love to win out.

For each furiously wiped her eyes and angrily flicked open her phone open.

If they were not going to be able to live happily with the man they ‘loved’, they will see to it that the two would forever be separated in life as well as in death.

Each woman had learnt long ago to ignore everyone’s wishes but their own, there is no fury as a woman scorn, or something like that.

Even the farewell letters in their pockets could do nothing to squash their anger.

The two men would be buried far away from each other. Forget the fact that they had asked to be burnt to ashes and spread across the ocean.

They are to be punished for the crime of faithful love, to be forever physically apart.

It was a whole five minutes until the private Haruno and Yamanaka ambulances came.

Sirens called loudly across the night leaving a ghostly ringing in one’s ears, sent the frozen men into action. Each left without a word being uttered. Yet with a heart full of emotions and two great scars. No, not scars, but open wounds, deep and painful, that threatening to bleed them dry.

Each, at a moment in time, shook their heads ruefully and smiled a bitter smile.

All saw now how their obsession, or ‘love’ was more a possessive nature. They all want not one, but both the men tied to them, without any other thought but possessing them.

Love could come later, maybe not at all. As long as they could feel, touch and f*ck them into submission, they didn’t really care. As long as they were there.

Love was a nuisance anyway. Winning was everything. Beating each other to get the prize? Isn’t that the Yukuza way? Take what you want, and don’t care of the consequences? So now why do they care so much?

Then it hit them all at once, because love did touch their cold hearts or something like that anyway. That was the jealousy, the need to monoplised the two men, the extreme steps they took to keep Naruto and Shikamaru by their side. Even with their covers blown, the five Yukaza leaders still tried to trap their prey into an iron cage.

So with five men wanting you, all threatening death to your loved ones. Not one, but five. So to protect the ones you care for, who do you give yourself to? The other four could still hurt them. Never mind that the one you truly love, is the one you could never be with, your partner and the man that was current in the same ridiculous situation as you.

You could only do what Romeo has done and poisoned yourself into death. Or stabbed yourself like Juliet at the sight of your lover’s dead body.

Life was nothing but a trial anyway. Death may just be what we needed after a long hard journey of pain. An eternity of dreaming of happiness, just to find it at the end of the tunnel.

Death doth us part. Yet, in this case death do us join at last.

Star crossed lovers meet in heaven, as they leave the earth to the stubborn and selfish people.

NB: Written like a novel - will explain later