Crossroads (A Naruto Fanfiction)

Don't Move On

**If you want to know how I imagine Athen^^

A year. For a year I didn't speak a word nor did I leave the house for any occasion. There are some improvements though; I walked more than at first and began to eat whole plates of food after that dinner with Kushina. My mother took over feeding me as the redhead did, and recently that was no longer needed. I started feeding myself. It was like that was the one thing my body submitted to my will for - to eat.

Our fourth birthday was just a week away now and my Mother scurried about as she prepared us for the small celebration. She visited many bakeries, including the ones in our clan district and out in the village to find where to buy a cake from. For our past birthdays she had bought the cake from her favorite sweets store just on the outskirts of our district, but that closed down a few months ago due to the owner growing ill and unable.

She made a decision today, however, to bake one herself. "I've only made one before." She said.

Baking. The verb hit me like ten tons of brick and it sprung a certain memory to the forefront of my mind.

.

.

.

"Hey look," It was in the month of August, just a few days before my brother's - Athen's - nineteenth birthday. He held out his phone to me to show a message sent by his girlfriend. "She wants to bake a cake for my birthday."

"Isn't that normal for any girlfriend to do?" I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me. "Fun fact: she hates cooking."

"But that's baking,"

Athen shrugged. "Same shit." He leaned up against the window that my bed was directly situated by and continued to text and browse through his phone.

I always wondered why he hung out in my room, but I wasn't about to question him. His little acts of talking to me made me feel a little bit worth something.

"Yo," He started again, "Why don't I bake something for her too, for thanks."

"You can't even boil water," I said sarcastically.

"Shut up, you know some stuff so help me out."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Hey, I'm pretty sure I'd marry this girl one day so technically you're helping me out with your future sister in law."

I looked at him surprised. "Marry?"

He raised an eyebrow, recently threaded in a dare by said girlfriend. "What? You don't believe me?" He questioned.

I pursed my lips. "It's not that... It's just, how can you be sure?"

It was his turn to look at me in confusion. He responded, "If I wasn't sure that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, I wouldn't be with her right now."

For a moment, we just looked at each other. I looked away first and huffed in amusement. "Where did you get that from? Tumblr?" I never thought he'd be such a romantic.

He got off the bed and slapped the back of my head as he passed by to leave. "Shut up. I'm going to go buy baking stuff. You better help me plan when I come back." He said.

"You could shop later," I called after him.

"I said planning!" And with that, I heard the click of the front door closing as he left.

An hour later, someone came knocking on the front door. It was dark out and the time marked that it was half-past ten o'clock. My parents were out on their date, so I was the one to go open the door. I looked through the peephole and there stood an officer in uniform with a solemn look on his face.

"Yes..." I greeted hesitantly as I opened the door.

"Is this the house of Athen Benett?"

I looked at the officer suspiciously. "Yes," I said.

"Are his parents home?"

"No, they're out."

"I see," He paused, trying to find a way to start explaining why he was here. "There was a collision down in North Street..."

An hour and a half later, I was at the hospital. An hour and forty minutes later, my parents arrived as well and questions were asked. Three hours later, Athen was pronounced brain dead.

My life never added up to anything. I made no contribution whatsoever. When it hit me that Athen was gone, I realized up till then that I only went by my days just to see what he would do with his own life; how he'd make a name for himself in the world because I knew he could.

'If this is where he stopped,' I had thought. 'Then there's no reason for me to go on myself.'