And life goes on... (Naruto fanfiction, oneshot)
Theme: CC
Genre: Kind of an AU, but it could be a post-manga sort of thing
Ratings: PG
Warnings: Yaoi, some language, one-shot
Summary: Naruto muses about life, death, and Sasuke. Post-Sasuke betrayal.
Life is no longer as you know it, Naruto.
Is it? You count the days, tracing the cracks in your speckled hospital ceiling with eyes that cannot see, a mind that cannot think. Ears that cannot hear. Fingers that cannot touch.
One, for him. Two, for betrayal. Three for village. Four for insanity. Five for yourself.
You can’t forget about yourself. It starts with him and ends with you. Insanity is always somewhere in between. And you can’t forget about betrayal. Oh, betrayal. If insanity is you, then betrayal is him.
Six, seven, and eight spider down the white. Nine branches into ten. You aren’t sure what they mean. Then again, you can’t be sure of anything these days.
Life goes on.
Death goes on.
The hospital room has four white washed walls. It smells of blood, disease, death. You think of Kyuubi and the cage that surrounds it. You think of the barrel Sasuke died in. You think of yourself, trapped in these walls, trapped in this village, the village that gave birth to you, shaped your inner monster. The village that killed you.
You close your eyes and will yourself to sleep.
Your teacher, your mentor, the person who you had always looked up to and thought, amazing, drops by one afternoon. You don’t say anything. Neither does he. The silence is awkward, the questions deceptively mild, the laughter mockingly bland.
Are you okay? You think it’s ironic that Kakashi of all people is asking you this. Are you okay? Does this interrogation mean anything to you, Kakashi? Do you like being so vague?
Do you really think you’ll get any answers at all?
Are you okay? Your answer is tricky, indefinite. You feel a sweet sticky hang in your gut, a sense of impending doom.
What happened? There is Kakashi, bluntly tactless and thoughtless with his words as always. Thinking that you would open up to someone who betrayed you, worked with Sasuke and threw you down and down and down and down, again and again and again and again…
Betrayal. You answer. Treason. Everything you expected. Nothing you wanted. What are you going to do now? Your face is calm and sometimes you wonder if you’ve been sleeping all this time and when Sasuke rammed that fucking chidori through you, you woke up.
Maybe you’ve been dreaming all this time. Maybe it’s all a nightmare.
Bring him back, of course. Kakashi answers in all seriousness. You shrug your shoulders casually and wince. A scar reopens, crimson blood staining the gauze around it. Your hospital gown is no longer white. You’re surprised they even gave you a hospital gown this time.
Kyuubi simmers beneath the surface of the painted seals on your stomach, floating between mid conscious and nothing. Blood pours out of your wound. He does nothing. You chuckle under your breath. Even demons sleep. Even demons die.
Even you can die.
Will you help? Kakashi is vaguely annoyed, but worried. You think he has misinterpreted your laughter. Maybe it goes both ways.
Why should I help a village who hates me? Maybe being a shinobi does something to the brain. Maybe Kakashi should retire before he does more damage than good.
Kakashi’s eyes soften uncharacteristically, and he pats the crinkled sheets covering your form. They don’t hate you Naruto. They just don’t understand.
You shrug. Maybe if you ignore the fact that this is the smallest room in the hospital, with no IV hooked up to keep you alive, no monitor to watch your heart beat out patterns of life, then maybe they don’t hate you as much as you were led on to thinking, what, with the cruel words and the looks that hurt so much more than the bruises. This room is meant for traitors, traitors like Sasuke. Not you.
Kakashi’s pointed look at the splash of red on your canvas of gauze and skin is dark, almost hooded. The pain is not there, you are cold and numb and empty. You feel like the air on winter nights, bitter wind numb on bone and frozen to the naked skin.
Do you feel like a failure?
No, not really. In some ways. Am I supposed to feel like a failure? Do you want me to feel like a failure?
No, just wondering.
Do you feel like a failure? You feel a sort of expectancy which tires you quickly. It’s the most you’ve felt all day. You shrug your shoulders around. The scar won’t stop bleeding.
It depends. You almost feel like laughing. It depends? It always depends.
On what?
The person, the objective.
Then, what about Sasuke?
There is a sort of pause, an uneasy shift. Kakashi struggles for words. You wait patiently. After all, you have nothing but time on your hands.
Sometimes, yes. This is his answer, two words about his prodigy, the one which fucking ran away to an enemy for power and slammed a chidori into his best friend’s chest. The same chidori which he had taught the Uchiha.
Are you angry at this? You don’t know. There comes a sort of fire, a madness which overcomes you like a wave, and washes out your emptiness, the hole left in your chest by Sasuke. You are drowning in that hole.
I’m angry. You speak in monotones, curt and precise.
I’m not surprised. Why? Kakashi straightens from his mundane position slouching against the blank wall and undresses the bloodstained bandages on your shoulder, first pulling the upper half of the standard hospital wear down. You shy from his touch instinctively. He undoes the circulation-cutting bonds in practiced motions.
I don’t know. You think of Sakura, all pink-haired and pink-faced at the prospect of the loved Uchiha. You think of the promise you made to her when you were naïve and stubborn and clung to hope like the life raft it is.
By the way, where is Sakura? Your question is simple and straightforward. Kakashi sighs and turns his gaze to the ceiling. One two three four five cracks.
She killed herself last night. Six seven eight nine ten cracks. Six for Sakura, seven for Kakashi, eight for trying, nine for naivety, ten for whatever is left of your sanity.
The water goes higher and higher around you and you wave your hands in the water, desperately. You think that once, you knew how to swim. Where did that knowledge go?
I’m not angry anymore. You are completely submerged in water, numb as usual and breathing salty air. You choke on the water. Your scars sting.
Kakashi dresses your re-opened scar with bandages from his jounin vest pocket, actions meticulous and quick. Sliding the bubblegum pink top of your roughly woven clothing back onto your shoulders, he pats your head with a smile.
Be a good boy, okay? Swooping down, Kakashi tilts his now unclothed lips onto your cheek. His lips are an unchapped smooth, warm against your dead-cold skin.
Okay. Someone lifts you from the water, hands securely under your armpits and onto land. Collapsing onto the firm ground, you sputter out a thank you, but no one is there.
Before you can catch a glimpse of his unmasked face, there is dark, and then light.
“Thank God, Naruto! You’re back with us again!” You see hazy pink hair and now, accusing spring green eyes, “Stop making me worry so much, baka!”
You blink into the light with eyes that are swollen with sleep. In the corner of the hut you lay in, you see a tall, silver-haired jounin and a pale, but smirking figure.
“Stop making fun of me, teme!”
“I haven’t even said anything, dobe!”
You grin even in the midst of the fight. It has been five years since Sasuke came back. Orochimaru is dead, Itachi is in a five mile radius of the point in the tea country you lay at and Sakura isn’t dead or infatuated with the retrieved Uchiha (anymore, at least).
And Kakashi has never kissed you. You aren’t sure if that’s good or bad.
“Come on Naruto,” Kakashi leans over you and lifts you up, hands under both armpits. You smile under the glare and pout you wear.
“I’m not a baby!”
“You sure act like one.”
“Yea! Don’t be a baby, Naruto!”
And life goes on.
Genre: Kind of an AU, but it could be a post-manga sort of thing
Ratings: PG
Warnings: Yaoi, some language, one-shot
Summary: Naruto muses about life, death, and Sasuke. Post-Sasuke betrayal.
Life is no longer as you know it, Naruto.
Is it? You count the days, tracing the cracks in your speckled hospital ceiling with eyes that cannot see, a mind that cannot think. Ears that cannot hear. Fingers that cannot touch.
One, for him. Two, for betrayal. Three for village. Four for insanity. Five for yourself.
You can’t forget about yourself. It starts with him and ends with you. Insanity is always somewhere in between. And you can’t forget about betrayal. Oh, betrayal. If insanity is you, then betrayal is him.
Six, seven, and eight spider down the white. Nine branches into ten. You aren’t sure what they mean. Then again, you can’t be sure of anything these days.
Life goes on.
Death goes on.
The hospital room has four white washed walls. It smells of blood, disease, death. You think of Kyuubi and the cage that surrounds it. You think of the barrel Sasuke died in. You think of yourself, trapped in these walls, trapped in this village, the village that gave birth to you, shaped your inner monster. The village that killed you.
You close your eyes and will yourself to sleep.
Your teacher, your mentor, the person who you had always looked up to and thought, amazing, drops by one afternoon. You don’t say anything. Neither does he. The silence is awkward, the questions deceptively mild, the laughter mockingly bland.
Are you okay? You think it’s ironic that Kakashi of all people is asking you this. Are you okay? Does this interrogation mean anything to you, Kakashi? Do you like being so vague?
Do you really think you’ll get any answers at all?
Are you okay? Your answer is tricky, indefinite. You feel a sweet sticky hang in your gut, a sense of impending doom.
What happened? There is Kakashi, bluntly tactless and thoughtless with his words as always. Thinking that you would open up to someone who betrayed you, worked with Sasuke and threw you down and down and down and down, again and again and again and again…
Betrayal. You answer. Treason. Everything you expected. Nothing you wanted. What are you going to do now? Your face is calm and sometimes you wonder if you’ve been sleeping all this time and when Sasuke rammed that fucking chidori through you, you woke up.
Maybe you’ve been dreaming all this time. Maybe it’s all a nightmare.
Bring him back, of course. Kakashi answers in all seriousness. You shrug your shoulders casually and wince. A scar reopens, crimson blood staining the gauze around it. Your hospital gown is no longer white. You’re surprised they even gave you a hospital gown this time.
Kyuubi simmers beneath the surface of the painted seals on your stomach, floating between mid conscious and nothing. Blood pours out of your wound. He does nothing. You chuckle under your breath. Even demons sleep. Even demons die.
Even you can die.
Will you help? Kakashi is vaguely annoyed, but worried. You think he has misinterpreted your laughter. Maybe it goes both ways.
Why should I help a village who hates me? Maybe being a shinobi does something to the brain. Maybe Kakashi should retire before he does more damage than good.
Kakashi’s eyes soften uncharacteristically, and he pats the crinkled sheets covering your form. They don’t hate you Naruto. They just don’t understand.
You shrug. Maybe if you ignore the fact that this is the smallest room in the hospital, with no IV hooked up to keep you alive, no monitor to watch your heart beat out patterns of life, then maybe they don’t hate you as much as you were led on to thinking, what, with the cruel words and the looks that hurt so much more than the bruises. This room is meant for traitors, traitors like Sasuke. Not you.
Kakashi’s pointed look at the splash of red on your canvas of gauze and skin is dark, almost hooded. The pain is not there, you are cold and numb and empty. You feel like the air on winter nights, bitter wind numb on bone and frozen to the naked skin.
Do you feel like a failure?
No, not really. In some ways. Am I supposed to feel like a failure? Do you want me to feel like a failure?
No, just wondering.
Do you feel like a failure? You feel a sort of expectancy which tires you quickly. It’s the most you’ve felt all day. You shrug your shoulders around. The scar won’t stop bleeding.
It depends. You almost feel like laughing. It depends? It always depends.
On what?
The person, the objective.
Then, what about Sasuke?
There is a sort of pause, an uneasy shift. Kakashi struggles for words. You wait patiently. After all, you have nothing but time on your hands.
Sometimes, yes. This is his answer, two words about his prodigy, the one which fucking ran away to an enemy for power and slammed a chidori into his best friend’s chest. The same chidori which he had taught the Uchiha.
Are you angry at this? You don’t know. There comes a sort of fire, a madness which overcomes you like a wave, and washes out your emptiness, the hole left in your chest by Sasuke. You are drowning in that hole.
I’m angry. You speak in monotones, curt and precise.
I’m not surprised. Why? Kakashi straightens from his mundane position slouching against the blank wall and undresses the bloodstained bandages on your shoulder, first pulling the upper half of the standard hospital wear down. You shy from his touch instinctively. He undoes the circulation-cutting bonds in practiced motions.
I don’t know. You think of Sakura, all pink-haired and pink-faced at the prospect of the loved Uchiha. You think of the promise you made to her when you were naïve and stubborn and clung to hope like the life raft it is.
By the way, where is Sakura? Your question is simple and straightforward. Kakashi sighs and turns his gaze to the ceiling. One two three four five cracks.
She killed herself last night. Six seven eight nine ten cracks. Six for Sakura, seven for Kakashi, eight for trying, nine for naivety, ten for whatever is left of your sanity.
The water goes higher and higher around you and you wave your hands in the water, desperately. You think that once, you knew how to swim. Where did that knowledge go?
I’m not angry anymore. You are completely submerged in water, numb as usual and breathing salty air. You choke on the water. Your scars sting.
Kakashi dresses your re-opened scar with bandages from his jounin vest pocket, actions meticulous and quick. Sliding the bubblegum pink top of your roughly woven clothing back onto your shoulders, he pats your head with a smile.
Be a good boy, okay? Swooping down, Kakashi tilts his now unclothed lips onto your cheek. His lips are an unchapped smooth, warm against your dead-cold skin.
Okay. Someone lifts you from the water, hands securely under your armpits and onto land. Collapsing onto the firm ground, you sputter out a thank you, but no one is there.
Before you can catch a glimpse of his unmasked face, there is dark, and then light.
“Thank God, Naruto! You’re back with us again!” You see hazy pink hair and now, accusing spring green eyes, “Stop making me worry so much, baka!”
You blink into the light with eyes that are swollen with sleep. In the corner of the hut you lay in, you see a tall, silver-haired jounin and a pale, but smirking figure.
“Stop making fun of me, teme!”
“I haven’t even said anything, dobe!”
You grin even in the midst of the fight. It has been five years since Sasuke came back. Orochimaru is dead, Itachi is in a five mile radius of the point in the tea country you lay at and Sakura isn’t dead or infatuated with the retrieved Uchiha (anymore, at least).
And Kakashi has never kissed you. You aren’t sure if that’s good or bad.
“Come on Naruto,” Kakashi leans over you and lifts you up, hands under both armpits. You smile under the glare and pout you wear.
“I’m not a baby!”
“You sure act like one.”
“Yea! Don’t be a baby, Naruto!”
And life goes on.