Tomorrow and After
Alright, so I'm finally posting the fic I wrote for sn_exchange, which was for the awesome and amazingly talented centimetre!
For: centimetre
Title: Tomorrow and After
Rating: M
Summary: It begins where it ended, and ends where it began. NaruSasuNaru.
Warnings: MANGA SPOILERS. Written in January 2010, so deviates from canon around chapter 478. swearing, some blood, boyxboy. Also, the title is taken from the lyrics (translated to English) of “Tomato” by NICO Touches the Walls.
Tomorrow and After
“I will kill you.”
“I know,” Naruto responds, unnaturally solemn, not even flinching at Sasuke’s toneless statement. He’s never been all that good at being bitter, but standing there, mere feet from Sasuke and mere miles from Konoha, Naruto has to admit he’s staring down a stranger. He thinks of the destruction Konoha has already endured, of the exhaustion devastating his friends, of Sakura’s hair fanned out over the pillow of her hospital bed.
Of why every time he thinks about or looks at Sasuke, he feels like he’s being gutted.
I will kill you. If I have to.
He has to shake his head to clear away the deadening feelings, the invasive numbness. It makes him ask, “This is how you’ve been feeling for years?” But it’s a question he already knows the answer to.
Sasuke doesn’t waste his time bothering to wonder what the hell the idiot is talking about. “You have no idea how I feel,” he hisses lowly, and the pure cold hatred packed behind those words makes the hair on the back of Naruto’s neck stand up. Strangely enough, though, he also finds it the slightest bit encouraging.
“But at least you admit that you feel something,” Naruto presses, brow quirking deviously. “Because up until now you’ve been trying to convince everyone, and yourself, that you don’t.”
He enjoys cracking Sasuke’s cold expression ever-so-slightly open, takes pride in the hairline crack in that mask of practiced indifference. He’s always found indifference more alarming than rage.
…Though rage is pretty damn alarming when it’s hurtling at you with a very sharp sword drawn.
Sasuke is determined to finish this nonsense quickly, and without wasting too much time. He doesn’t even bother to awaken the Mangekyo, as it would drain at the energy he will need shortly when he obliterates Konoha. But because this is Naruto, the plan to keep this brief is quickly discarded.
Naruto loses all sense of time when fighting Sasuke. It makes everything around him fade and dissipate into a dull blur. They trade attack after attack, parrying and dodging in an unrelenting flow of movement. The Kyuubi roars its bloodlust within him, but he pours all his willpower into suppressing it, wary of the toll it would take on him and Sasuke’s ability to negate its powers.
(And besides. This is his fight, goddammit.)
Naruto’s divided attention supplies Sasuke with the chance to strike; his chokuto rips a gash through Naruto’s side that nearly makes him double over. Naruto breathes an internal sigh of relief that he had been moving fast enough that the blade had only been able to graze the skin. It’s been awhile since Sasuke actually bothered to fight him like this.
Sasuke lands neatly a short distance away and slides his blade back into its holster with a graceful flick of his wrist. They both watch the rivulets of blood trickle from the wound and the torn cloth and drip onto the ground below.
“See where all your asinine promises have gotten you, Naruto?” is Sasuke’s cruel, mocking query.
The wound throbs enough that Naruto lets out a painful breath when he straightens again. He has to grit his teeth to keep from screaming-not so much in pain as in pure, unadulterated anger. Sakura fills his mind’s eye; Sakura, limp in Kakashi’s arms, alive and mostly unhurt but unconscious from her attempted attack against Sasuke. (Is this the wakeup call you needed, Naruto? Someone had said to him, but he does not remember whom. He does not remember much between then and now, just days later-only running, searching.)
“Shut up. Don’t you dare mention her, asshole,” Naruto bares his teeth, flecks of red emerging in his pupils. When he feels his own canine scrape against his lip, he realizes what’s happening and draws in a deep breath to reel himself in.
For once, he recognizes when Sasuke’s baiting him. And decides it’s time to bait right fucking back. “Besides, it stopped being just about the promise to her a long time ago. I made a promise to myself that I’d knock some sense into your thick skull and drag your sorry ass back to Konoha.” Naruto smirks, and it’s positively feral. “Heh, it was just a surprise to have Itachi support me on that one.”
The expression on Sasuke’s face would be almost comical if they weren’t kinda currently in the middle of a battle to the death.
In seconds his features are steel again. “You spoke with Itachi.” It’s only the sub-zero chill of his voice that keeps it from being a question. “When?”
“I don’t know. I imagine not long before you battled it out with your brother, got brainwashed by some old psychopath, played house with the Akatsuki, and decided to go batshit crazy and kill everybody.” Naruto starts to sneer, but it soon tapers off into a frown.
He looks down at the blood staining his hands, trying to determine how much of it is his own. “I didn’t know about the secret behind the massacre then,” Naruto murmurs thoughtfully, as if to himself. “I didn’t know that he killed his clan for the sake of his village. Our village. Before now, I’m pretty sure I never thought something could be wrong and right at the same time, or neither. I keep turning it over in my mind, and the only thing I can make sense of in any of this is that he loved you. And maybe he had a really fucked-up way of showing that, but…” he pauses, searching for the right words. “How do you honor someone-“
“And what would you know about honor, Naruto? About justice?” is Sasuke’s vicious retort.
“I know enough,” Naruto answers grimly, blinking away the smiling faces of his father and Jiraiya. He wipes the blood off on his pants and looks back at Sasuke.
“How do you honor someone that made such a sacrifice?” he continues, imploring. “By living and letting live, Sasuke. By making things better.”
“The decimation of Konoha will make things better.”
“How? Can you see it, Sasuke? See the broken bodies, hear the screams of pain? See children and parents clinging together in their final moments-two brothers, buried under the rubble?” Naruto feels his throat tighten. “How does that make you any different from Danzo and the elders? Where does it stop?”
“It stops with them dead,” Sasuke says; too calmly, too quietly.
“I promised your brother that I would stop you without killing you.” Naruto stands up a little straighter, stubbornly resolute as always. “But I will protect this village, like he did. Even if it’s from you.”
I’ll protect you, Sasuke. Even if it’s from yourself.
“How dare you compare yourself with him?!” Sasuke screams, actually shaking in his fury, control finally shattered. He’s never hated Naruto more, never wanted so badly to break that stupid mouth and watch it bleed moralistic bullshit all over the ground, never wanted so badly to claw out those eyes and extinguish their ever-faithful light. He can’t afford to think, to regret, to feel. And those are things that happen too much when he is around Naruto.
He barely registers the blood oozing from his eye socket and trailing down his cheek (dripping like so many tears he’s never allowed himself to shed). The deadly whisper seems suspended in the air: “Amaterasu.”
The dark flames rear up, consuming everything in their wake; burning, burning, licking at the sky.
As he watches the fire race toward him, Naruto knows he can’t escape it. He isn’t afraid of dying so much as losing (so much as losing Sasuke), but somehow he never actually thought that things would end like this-that they could end like this.
All at once, the clamoring thoughts inside his head fall still. From the silence, one voice emerges, clear but unfamiliar. He can’t discern what it is saying, can’t pick apart the stream of syllables that is overflowing from the depths of his mind and cascading down to his tongue; all he knows is that his lips are moving of their own accord, his hands of their own volition.
Sasuke watches detachedly as Naruto forms hand signs and mutters some jutsu in a last-ditch effort to save himself. He’s surprised at the urge to close his eyes and turn away, at the way his stomach turns violently at the thought of watching Naruto be swallowed up by the flames-
He knows something is amiss when the blaze changes direction without his influence. His eye stings as the Mangekyo strains, but it’s as if some circuit has been disconnected and everything has been thrown in reverse: he now cannot control the path of Amaterasu, nor can he extinguish it. The jet-black conflagration zooms toward him, poised to devour him.
If Sasuke were the sort to appreciate irony, he’d have to admit the humor in the infamous Uchiha Sasuke being destroyed by his own jutsu. Did you know this is how it would all turn out, Itachi? He almost wants to laugh. Is this how my miserable life finally comes to an end-with yet another failure?
The next thing he registers is an orange blur tackling him solidly to the ground. He blinks the stars away from his eyes to see Naruto hunched over him, cloaked in the Kyuubi’s sizzling chakra-shielding him. It clashes with the flames, forcing them back, fighting fire with fire. Naruto’s face is screwed up in pain, as well as in concentration to keep himself at one tail only.
“Why?” is all Sasuke can manage to choke out, watching a patch of skin peel off Naruto’s cheek. The Kyuubi’s chakra bites at his skin from their close proximity, but he does not notice.
“I don’t know.” Naruto grins shakily. “Would you believe my body moved on its own?”
In that brief moment, with Sasuke staring up at him with such wide eyes, Naruto catches the first faint glimpse of Sasuke he’s seen in years.
“Now now, boys,” a voice interrupts. “You’re no good to me dead.”
Then everything goes black.
~*~*~*~
When they become aware of their surroundings, they realize that they are in some sort of cave. Naruto is bound by chakra restraints against a wall. Sasuke once again assumes an expression of utter impassivity.
Madara is sitting a short distance away on an outcrop of rock, all too casual for an immortal megalomaniac.
“And here I thought I was going to have to go to the trouble to find the Kyuubi jinchuriki,” Madara says, sounding downright merry. “Thank you, Sasuke.”
Still cloaked by the Kyuubi’s chakra, Naruto bares his teeth. He struggles to free himself from the restraints, but to no avail.
Sasuke’s eyes merely narrow. “You’ve captured the eight-tails?”
“Yes. I had time for a quick errand after you killed Danzo and were making your way to Konoha,” Madara chuckles. “And now here we are, on the eve of a new world.”
Naruto snarls.
“It’s time for you to help create that world, Sasuke,” Madara continues. “A world in which there is no more crime, no more war. A world in which the atrocities that happened to the Uchiha clan, to Itachi, would never again occur.”
“And Konoha?”
“I assure you, you will make Konoha meet it’s wretched fate soon enough.”
“So how do I go about ‘helping’?”
Naruto’s eyes dart to him, mouth agape. “Sasuke!”
“All you must do,” Madara replies, ignoring Naruto, “is learn to summon the Demonic Statue
of the Outer Path.”
Naruto’s vision floods with the silhouette of Sasuke, an emaciated shell of life in Pain’s place-and snaps.
Everything seems to break all at once: the restraints, the walls, and Naruto’s fragile fragment of control. The Kyuubi’s chakra boils, sprouting new tail after new tail. Naruto can’t count them through the red haze eating away at his humanity.
The last thing he’s cognizant of is Sasuke’s red eyes lifting to his.
He blinks, and finds himself literally in the dark recesses of his mind.
Sasuke stands in the middle of it all, staring down the Kyuubi for the second time. Only this time, he’s not the only one.
“Uchiha Madara,” comes the Kyuubi’s booming rumble.
Sasuke turns slightly to regard Madara while raising a hand toward the Kyuubi’s seal. “I have no interest in taking over the world,” he sneers, before swiftly pushing the Kyuubi’s
influence back, reinforcing the seal.
In an instant, Sasuke feels his own blade press against his jugular. “I’ve been waiting to see when you would betray me,” Madara muses. “It’s a shame you won’t get to annihilate Konoha before you die. But I’ll be more than willing to pick up the slack.”
He tilts his mask enough to expose his Sharingan eye to the Kyuubi.
Then the world erupts in crows.
They dart in every direction, their cawing and the frantic beating of their wings echoing cacophonously in the chamber. In the chaos, the blade falls to the wet floor with a clang, and Sasuke twists away from Madara.
Naruto and Sasuke look upon it all with disoriented bewilderment; only Madara is unfazed.
“You would do something like this, Itachi.”
At Madara’s words, an effigy of Itachi emerges from the curtain of feathers and movement. “I felt it necessary to take precaution,” it says.
Sasuke freezes as if paralyzed.
“Okay, what the fuck is up with everyone showing up in my head?” Naruto gripes, rolling his eyes despite the gravity of the situation. (It was pretty cool when the Yondaime showed up, but this was getting to be ridiculous.)
The image of Itachi shifts its attention over to him. “I’m glad I could put my trust in you, Uzumaki Naruto. You used the power I gave you just as I imagined you would.”
“Huh?” Naruto is sure he must be referring to the strange power that seized control of him and commanded the Amaterasu to backfire against Sasuke, but… Wait, he knew I would move to save Sasuke? That tricky bast-
The illusion looks to Sasuke next. “Little brother,” is all it says, and Naruto isn’t fluent in Uchiha, but he can plainly hear the sorrow in those words, the regret.
Before Sasuke can say or do anything, Itachi transforms into another group of crows. They join the others in a convulsing whirl again. Then, all at once, they swoop down upon Madara.
He doesn’t make a sound. They cover him until he is no longer visible under the writing mass of birds.
“He is weak, and they are scavengers,” the Kyuubi growls, grinning bloodthirstily. “I just wish they would leave leftovers.”
When they return to reality, Madara’s laugh fills what’s left of the cave. “Itachi’s more of a fool than I thought if he thinks a little genjustu will stop me.” His manic exclamation falters, though, when he starts coughing up blood.
Sasuke has skewered him with his chokuto, pinning him in place. Madara’s voice loses any trace of joviality; in an instant, his true, malevolent demeanor surfaces. “So Itachi managed to find a way to stop me from teleporting by trapping a part of me in another dimension… Goddamn him! Goddamn him and the cursed Uchiha clan! Goddamn Konoha and its idiotic ‘Will of Fire’! Power is wasted on the young!”
Sasuke rips his mask off and looks upon the gnarled face of his ancestor, his Amaterasu triggered automatically. “You remind me so much of myself at your age,” is all Madara has time to hiss, before he is finally lost to the flames.
Sasuke falls to his knees, weak with the strain of performing Amaterasu twice in such a short increment of time. His eyes are searing, his face streaked with blood. He looks up to where the ceiling had been blasted away during Naruto’s transformation. In the distance, he thinks he hears a cawing bird.
Naruto is himself again, though hunched over and soaked with blood. He studies Sasuke for a long, long time. “Aren’t you going to take off?” he questions, when Sasuke makes no move to stand.
“It almost sounds like you’re encouraging me to.” Sasuke’s eyes are dull, lackluster, two flat black stones.
“Look, I… as much as I want you to come back, I’m beginning to realize that I can’t force you. And maybe you don’t want to go back because you feel there’s nothing there for you… And there is,” Naruto insists, “but if going away is what is going to make things alright, then…” the words he’s trying to say taper off and he sighs. “I just want you to be happy, Sasuke. I want you to find a way to be at peace, or as close to it as you possibly can. And if that’s not in Konoha, then… then I’m not going to force you back.
“But I’ll always keep chasing you, one way or another,” Naruto grins-despite all that’s happened, he grins so brightly in the dim light-and it’s a promise.
Sasuke stares at him.
He’s still staring when Naruto’s team shows up several minutes later.
~*~*~*~
After they are dismissed from the hospital, Sasuke is promptly imprisoned for treason.
He is taken into custody without a fight. As poised and stoic as ever, he walks with his head held high and his back board-straight, the very picture of an honored warrior heading calmly into battle instead of a talented young shinobi fallen from grace at the age of
seventeen.
As much as a part of him wants to kick and scream and demand that they release Sasuke,
Naruto knows the imprisonment is necessary. He watches the guards lead Sasuke away in silence, steels his face into a mask of resolution that makes Sakura watch him with worried eyes.
She lifts a hand to press a light touch to his arm, but he does not feel it.
~*~*~*~
With Konoha’s concentration focused on reconstruction and healing the wounds inflicted by the Fourth Great Shinobi War-a war brief in duration yet no less haunting for those involved-the trial of Uchiha Sasuke is delayed for many months.
The first time he was permitted to visit Sasuke, Naruto is surprised to find that the cell he is detained is not the dank, dungeon-like room his imagination supplies. Instead, it is almost blindingly sterile, consisting of nothing more than a bed on one side of the white-walled room and a toilet on the other.
(He can’t help but notice that Sasuke is the darkest thing in the room.)
He’s told that this enclosure, innocuous as it may appear, is actually reserved for the highest-level criminals. Sasuke’s chakra had already been temporarily sealed upon his return to Konoha, but the walls practically buzz with chakra-suppressant energy. Should there be any kind of struggle within, the inmate would be killed instantly-Konoha treats its captives humanely, but spares no necessary precaution.
Subsequently, Naruto finds himself placing a fair amount of distance between himself and the bars of the cell.
(Visitors are typically not permitted here, but Naruto is, well, Naruto.)
Naruto visits Sasuke whenever he can, bringing with him stories of the mundane daily occurrences of Konoha, as well as tales of what happened while Sasuke was “away”. For the longest time, Sasuke ignores every word of Naruto’s inane prattle. Naruto is perfectly aware of this, but continues because he cannot bear the aching silence.
As the days bleed together, however, Sasuke cannot help but listen. Naruto’s chatter does indeed interrupt the silence-the incessant, inescapable silence that keeps him up at night, consumed by thoughts and memories that haunt him in consciousness as much as in sleep. He responds only occasionally, mostly with merely a grunt or an insult, but it is enough to appease Naruto’s otherwise one-sided conversation.
Naruto takes on as many missions as he can shoulder, desperate to help out in any way possible. He is among the first to volunteer for the type of tasks he so often scorned when he was twelve; he rebuilds fences, cleans up debris, and even locates a lost pet or two, all with a smile. He’s just not used to the beaming smiles he now receives in return.
Gradually, life returns to normal in Konoha. Except that it doesn’t.
Sasuke loses track of the days. He notices that it is far easier to count the rare instances in which Naruto actually looks at him. He isn’t sure why he notices.
(He doesn’t know that Naruto is afraid he’ll stop seeing Sasuke and instead see only the criminal that everyone else does.)
Sometimes, Naruto stops by and finds that Sasuke has just returned from one of his numerous interrogation sessions with Ibiki. Naruto hates those days the most, because they make something in Sasuke close off even more-that last faint, precious flicker of light in his eyes, already all but extinguished a few months ago. He doesn’t know what they do or say to Sasuke during his interrogation sessions, and is fairly sure he never wants to. Those are the days he says anything to get Sasuke to call him an idiot, does anything to bring any hint of expression to that despairingly blank face.
The morning of Sasuke’s trial dawns nearly six months after his return. He is to appear alone before the elders and the Hokage, the trial kept quiet and closed to the public.
Predictably, Naruto shows up at his cell not long after sunrise. He finds Sasuke awake, sitting on the cold floor and staring at nothing, and a quick glance at the bed in the corner of the cell suggests that it had not been slept in the previous night. Naruto bites his lip to avoid asking Sasuke if he’s nervous, but can imagine the derisive snort that he would receive in response to such a ridiculous question.
Instead, he swallows down the nervous energy churning inside of him and grins. “Just think, by this time tomorrow you’ll be a free man!”
Naruto’s grin is stretched a little too tight to be as carefree as it is intended. The sight of it makes Sasuke’s eyes narrow unconsciously. He is suddenly deaf to whatever else Naruto is saying, too focused on that fake grin, on the eyes that seem to studiously avoid his own. Sasuke doesn’t take the time to think about the anger that suddenly burns swift and hot in his veins.
“Look at me,” he says quietly, almost a hiss. But Naruto either doesn’t hear him or keeps talking anyway; Sasuke suspects that it’s the latter. His hands clench into fists.
“Look at me!” he repeats harshly, the loudest his voice has rung out in months. It has the desired effect, however, when Naruto’s eyes snap to meet his.
The fire turns icy, however, at the exhaustion and grief Sasuke finds staring back at him.
Naruto’s mouth settles into a firm, thin line. Sasuke can’t stand it-can’t deal with seeing the sadness that should not be there, needs Naruto’s face to be split with a grin or twisted up in rage. Those expressions are safe.
“Why the hell have you been visiting me?” he sneers, inexplicably relieved as the pain in those eyes is quickly eclipsed by anger. “You’re the village’s golden boy now, just like you always wanted. There’s no need to play nice with the traitor.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Naruto grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes closed. “Dammit, you asshole, you’re my friend.”
Sasuke stands and stalks forward a few steps, closer to the bars. “I don’t know when it’s going to get through your thick skull that we haven’t been ‘friends’ for years,” he retorts lowly, deliberate and cruel.
“Fine,” Naruto bites out, throwing his hands up and almost choking around the sudden thickness of his throat. “Fine. We’re not friends. But what you don’t seem to get is that the connections you have with people don’t just end because you want them to, that you can’t stop people from caring about you. Not Itachi,” Naruto watches Sasuke’s eyes narrow until they are little more than slits, “and not me.”
“I don’t know, maybe the day I decided to chase after you was the worst decision I ever made,” Naruto lets out a laugh, a sharp and bitter sound, “At least, that’s what everyone’s been saying to me for years now,” the forced humor drains from his face and he raises his eyes to regard Sasuke again, his gaze steady. “But it’s a decision that I will never regret.”
“They’re going to sentence me to death today, you pathetic fool,” Sasuke spits out, steeling himself against the unexpected pain pulsing through his chest, suspiciously close to his heart.
Naruto has to resist the urge to clap his hands over his ears like a child. “No,” he growls. “No, they’re not! You deserve a second chance, a chance to finally live. They’ll see.”
When Sasuke responds with only a defiant silence, Naruto throws his sneer back at him. “I never knew the great Uchiha Sasuke was such a coward.”
“Excuse me?” Sasuke hisses, voice dripping with pure venom.
“I said that you’re a coward. You don’t know what the hell you’re gonna do if actually given the chance to live, do you?” Naruto accuses slowly, his comprehension deepening with the slight widening of Sasuke’s eyes. At that, Naruto’s anger fizzles out suddenly, until all that’s left is weary exasperation. “You may finally have the chance to live your life your way instead of being ruled by some fucked up sense of duty to your family-who, by the way, probably would have just wanted you to be happy rather than wasting time going on a murderous, whacked-out quest for ‘vengeance’, idiot-and you’re afraid. You’re so damn afraid that you don’t even want to try.”
Sasuke opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Naruto cuts him off anyway, his grin returning and spreading slowly across his face, not forced this time. It makes Sasuke close his mouth and swallow.
“Like I said, you deserve a second chance. They’ll see. And you’ll see too,” Naruto nods, conviction etched in every line of his face. “I mean, I would know about second chances, wouldn’t I? They’re pretty damn awesome.”
Naruto’s grin softens into a smile, but he turns to leave before Sasuke has a chance to watch it happen. “I know they’ll let you live,” he says softly, his words ringing with conviction.
“Why?” is the only thing Sasuke finds himself able to ask, but he isn’t sure exactly what he’s questioning.
Naruto stops walking but doesn’t turn back around. “I have faith,” in the future, in you. “Guess that’s why I’m such a fool, huh?” he tilts his head back toward the cell, just enough for Sasuke to catch a glimpse of his smile and the tinge of sadness within it, before he turns the corner and vanishes from sight.
~*~*~*~
After a lengthy trial, Sasuke is called back into the council room for his sentencing late in the afternoon.
When the Hokage reveals the verdict, Sasuke can only stare.
“Hmm. You have the expression of someone that never expected not to die,” Kakashi muses, eyes threatening to curve into amused slits despite the situation.
Sasuke says nothing.
“You’ve earned yourself a lifetime of probation and watchful eyes turned in your direction, but not a punishment so severe as death,” Kakashi continues, looking back down to the next page in his book. “Despite your years of status as a missing nin, reports from your interrogation support that you killed only when presented with a motive. You certainly had a rather…dramatic way of going about it, however,” Kakashi adds, pausing in his reading and raising his (visible) eyebrow, ignoring Sasuke’s glare.
“And though you alone are responsible for the execution of your actions, we both know very well that Konoha is far from blameless for much of what has happened to you,” Kakashi sets his book down entirely and focuses his even gaze on Sasuke, tapping a finger against the portion of hitai-ite covering his Sharingan. “We can’t erase the past, Sasuke. We can only go forward with what we’ve got, carrying our burdens and trying to find what precious peace we can, in the hope it will ease their weight.”
Sasuke takes that in with a slow nod.
“Besides, I’m kind of sick of death. There’s been far too much of it going on lately,” Kakashi carries on, waving a hand dismissively. Sasuke has to resist rolling his eyes. “I’m reinstating you as a shinobi of Konoha, genin rank. For now, I am permitting some of the seals suppressing your chakra to be removed, with the rest to be considered upon future evaluation. Until you prove yourself to be worthy of a promotion in rank, you will be allowed to complete C and D-rank missions only and are prohibited from leaving the village until further notice.”
“Will I be monitored?” Sasuke feels his lip curl at the thought of being followed wherever he goes.
“From a distance, certainly, but I’m not going to assign ANBU to shadow you. But I’m sure you realize that should you violate the restrictions of your probation, you’ll end up here before me again, but unfortunately with a far different sentence,” Kakashi says sternly.
Sasuke nods. “You’re going to have to earn the village’s trust back yourself. And, I suppose you’ll have to regain your trust in the village as well,” the Hokage shrugs. “It will be a difficult task. But I can think of someone that already has a great deal faith in you.”
At Kakashi’s faint smirk, Sasuke frowns suspiciously. “Did Naruto come and vouch for me?” He grits his teeth at the thought of being spared out of pity, all because that idiot now had Konoha wrapped around his finger.
“No. Naruto had no involvement in this trial, much as I’m sure he’d have liked to. And we all know that he has clearly shown his belief that you should be reinstated.”
Sasuke’s uncharacteristic confusion prompts Kakashi to close his eyes in mirth. “Mm. You won your freedom-your life-back all on your own, Sasuke. Now the question is, what are you going to do with it?”
~*~*~*~
“How can you live with yourself and all that you’ve done?” Homura and Koharu, the elders, squinted down at him contemptuously.
Sasuke returned their expression with vigor. “Ask me that question only if you can honestly answer it yourselves,” he replied darkly.
Ignoring their huffs and splutters of indignation, he continued, “And if you’re actually expecting me to answer that question, I can only say that… I don’t know.”
His brow furrowed, as if trying to recall something important. “I suppose I’ll just have to try.”
Behind his mask, Kakashi smiled.
~*~*~*~
On his way out of the council room of the Hokage tower, Sasuke feels the heated glares that hit his back but pays them no mind. Frankly, he’s surprised to find Naruto nowhere in sight, certain he’d be waiting with an ear pressed to the door or something else idiotic.
He does, however, encounter Sakura, who looks torn between admitting that she had been waiting to hear the verdict and pretending as if she hadn’t tried to press her ear against the door.
She offers him a slight smile, but Sasuke notices the wariness in her eyes. He knows it’s probably the least he deserves. He did knock her unconscious (again) and leave her lying in a field, after all. “Naruto knew you would live,” is what she finally says, her smile growing a touch warmer. He was the only one that never gave up on you.
Sasuke notes that she doesn’t say “we”.
“Where is the idiot, anyway?” Sasuke asks in a way that clearly suggests how little he actually cares.
Sakura tilts her head slightly. “He didn’t tell you? He left for a mission this morning. He’s supposed to be gone for at least a month or two... apparently he requested it.”
“Oh,” Sasuke says. He finds it’s all he can say.
~*~*~*~
The days creep by slowly. The bustle of reconstruction fades into a tranquil murmur, the inhabitants of Konoha knowing far too well that times of peace must be cherished in their rarity and ultimate transience.
In what is left of the Uchiha district, however, there is only ceaseless, aching silence.
As much as Sasuke had not wanted to return to the compound, there had been nowhere else to go. (Many properties had been damaged during Pain’s attack, and landlords tend to be unwilling to rent you an apartment when you’ve recently been imprisoned for treason after spending years as an S-class missing nin.) Yet he does not return to his home-or what used to be his home-and instead settles into a smaller property on the outer fringes of the district, one not damaged in the attack and one of the few that had not been inhabited in the time of the massacre.
It spares him from having to scrub away bloodstains along with the years of dust.
The dust chokes him as he wipes it away, a veneer of filth obscuring everything beneath it-like the veil of lies draped across his entire life, ripped down only now.
Later, when he steps back and watches the old wooden floors gleam dully in the low light stealing through the dirty windows, Sasuke wishes that curses could be lifted as easily as dust.
~*~*~*~
The day Sasuke finally summons the resolve to venture into his family’s home, he treads softly through it, his presence confirmed only by the dusty footprints he leaves behind.
(a living ghost among the dead)
He visits Itachi’s room last, and blames the dust for the stinging of his eyes.
~*~*~*~
Between sips of tea, Sakura regards Sasuke with contemplative look. He notices but ignores it, wanting to evade another bout of her meddling.
She’d taken to dropping by every so often to check up on him; that is, on the rare occasions she could find the time. Though Tsunade had woken up from her coma, her strength had been greatly reduced, causing her to step down from her position as Hokage and spend less time working in the hospital. As a result, Sakura had inherited her dropped shifts and patients.
Though a part of her can’t help but be resentful, Sakura still worries about Sasuke. She knows that, aside from the odd mission thrown his way, he barely leaves the Uchiha district. He’d even admitted to her once that he hadn’t been sleeping much. Watching him drink his tea methodically, his face more blank and closed off than ever, she thinks that he seems… completely at a loss. Almost depressed.
She sets her cup down on the table gently, wiping a stray drop spilling over the side with her thumb. “I heard that a messenger hawk came today with Naruto’s mission report,” she reveals almost absentmindedly, while watching from the corner of her eye as Sasuke unconsciously tenses and sits up a little straighter.
“Apparently he managed to finish his mission pretty quickly, but has requested a little time off, which was granted to him.” She sees Sasuke’s brow crinkle almost imperceptibly. Naruto had already been gone for just over two months.
When he offers no response, she has to suppress the urge to smack him. Instead, she balls up her fist and rests her chin against it, propped up on her elbow. Finally managing to catch his eye, she asks, “Time moves slowly when you’re waiting for something, doesn’t it?”
Sasuke looks impassively at the wall behind her. “I wouldn’t know. I have nothing left to wait for.”
The fist slams down against the tabletop, making tea slosh out of her cup and Sasuke’s topple over.
“Shit,” Sasuke hisses, jumping up before the hot tea spills into his lap. (He’s lucky Sakura didn’t put any force behind it, or it would have been the table that shattered. And the floor as well.) He stares at her, more surprised than agitated.
Sakura looks about ready to start pulling her hair out. “Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?!” she growls.
When he just keeps staring at her, with a look that suggests that he thinks she’s been sniffing formaldehyde in the hospital morgue, she stands, throwing up her arms with an exasperated huff.
“You miss him, you idiot!”
With that, she storms off, slamming the door behind her so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t swing off of its hinges.
Sasuke stands alone in his living room for what feels like hours, peering down at the tea leaves drifting across the table.
~*~*~*~
Two weeks later, Sasuke finds himself about to sneak out of Konoha for the second time in his life.
For the first time in his life, however, Sasuke doesn’t think too much about what he’s doing. (Or, perhaps more pivotally, why he’s doing…whatever it is he’s doing.)
“I would laugh at how familiar this is, if only it were the least bit funny.”
Truth be told, he isn’t the least bit surprised she’s here. The seconds tick by with Sakura’s eyes baring holes into his back, her words hanging between them like so many fragments of shattered hope.
“I’m not running away,” he says, and receives a snort in response.
“Oh? That’s sure what it looks like. And it is what you do best, after all.”
Her words, though not sharp enough to crack his stone defenses, carve into them nonetheless. He’s still not used to her this fierce, this irascible; a vision passes before his eyes of the weak young girl that stood here on that dark night, tearfully declaring her schoolgirl love and pleading that he stay. He pictures the absurdly strong young woman standing behind him, the love and innocence long extinguished from her eyes, and can only think of all the things he’s damaged beyond repair.
It’s the foreign taste of guilt that makes him turn around and meet her gaze head on. “I’m not running away this time.”
“Oh?” she murmurs, one brow quirked, and there’s a light of comprehension in her eyes that suggests she understands a lot more than he’s ever given her credit for.
“I’m not here to stop you, you know. Nor am I naïve enough to be surprised to find you here, or to really believe you’re telling me the truth right now. I haven’t been that naïve since I foolishly thought I could stop you that night. Since I watched my best friend waste years slowly destroying himself over you while letting myself stupidly believe that it was all still because of some inane promise to me.
“So go. That might be the stupidest thing I could say after all that’s happened, but go. If you don’t come back, they’re sure as hell not going to send a search party to chase after you this time.” She places her hands on her hips in a defiant stance, as if daring him to argue.
You’re not worth it anymore is what she doesn’t say, but he hears it clearly.
When he does nothing but look back at her stoically, her frown gradually softens at the edges until it threatens to twist into a smirk. “…And if you do come back, it’d better be by this time next week, with that damn idiot in tow.”
As if I’ll need a full week, he almost replies. But the words don’t come out; he knows he owes her more than some dismissive, haughty remark.
She cuts him off just as his lips start to form two words he rarely utters. “Don’t tell me ‘thank you’ or I’ll knock you unconscious this time.” There’s a layer of resentment behind her faint smile, but he can’t help but notice that, more than anything, she looks so very tired.
“Go. I’m still waiting for you to deserve that ‘you’re welcome’ I never got to say.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Maybe when you come back, you finally will.”
He nods, slowly, deliberately. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, he’s gone. She sinks down and seats herself on the bench this time, runs her palms over the night-chilled stone.
“Looks like you haven’t given up on him either,” she muses quietly to the empty air where Sasuke just stood, and fights to suppress the sudden mirth that bubbles up inside of her. When she finds that she cannot, she puts her head in her hands and laughs until tears are streaming down her face.
~*~*~*~
It’s after three solid days of running without any real sense of destination that Sasuke begins to realize the futility of what he’s doing. He hadn’t expected Naruto to be so difficult to track down.
Yet with a significant portion of his chakra still sealed away, including the use of his Sharingan, finding Naruto is like locating a particularly stupid needle in a very large haystack.
He senses Naruto nowhere and everywhere all at once. It makes him skulk through towns, dart through forests, and venture wherever his feet take him. Yet on the fourth day, the impossibility of his task begins to settle in, and his footfalls slow against the forest floor he’s zipping through.
He hears the rush of water in the distance, and the urge to potentially drink some and clean up a bit compels him to follow the sound. His exact location swiftly becomes apparent to him, however. The looming figures of Madara and Hashirama cause a momentary chill to skitter down his spine, stopping him in his tracks.
There’s a twisted kind of beauty even in this place of ugly memories. The roar of the waterfall echoes hauntingly throughout the Valley, the curtain of water glinting with tremulous light against the dark rocks. On a day like this, one could almost be fooled into believing that the water washes away all traces of what has transpired here.
But Sasuke knows that sins aren’t cleansed so easily.
As he steps out from the underbrush and draws closer, he notices that one thing is decidedly different. Peering up into the stone face of his most malevolent (and freshly deceased) ancestor, it appears that much of the statue’s face has been blasted away. He nearly smirks, thinking it looks like something the idiot would do with his Rasengan.
And then he sees Naruto.
At first he thinks it’s an illusion, a shadow supplied by his mind, a ghost from his past lingering in this desecrated land. Then the ghost lifts its head, and Naruto stares back at him.
He’s sitting on an outcrop of rock, skipping stones across the pool of water, breaking the surface into countless ripples. He lets the stone in his hand fly out, but the force with which he throws it sends it cutting through the water like a kunai.
They stare at each other for what seems like hours. Naruto’s eyes drift over Sasuke, who is strung out and dirty. Then Naruto throws back his head and laughs.
“Took you long enough,” he snickers.
And Sharingan or no, Sasuke sees red. He launches himself at Naruto, and they go rolling across the rocks, years of training and finesse dissolved in the face of single-minded fury. Naruto catches Sasuke’s fist before it can dislocate his face and glares up at him.
“What the fuck, bastard?!”
“You left,” Sasuke snarls, and the glimpse he gets of the one-man tent set up on the edge of the clearing only fuels his inexplicable anger.
“Aww, did you miss me, Sasuke?” Naruto smirks, and takes advantage of the split second in which Sasuke stiffens to flip them over and pin him to the ground. The stone grates harshly against Sasuke’s spine, causing a hiss of breath to escape from between his teeth.
“You give me shit for years about deserting Konoha, and then you leave. Skip town
on some imbecilic vacation, no less. After all your fucking talk, you didn’t even stick around to see what my sentence was,” Sasuke hisses, and aims a kick at Naruto’s stomach that sends him flying backwards.
Naruto manages to land on his feet in a crouch. He lets out a wheezing breath and coughs, spattering specks of blood against the stone below. Sasuke pushes himself to his feet, feeling blood beading at the fresh contusions and scrapes on his back, air stinging the skin in a few patches where his shirt had been ripped because of their tumble.
When Naruto rises a moment later, all traces of joviality are drained from his face. “And after all your fucking talk, it almost sounds like you cared whether I was there or not,” he sneers, spitting out his words harshly, as if their unexpected bitterness is too foul to let linger on his tongue. “But that’s impossible, since you refuse to care about anything.”
Sasuke charges at him again but Naruto is just as quick, if not quicker. They fall into circling each other in a vicious dance, moving so rapidly that all Sasuke sees is disorienting blurs where the Sharingan would have captured every detail in hyper-definition.
“How’d it feel to be chasing after me?” Naruto yells from somewhere behind him, before they meet with a clang of kunai and spring apart again. “How’d it feel to be left behind?!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Sasuke rages, and Naruto is able to sneak in a punch that makes Sasuke’s field of vision cloud momentarily. Through the ringing in his head drowning out the sound of the waterfall, Sasuke has the detached thought that nothing feels shattered or dislocated; Naruto had hit him hard enough to leave a vicious bruise, but not to break anything. Somehow, that only makes him angrier.
His leg snaps out and manages to upset Naruto’s footing enough for Sasuke to grab him and slam him against the wall of stone behind them. At their feet, he spits out the blood welling up from the gash his teeth had cut into the inside of his cheek when Naruto punched him. His blood is boiling so molten hot in his veins he’s halfway convinced he’ll start bleeding steam. Sasuke hasn’t felt this livid in months, hasn’t felt this anything in months.
He searches almost hungrily for the telltale tint of incendiary crimson in Naruto’s eyes, but finds only icy blue slits glaring back at him. He’s fighting Naruto and not the Kyuubi-and somehow, that’s more… unnerving? Intimidating? (…Invigorating?)
“What, come to finish the job this time?” Naruto rasps darkly, and only then does Sasuke realize that his hands have crept up tightly around Naruto’s neck.
Sasuke wrenches his hands away as if burned, and fights down the bile threatening to creep up his throat-an unexpectedly automatic reaction. But he doesn’t have time to think about it as Naruto grabs his wrists tightly, fingers clenching hard enough to bruise.
Sasuke could easily jerk out of his grasp, but something in Naruto’s expression freezes him in place. “The day of your trial, I was more afraid than I think I’ve ever been in my life,” Naruto avows fervently, eyes narrowing further and his grip tightening even more. They’re almost nose-to-nose now, and puffs of Naruto’s breath wash hotly over Sasuke’s face as he speaks. “But with that fear was also more hope. I didn’t spend years chasing you just to give up in the final stretch, bastard.”
“I never asked you to chase after me!” Sasuke all but shouts, cursing Naruto and all his goddammed righteousness.
“And I never asked you to chase after me. But you did.”
Sasuke’s mouth falls open in a mix of indignation and shock-because as much as he wants to deny it, it is undeniably true.
Then Naruto leans in just a fraction closer, and the ground under Sasuke’s feet suddenly doesn’t feel so solid anymore. Everything else shifts out of focus with Naruto’s blue, blue eyes so startlingly close.
“Took you long enough too, but you’ve always been slow where it really matters, huh bastard?” Naruto whispers, and Sasuke feels every expelled word fan against his lips.
The next sensation he’s aware of is his back colliding painfully with the wall, knocking the air out of his lungs with a whoosh. Before he can gasp in a necessary breath-when his world stops spinning and the blackness recedes from the corners of his vision-he becomes acutely aware that doing so is impossible, because Naruto’s kissing him like he’s content to let him asphyxiate.
Then the world tilts sharply on its axis and Sasuke’s sure he’s dying, sure he’s dying because Naruto’s stealing all his air and the lack of oxygen to his brain has him pressing back just as hard.
Naruto only becomes conscious of what he’s doing about the minute he feels Sasuke’s unresponsive lips under his. Sasuke is frozen under his touch, shocked into stillness. Already planning his escape route and hoping Sasuke will at least be decent enough to take him to a hospital after he maims him, Naruto starts to lean back.
He never expects Sasuke to surge forward and kiss him back fiercely.
God, what is it with Uchihas shoving things down my throat? is his last dazed thought, before turning his full attention to more pressing matters. Like Sasuke’s tongue.
The kiss is brutal, bruising; as entrenched in fury and desperation as any one of their fights. They execute kisses like they would attacks-Naruto, at turns imprecise and achingly accurate, unfailingly impassioned; Sasuke, swift and ruthless, yet no less fervid. The blood in their mouths taints the kiss with the taste of copper, but it doesn’t stop them.
Like two objects caught in a powerful orbit around each other finally, finally converging, there’s an energy that’s been pulling them together for years, perhaps all their lives.
When Naruto breaks the kiss for air, Sasuke draws in a shuddering breath before Naruto dives back to slant his mouth back over his. Realizing he still has his hands around Sasuke’s wrists, Naruto lets go and runs his hands over Sasuke’s sides. Sasuke is all bone and corded muscle under his hands and the thin fabric of his shirt. He runs his hands over the body he has fought against more times than he can count, reveling in how unexpectedly warm it is.
He feels a fine, involuntary tremor pulse through Sasuke, and it only makes him groan and try to meld them closer together.
Sasuke’s hands come up and grip blindly at Naruto’s shoulders. He isn’t sure why Naruto is doing this, or why he himself is letting this happen, or why he’s responding to it so enthusiastically, for that matter. Maybe this, his last functioning brain cell supplies-whatever this is-explains why he had laid awake so many nights while the idiot had been “missing”, unable to sleep. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a seventeen-year-old boy and not a former S-class criminal-maybe this is what it feels like to be everyone but them, to be young and unburdened.
And maybe he isn’t the best authority on the matter of right and wrong, but he knows how unequivocally right this feels.
But he can’t be bothered to think about that too much right now because Naruto’s hips are making tight, unconscious circles against his own, and it’s all he can do not to let his knees buckle embarrassingly.
A particular movement of Naruto’s pelvis suddenly has them perfectly, gloriously aligned, and Sasuke registers through the haze in his mind that he is painfully, achingly hard. And, by the feel of it, so is Naruto.
Naruto apparently realizes this too, for he shifts and gives a deep, forceful thrust forward, grinding Sasuke into the wall.
Sasuke’s knuckles strain white against Naruto’s shoulders with the effort to keep himself standing, and he rips his mouth away from Naruto’s with a gasp. “Nnnhh,” he moans from behind his clenched teeth, his head tilting back.
He feels Naruto’s answering groan rumble straight through to his own chest, and it only makes their pace more frantic. Each crash of their hips has Naruto’s cock rubbing thrillingly, gratifyingly over his own, separated by only a few thin layers of cloth. Sasuke’s blood is boiling in an entirely new way, to the point where he’s half convinced Naruto is actually trying to kill him.
They don’t last long. For once, they are not skilled ninjas or experienced warriors, but two boys, seventeen and stupid, fumbling desperately for release in their clumsy inexperience.
Naruto leans down and bites Sasuke’s neck right in the spot where the curse mark used to be, tastes Sasuke’s skin under the sheen of sweat and grime. It’s enough to make Sasuke suddenly feel like he’s about to go careening over the edge of some treacherous precipice. All Naruto has to do is run a hand down Sasuke’s body to brush over the cloth covering the straining bulge and Sasuke comes to a shuddering release, gasping out involuntary little noises that make Naruto’s insides clench with longing.
“Nhh, fuck!” Naruto pants, watching Sasuke’s normally cold face twist up in pleasure from under lowered eyelids. He fists a hand in the hair at Sasuke’s sweaty nape and kisses him with everything he has, with everything he had to walk through hell to realize. The sensation of Sasuke’s lips parting willingly under his own, the realization that Sasuke is kissing him back, makes him come abruptly.
They stay slumped together for several minutes, shaking. Naruto rests his forehead against Sasuke’s equally sweaty one, trying to will his heartbeat down to a survivable pace. Almost unable to believe what just happened, he manages to suppress the face-splitting grin wanting to emerge.
Sasuke is faring little better; his eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving. When his eyes peel back open and rise to meet Naruto’s, Naruto cannot recall a time that he has seen Sasuke more unraveled. It makes him look endearingly… human.
Naruto lowers his head and trails a series of kisses down Sasuke’s jaw and neck. It’s such a tender gesture that Sasuke doesn’t know what to do. It’s infinitely more frightening than if Naruto were to hold a kunai against his jugular.
“Why did you leave?” he breathes out instead a few minutes later, when the ability to think and talk returns to him, ignoring for the moment the wetness seeping unpleasantly through his pants. He needs the answer to this question.
Naruto chuckles softly into his neck. “It was… sort of a test.”
“A test?”
“Yeah, a test. And,” Naruto says, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping Sasuke won’t take this the wrong way (because when has he ever done that?), “you, uh, passed.”
He’s met with a tense, suspicious silence. (Naruto has to resist rolling his eyes; Sasuke will let him dry hump him against a rough rock wall, but talking is out of the question? Typical.)
“I’d already left for my mission when I got a message from Kakashi. He told me they’d decided to left you live-heh, which I totally called, by the way-but that the council wanted to test your loyalties to the village, to determine if you still felt connected to it… That’s why they sent me away on a mission. When I finished early, Kakashi asked me to stay away from Konoha for a while longer, to ‘take a little vacation’. And I agreed,” Naruto murmurs, licking his dry lips. “Sakura was the only other person that knew about it. Kakashi said you were hardly leaving your house, that Sakura thought you seemed… sad? I didn’t know what to think when I heard that. He said he wanted to see what you’d do, that he thought you might come after me. I couldn’t even imagine you doing that,” Naruto swallows thickly. “I just… really hoped you would.”
Standing here, pressed against Sasuke like this, so new but so familiar, Naruto is reminded of that day in the rubble of Orochimaru’s lair. He has to will away the nausea summoned by the haunting similarity, by the painful memories that flash on the insides of his eyelids. But when he opens his eyes, Sasuke is here, here under his hands, here and real.
The thought makes his eyes moist.
Instead, he drops a soft kiss against the spot where the curse mark once stained Sasuke’s skin. “You can’t escape your bonds, Sasuke. You wouldn’t be here if you could.”
Without warning, Sasuke fists a hand in Naruto’s hair and yanks his head up. Sasuke’s eyes are narrowed. “It was a test for me too, in a way,” Naruto blurts out, suppressing a wince, before Sasuke can make up his mind about just how irritated he should be. “For the past four years, I’ve almost single-handedly chased after you, literally and otherwise, and now that you’re back… I needed to think about some things. I… I needed to take a little time to figure out who I am without you. If that makes sense.”
Sasuke isn’t sure why that’s difficult to hear, but he doesn’t want to think about it. He means to sneer, Haven’t you been without me this whole time? But instead it comes out, in nearly a whisper: “And what are you?”
Naruto grins nervously, and though he’s dying to look away, he keeps his eyes level with Sasuke’s. “…I would say empty, but that’s too dramatic, and not entirely true,” Naruto swallows, his throat fighting to keep his words there. “But I’m sure as hell not whole either,” he concludes softly.
Sasuke starts to scoff, but Naruto swallows his disbelief with his lips. He kisses him slowly, lazily this time, as if they’re allowed to do things like take their time and explore and be happy and experience that four-letter feeling he only recently started to admit to himself.
And they will be, at least if he has anything to do with it.
“I’m tired of chasing. I’m tired of running. And I think you are too,” he murmurs against Sasuke’s mouth.
Sasuke sighs and drops his head down until his forehead is resting against Naruto’s neck. It’s such an uncharacteristic action that Naruto’s hands hover hesitantly over Sasuke’s shoulders, afraid to move too much and break whatever spell or genjutsu is at work.
Sasuke is close enough to feel Naruto’s heartbeat, steady and unfailing. He has the odd thought that it would drown out the sound of the waterfall if he pressed his ear to it, but quickly dismisses it as nonsense, a consequence of spending too much time around Naruto. He blames Naruto’s big, stupid heart for all of this; for keeping too much room in it for him all these years, a space he never deserved.
Here, in the Valley of the End and here, mere inches from Naruto’s heart, Sasuke is so close to where everything could have gone irreparably wrong. Here, where one life came so horribly close to ending, is the chance for another to start anew.
“Idiot,” he mumbles. And somehow, as Naruto glances up at the two stone figures towering over the Valley, he takes that to mean that things have a chance of finally being okay.
~*~*~*~
On the way back to Konoha, Sasuke informs Naruto that there is a stop they should make. (“On the way home” is what Sasuke actually says, albeit unconsciously, and Naruto has to hide his grin the entire way there.)
Sasuke knows that he’ll go blind one day, likely even soon. But he’s pretty sure that the look on Naruto’s face when he first sees the Great Naruto Bridge-the image of Naruto, resplendent and smiling and framed by a backdrop of glimmering sea-will be enough to sustain him in the darkness.
He isn’t exactly sure how they got to this point, and even less sure about what tomorrow will bring. And for some reason, that’s alright.
He thinks that maybe this is what Naruto meant about living. That maybe living to learn is impossible without first learning to live.
After all, the most important bridges are not those burnt, but those rebuilt.
The End.
~*~*~*~
A/N: Where to begin? First of all, I’m sure that my action scenes are shaky and somewhat choppy at best. And not nearly epic enough i.e. I think they suck DX … meh. I wasn’t able to put the amount of detail into them that I would have liked because I had to rush a little bit. I hope they were at least tolerable, and made an iota of sense…
I also was continually conscious of making them as IC as possible, given that right now it’s difficult to imagine an “after” to what’s going on right now (let alone a potentially “happy” and satisfyingly gay scenario XD).
As you’ve probably noticed, I’m fascinated by the notion of repetition: Sasuke and Sakura’s encounter as Sasuke’s leaving Konoha, Valley of the End, the bridge… And I like the idea of Sasuke and Naruto resolving things at the Valley of the End. There’s so much symbolism too, regarding how the Rikudou’s sons inherited his “eyes” (physical strength/strength as a key to peace) and his “body” (strength of heart/love as a key to peace), respectively. Thus, the Uchiha and Senju finally coming together in Sasuke and Naruto, strength and love combined. …I’m such a sap.
Anyway, I hope you liked this!
For: centimetre
Title: Tomorrow and After
Rating: M
Summary: It begins where it ended, and ends where it began. NaruSasuNaru.
Warnings: MANGA SPOILERS. Written in January 2010, so deviates from canon around chapter 478. swearing, some blood, boyxboy. Also, the title is taken from the lyrics (translated to English) of “Tomato” by NICO Touches the Walls.
Tomorrow and After
“I will kill you.”
“I know,” Naruto responds, unnaturally solemn, not even flinching at Sasuke’s toneless statement. He’s never been all that good at being bitter, but standing there, mere feet from Sasuke and mere miles from Konoha, Naruto has to admit he’s staring down a stranger. He thinks of the destruction Konoha has already endured, of the exhaustion devastating his friends, of Sakura’s hair fanned out over the pillow of her hospital bed.
Of why every time he thinks about or looks at Sasuke, he feels like he’s being gutted.
I will kill you. If I have to.
He has to shake his head to clear away the deadening feelings, the invasive numbness. It makes him ask, “This is how you’ve been feeling for years?” But it’s a question he already knows the answer to.
Sasuke doesn’t waste his time bothering to wonder what the hell the idiot is talking about. “You have no idea how I feel,” he hisses lowly, and the pure cold hatred packed behind those words makes the hair on the back of Naruto’s neck stand up. Strangely enough, though, he also finds it the slightest bit encouraging.
“But at least you admit that you feel something,” Naruto presses, brow quirking deviously. “Because up until now you’ve been trying to convince everyone, and yourself, that you don’t.”
He enjoys cracking Sasuke’s cold expression ever-so-slightly open, takes pride in the hairline crack in that mask of practiced indifference. He’s always found indifference more alarming than rage.
…Though rage is pretty damn alarming when it’s hurtling at you with a very sharp sword drawn.
Sasuke is determined to finish this nonsense quickly, and without wasting too much time. He doesn’t even bother to awaken the Mangekyo, as it would drain at the energy he will need shortly when he obliterates Konoha. But because this is Naruto, the plan to keep this brief is quickly discarded.
Naruto loses all sense of time when fighting Sasuke. It makes everything around him fade and dissipate into a dull blur. They trade attack after attack, parrying and dodging in an unrelenting flow of movement. The Kyuubi roars its bloodlust within him, but he pours all his willpower into suppressing it, wary of the toll it would take on him and Sasuke’s ability to negate its powers.
(And besides. This is his fight, goddammit.)
Naruto’s divided attention supplies Sasuke with the chance to strike; his chokuto rips a gash through Naruto’s side that nearly makes him double over. Naruto breathes an internal sigh of relief that he had been moving fast enough that the blade had only been able to graze the skin. It’s been awhile since Sasuke actually bothered to fight him like this.
Sasuke lands neatly a short distance away and slides his blade back into its holster with a graceful flick of his wrist. They both watch the rivulets of blood trickle from the wound and the torn cloth and drip onto the ground below.
“See where all your asinine promises have gotten you, Naruto?” is Sasuke’s cruel, mocking query.
The wound throbs enough that Naruto lets out a painful breath when he straightens again. He has to grit his teeth to keep from screaming-not so much in pain as in pure, unadulterated anger. Sakura fills his mind’s eye; Sakura, limp in Kakashi’s arms, alive and mostly unhurt but unconscious from her attempted attack against Sasuke. (Is this the wakeup call you needed, Naruto? Someone had said to him, but he does not remember whom. He does not remember much between then and now, just days later-only running, searching.)
“Shut up. Don’t you dare mention her, asshole,” Naruto bares his teeth, flecks of red emerging in his pupils. When he feels his own canine scrape against his lip, he realizes what’s happening and draws in a deep breath to reel himself in.
For once, he recognizes when Sasuke’s baiting him. And decides it’s time to bait right fucking back. “Besides, it stopped being just about the promise to her a long time ago. I made a promise to myself that I’d knock some sense into your thick skull and drag your sorry ass back to Konoha.” Naruto smirks, and it’s positively feral. “Heh, it was just a surprise to have Itachi support me on that one.”
The expression on Sasuke’s face would be almost comical if they weren’t kinda currently in the middle of a battle to the death.
In seconds his features are steel again. “You spoke with Itachi.” It’s only the sub-zero chill of his voice that keeps it from being a question. “When?”
“I don’t know. I imagine not long before you battled it out with your brother, got brainwashed by some old psychopath, played house with the Akatsuki, and decided to go batshit crazy and kill everybody.” Naruto starts to sneer, but it soon tapers off into a frown.
He looks down at the blood staining his hands, trying to determine how much of it is his own. “I didn’t know about the secret behind the massacre then,” Naruto murmurs thoughtfully, as if to himself. “I didn’t know that he killed his clan for the sake of his village. Our village. Before now, I’m pretty sure I never thought something could be wrong and right at the same time, or neither. I keep turning it over in my mind, and the only thing I can make sense of in any of this is that he loved you. And maybe he had a really fucked-up way of showing that, but…” he pauses, searching for the right words. “How do you honor someone-“
“And what would you know about honor, Naruto? About justice?” is Sasuke’s vicious retort.
“I know enough,” Naruto answers grimly, blinking away the smiling faces of his father and Jiraiya. He wipes the blood off on his pants and looks back at Sasuke.
“How do you honor someone that made such a sacrifice?” he continues, imploring. “By living and letting live, Sasuke. By making things better.”
“The decimation of Konoha will make things better.”
“How? Can you see it, Sasuke? See the broken bodies, hear the screams of pain? See children and parents clinging together in their final moments-two brothers, buried under the rubble?” Naruto feels his throat tighten. “How does that make you any different from Danzo and the elders? Where does it stop?”
“It stops with them dead,” Sasuke says; too calmly, too quietly.
“I promised your brother that I would stop you without killing you.” Naruto stands up a little straighter, stubbornly resolute as always. “But I will protect this village, like he did. Even if it’s from you.”
I’ll protect you, Sasuke. Even if it’s from yourself.
“How dare you compare yourself with him?!” Sasuke screams, actually shaking in his fury, control finally shattered. He’s never hated Naruto more, never wanted so badly to break that stupid mouth and watch it bleed moralistic bullshit all over the ground, never wanted so badly to claw out those eyes and extinguish their ever-faithful light. He can’t afford to think, to regret, to feel. And those are things that happen too much when he is around Naruto.
He barely registers the blood oozing from his eye socket and trailing down his cheek (dripping like so many tears he’s never allowed himself to shed). The deadly whisper seems suspended in the air: “Amaterasu.”
The dark flames rear up, consuming everything in their wake; burning, burning, licking at the sky.
As he watches the fire race toward him, Naruto knows he can’t escape it. He isn’t afraid of dying so much as losing (so much as losing Sasuke), but somehow he never actually thought that things would end like this-that they could end like this.
All at once, the clamoring thoughts inside his head fall still. From the silence, one voice emerges, clear but unfamiliar. He can’t discern what it is saying, can’t pick apart the stream of syllables that is overflowing from the depths of his mind and cascading down to his tongue; all he knows is that his lips are moving of their own accord, his hands of their own volition.
Sasuke watches detachedly as Naruto forms hand signs and mutters some jutsu in a last-ditch effort to save himself. He’s surprised at the urge to close his eyes and turn away, at the way his stomach turns violently at the thought of watching Naruto be swallowed up by the flames-
He knows something is amiss when the blaze changes direction without his influence. His eye stings as the Mangekyo strains, but it’s as if some circuit has been disconnected and everything has been thrown in reverse: he now cannot control the path of Amaterasu, nor can he extinguish it. The jet-black conflagration zooms toward him, poised to devour him.
If Sasuke were the sort to appreciate irony, he’d have to admit the humor in the infamous Uchiha Sasuke being destroyed by his own jutsu. Did you know this is how it would all turn out, Itachi? He almost wants to laugh. Is this how my miserable life finally comes to an end-with yet another failure?
The next thing he registers is an orange blur tackling him solidly to the ground. He blinks the stars away from his eyes to see Naruto hunched over him, cloaked in the Kyuubi’s sizzling chakra-shielding him. It clashes with the flames, forcing them back, fighting fire with fire. Naruto’s face is screwed up in pain, as well as in concentration to keep himself at one tail only.
“Why?” is all Sasuke can manage to choke out, watching a patch of skin peel off Naruto’s cheek. The Kyuubi’s chakra bites at his skin from their close proximity, but he does not notice.
“I don’t know.” Naruto grins shakily. “Would you believe my body moved on its own?”
In that brief moment, with Sasuke staring up at him with such wide eyes, Naruto catches the first faint glimpse of Sasuke he’s seen in years.
“Now now, boys,” a voice interrupts. “You’re no good to me dead.”
Then everything goes black.
~*~*~*~
When they become aware of their surroundings, they realize that they are in some sort of cave. Naruto is bound by chakra restraints against a wall. Sasuke once again assumes an expression of utter impassivity.
Madara is sitting a short distance away on an outcrop of rock, all too casual for an immortal megalomaniac.
“And here I thought I was going to have to go to the trouble to find the Kyuubi jinchuriki,” Madara says, sounding downright merry. “Thank you, Sasuke.”
Still cloaked by the Kyuubi’s chakra, Naruto bares his teeth. He struggles to free himself from the restraints, but to no avail.
Sasuke’s eyes merely narrow. “You’ve captured the eight-tails?”
“Yes. I had time for a quick errand after you killed Danzo and were making your way to Konoha,” Madara chuckles. “And now here we are, on the eve of a new world.”
Naruto snarls.
“It’s time for you to help create that world, Sasuke,” Madara continues. “A world in which there is no more crime, no more war. A world in which the atrocities that happened to the Uchiha clan, to Itachi, would never again occur.”
“And Konoha?”
“I assure you, you will make Konoha meet it’s wretched fate soon enough.”
“So how do I go about ‘helping’?”
Naruto’s eyes dart to him, mouth agape. “Sasuke!”
“All you must do,” Madara replies, ignoring Naruto, “is learn to summon the Demonic Statue
of the Outer Path.”
Naruto’s vision floods with the silhouette of Sasuke, an emaciated shell of life in Pain’s place-and snaps.
Everything seems to break all at once: the restraints, the walls, and Naruto’s fragile fragment of control. The Kyuubi’s chakra boils, sprouting new tail after new tail. Naruto can’t count them through the red haze eating away at his humanity.
The last thing he’s cognizant of is Sasuke’s red eyes lifting to his.
He blinks, and finds himself literally in the dark recesses of his mind.
Sasuke stands in the middle of it all, staring down the Kyuubi for the second time. Only this time, he’s not the only one.
“Uchiha Madara,” comes the Kyuubi’s booming rumble.
Sasuke turns slightly to regard Madara while raising a hand toward the Kyuubi’s seal. “I have no interest in taking over the world,” he sneers, before swiftly pushing the Kyuubi’s
influence back, reinforcing the seal.
In an instant, Sasuke feels his own blade press against his jugular. “I’ve been waiting to see when you would betray me,” Madara muses. “It’s a shame you won’t get to annihilate Konoha before you die. But I’ll be more than willing to pick up the slack.”
He tilts his mask enough to expose his Sharingan eye to the Kyuubi.
Then the world erupts in crows.
They dart in every direction, their cawing and the frantic beating of their wings echoing cacophonously in the chamber. In the chaos, the blade falls to the wet floor with a clang, and Sasuke twists away from Madara.
Naruto and Sasuke look upon it all with disoriented bewilderment; only Madara is unfazed.
“You would do something like this, Itachi.”
At Madara’s words, an effigy of Itachi emerges from the curtain of feathers and movement. “I felt it necessary to take precaution,” it says.
Sasuke freezes as if paralyzed.
“Okay, what the fuck is up with everyone showing up in my head?” Naruto gripes, rolling his eyes despite the gravity of the situation. (It was pretty cool when the Yondaime showed up, but this was getting to be ridiculous.)
The image of Itachi shifts its attention over to him. “I’m glad I could put my trust in you, Uzumaki Naruto. You used the power I gave you just as I imagined you would.”
“Huh?” Naruto is sure he must be referring to the strange power that seized control of him and commanded the Amaterasu to backfire against Sasuke, but… Wait, he knew I would move to save Sasuke? That tricky bast-
The illusion looks to Sasuke next. “Little brother,” is all it says, and Naruto isn’t fluent in Uchiha, but he can plainly hear the sorrow in those words, the regret.
Before Sasuke can say or do anything, Itachi transforms into another group of crows. They join the others in a convulsing whirl again. Then, all at once, they swoop down upon Madara.
He doesn’t make a sound. They cover him until he is no longer visible under the writing mass of birds.
“He is weak, and they are scavengers,” the Kyuubi growls, grinning bloodthirstily. “I just wish they would leave leftovers.”
When they return to reality, Madara’s laugh fills what’s left of the cave. “Itachi’s more of a fool than I thought if he thinks a little genjustu will stop me.” His manic exclamation falters, though, when he starts coughing up blood.
Sasuke has skewered him with his chokuto, pinning him in place. Madara’s voice loses any trace of joviality; in an instant, his true, malevolent demeanor surfaces. “So Itachi managed to find a way to stop me from teleporting by trapping a part of me in another dimension… Goddamn him! Goddamn him and the cursed Uchiha clan! Goddamn Konoha and its idiotic ‘Will of Fire’! Power is wasted on the young!”
Sasuke rips his mask off and looks upon the gnarled face of his ancestor, his Amaterasu triggered automatically. “You remind me so much of myself at your age,” is all Madara has time to hiss, before he is finally lost to the flames.
Sasuke falls to his knees, weak with the strain of performing Amaterasu twice in such a short increment of time. His eyes are searing, his face streaked with blood. He looks up to where the ceiling had been blasted away during Naruto’s transformation. In the distance, he thinks he hears a cawing bird.
Naruto is himself again, though hunched over and soaked with blood. He studies Sasuke for a long, long time. “Aren’t you going to take off?” he questions, when Sasuke makes no move to stand.
“It almost sounds like you’re encouraging me to.” Sasuke’s eyes are dull, lackluster, two flat black stones.
“Look, I… as much as I want you to come back, I’m beginning to realize that I can’t force you. And maybe you don’t want to go back because you feel there’s nothing there for you… And there is,” Naruto insists, “but if going away is what is going to make things alright, then…” the words he’s trying to say taper off and he sighs. “I just want you to be happy, Sasuke. I want you to find a way to be at peace, or as close to it as you possibly can. And if that’s not in Konoha, then… then I’m not going to force you back.
“But I’ll always keep chasing you, one way or another,” Naruto grins-despite all that’s happened, he grins so brightly in the dim light-and it’s a promise.
Sasuke stares at him.
He’s still staring when Naruto’s team shows up several minutes later.
~*~*~*~
After they are dismissed from the hospital, Sasuke is promptly imprisoned for treason.
He is taken into custody without a fight. As poised and stoic as ever, he walks with his head held high and his back board-straight, the very picture of an honored warrior heading calmly into battle instead of a talented young shinobi fallen from grace at the age of
seventeen.
As much as a part of him wants to kick and scream and demand that they release Sasuke,
Naruto knows the imprisonment is necessary. He watches the guards lead Sasuke away in silence, steels his face into a mask of resolution that makes Sakura watch him with worried eyes.
She lifts a hand to press a light touch to his arm, but he does not feel it.
~*~*~*~
With Konoha’s concentration focused on reconstruction and healing the wounds inflicted by the Fourth Great Shinobi War-a war brief in duration yet no less haunting for those involved-the trial of Uchiha Sasuke is delayed for many months.
The first time he was permitted to visit Sasuke, Naruto is surprised to find that the cell he is detained is not the dank, dungeon-like room his imagination supplies. Instead, it is almost blindingly sterile, consisting of nothing more than a bed on one side of the white-walled room and a toilet on the other.
(He can’t help but notice that Sasuke is the darkest thing in the room.)
He’s told that this enclosure, innocuous as it may appear, is actually reserved for the highest-level criminals. Sasuke’s chakra had already been temporarily sealed upon his return to Konoha, but the walls practically buzz with chakra-suppressant energy. Should there be any kind of struggle within, the inmate would be killed instantly-Konoha treats its captives humanely, but spares no necessary precaution.
Subsequently, Naruto finds himself placing a fair amount of distance between himself and the bars of the cell.
(Visitors are typically not permitted here, but Naruto is, well, Naruto.)
Naruto visits Sasuke whenever he can, bringing with him stories of the mundane daily occurrences of Konoha, as well as tales of what happened while Sasuke was “away”. For the longest time, Sasuke ignores every word of Naruto’s inane prattle. Naruto is perfectly aware of this, but continues because he cannot bear the aching silence.
As the days bleed together, however, Sasuke cannot help but listen. Naruto’s chatter does indeed interrupt the silence-the incessant, inescapable silence that keeps him up at night, consumed by thoughts and memories that haunt him in consciousness as much as in sleep. He responds only occasionally, mostly with merely a grunt or an insult, but it is enough to appease Naruto’s otherwise one-sided conversation.
Naruto takes on as many missions as he can shoulder, desperate to help out in any way possible. He is among the first to volunteer for the type of tasks he so often scorned when he was twelve; he rebuilds fences, cleans up debris, and even locates a lost pet or two, all with a smile. He’s just not used to the beaming smiles he now receives in return.
Gradually, life returns to normal in Konoha. Except that it doesn’t.
Sasuke loses track of the days. He notices that it is far easier to count the rare instances in which Naruto actually looks at him. He isn’t sure why he notices.
(He doesn’t know that Naruto is afraid he’ll stop seeing Sasuke and instead see only the criminal that everyone else does.)
Sometimes, Naruto stops by and finds that Sasuke has just returned from one of his numerous interrogation sessions with Ibiki. Naruto hates those days the most, because they make something in Sasuke close off even more-that last faint, precious flicker of light in his eyes, already all but extinguished a few months ago. He doesn’t know what they do or say to Sasuke during his interrogation sessions, and is fairly sure he never wants to. Those are the days he says anything to get Sasuke to call him an idiot, does anything to bring any hint of expression to that despairingly blank face.
The morning of Sasuke’s trial dawns nearly six months after his return. He is to appear alone before the elders and the Hokage, the trial kept quiet and closed to the public.
Predictably, Naruto shows up at his cell not long after sunrise. He finds Sasuke awake, sitting on the cold floor and staring at nothing, and a quick glance at the bed in the corner of the cell suggests that it had not been slept in the previous night. Naruto bites his lip to avoid asking Sasuke if he’s nervous, but can imagine the derisive snort that he would receive in response to such a ridiculous question.
Instead, he swallows down the nervous energy churning inside of him and grins. “Just think, by this time tomorrow you’ll be a free man!”
Naruto’s grin is stretched a little too tight to be as carefree as it is intended. The sight of it makes Sasuke’s eyes narrow unconsciously. He is suddenly deaf to whatever else Naruto is saying, too focused on that fake grin, on the eyes that seem to studiously avoid his own. Sasuke doesn’t take the time to think about the anger that suddenly burns swift and hot in his veins.
“Look at me,” he says quietly, almost a hiss. But Naruto either doesn’t hear him or keeps talking anyway; Sasuke suspects that it’s the latter. His hands clench into fists.
“Look at me!” he repeats harshly, the loudest his voice has rung out in months. It has the desired effect, however, when Naruto’s eyes snap to meet his.
The fire turns icy, however, at the exhaustion and grief Sasuke finds staring back at him.
Naruto’s mouth settles into a firm, thin line. Sasuke can’t stand it-can’t deal with seeing the sadness that should not be there, needs Naruto’s face to be split with a grin or twisted up in rage. Those expressions are safe.
“Why the hell have you been visiting me?” he sneers, inexplicably relieved as the pain in those eyes is quickly eclipsed by anger. “You’re the village’s golden boy now, just like you always wanted. There’s no need to play nice with the traitor.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Naruto grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes closed. “Dammit, you asshole, you’re my friend.”
Sasuke stands and stalks forward a few steps, closer to the bars. “I don’t know when it’s going to get through your thick skull that we haven’t been ‘friends’ for years,” he retorts lowly, deliberate and cruel.
“Fine,” Naruto bites out, throwing his hands up and almost choking around the sudden thickness of his throat. “Fine. We’re not friends. But what you don’t seem to get is that the connections you have with people don’t just end because you want them to, that you can’t stop people from caring about you. Not Itachi,” Naruto watches Sasuke’s eyes narrow until they are little more than slits, “and not me.”
“I don’t know, maybe the day I decided to chase after you was the worst decision I ever made,” Naruto lets out a laugh, a sharp and bitter sound, “At least, that’s what everyone’s been saying to me for years now,” the forced humor drains from his face and he raises his eyes to regard Sasuke again, his gaze steady. “But it’s a decision that I will never regret.”
“They’re going to sentence me to death today, you pathetic fool,” Sasuke spits out, steeling himself against the unexpected pain pulsing through his chest, suspiciously close to his heart.
Naruto has to resist the urge to clap his hands over his ears like a child. “No,” he growls. “No, they’re not! You deserve a second chance, a chance to finally live. They’ll see.”
When Sasuke responds with only a defiant silence, Naruto throws his sneer back at him. “I never knew the great Uchiha Sasuke was such a coward.”
“Excuse me?” Sasuke hisses, voice dripping with pure venom.
“I said that you’re a coward. You don’t know what the hell you’re gonna do if actually given the chance to live, do you?” Naruto accuses slowly, his comprehension deepening with the slight widening of Sasuke’s eyes. At that, Naruto’s anger fizzles out suddenly, until all that’s left is weary exasperation. “You may finally have the chance to live your life your way instead of being ruled by some fucked up sense of duty to your family-who, by the way, probably would have just wanted you to be happy rather than wasting time going on a murderous, whacked-out quest for ‘vengeance’, idiot-and you’re afraid. You’re so damn afraid that you don’t even want to try.”
Sasuke opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Naruto cuts him off anyway, his grin returning and spreading slowly across his face, not forced this time. It makes Sasuke close his mouth and swallow.
“Like I said, you deserve a second chance. They’ll see. And you’ll see too,” Naruto nods, conviction etched in every line of his face. “I mean, I would know about second chances, wouldn’t I? They’re pretty damn awesome.”
Naruto’s grin softens into a smile, but he turns to leave before Sasuke has a chance to watch it happen. “I know they’ll let you live,” he says softly, his words ringing with conviction.
“Why?” is the only thing Sasuke finds himself able to ask, but he isn’t sure exactly what he’s questioning.
Naruto stops walking but doesn’t turn back around. “I have faith,” in the future, in you. “Guess that’s why I’m such a fool, huh?” he tilts his head back toward the cell, just enough for Sasuke to catch a glimpse of his smile and the tinge of sadness within it, before he turns the corner and vanishes from sight.
~*~*~*~
After a lengthy trial, Sasuke is called back into the council room for his sentencing late in the afternoon.
When the Hokage reveals the verdict, Sasuke can only stare.
“Hmm. You have the expression of someone that never expected not to die,” Kakashi muses, eyes threatening to curve into amused slits despite the situation.
Sasuke says nothing.
“You’ve earned yourself a lifetime of probation and watchful eyes turned in your direction, but not a punishment so severe as death,” Kakashi continues, looking back down to the next page in his book. “Despite your years of status as a missing nin, reports from your interrogation support that you killed only when presented with a motive. You certainly had a rather…dramatic way of going about it, however,” Kakashi adds, pausing in his reading and raising his (visible) eyebrow, ignoring Sasuke’s glare.
“And though you alone are responsible for the execution of your actions, we both know very well that Konoha is far from blameless for much of what has happened to you,” Kakashi sets his book down entirely and focuses his even gaze on Sasuke, tapping a finger against the portion of hitai-ite covering his Sharingan. “We can’t erase the past, Sasuke. We can only go forward with what we’ve got, carrying our burdens and trying to find what precious peace we can, in the hope it will ease their weight.”
Sasuke takes that in with a slow nod.
“Besides, I’m kind of sick of death. There’s been far too much of it going on lately,” Kakashi carries on, waving a hand dismissively. Sasuke has to resist rolling his eyes. “I’m reinstating you as a shinobi of Konoha, genin rank. For now, I am permitting some of the seals suppressing your chakra to be removed, with the rest to be considered upon future evaluation. Until you prove yourself to be worthy of a promotion in rank, you will be allowed to complete C and D-rank missions only and are prohibited from leaving the village until further notice.”
“Will I be monitored?” Sasuke feels his lip curl at the thought of being followed wherever he goes.
“From a distance, certainly, but I’m not going to assign ANBU to shadow you. But I’m sure you realize that should you violate the restrictions of your probation, you’ll end up here before me again, but unfortunately with a far different sentence,” Kakashi says sternly.
Sasuke nods. “You’re going to have to earn the village’s trust back yourself. And, I suppose you’ll have to regain your trust in the village as well,” the Hokage shrugs. “It will be a difficult task. But I can think of someone that already has a great deal faith in you.”
At Kakashi’s faint smirk, Sasuke frowns suspiciously. “Did Naruto come and vouch for me?” He grits his teeth at the thought of being spared out of pity, all because that idiot now had Konoha wrapped around his finger.
“No. Naruto had no involvement in this trial, much as I’m sure he’d have liked to. And we all know that he has clearly shown his belief that you should be reinstated.”
Sasuke’s uncharacteristic confusion prompts Kakashi to close his eyes in mirth. “Mm. You won your freedom-your life-back all on your own, Sasuke. Now the question is, what are you going to do with it?”
~*~*~*~
“How can you live with yourself and all that you’ve done?” Homura and Koharu, the elders, squinted down at him contemptuously.
Sasuke returned their expression with vigor. “Ask me that question only if you can honestly answer it yourselves,” he replied darkly.
Ignoring their huffs and splutters of indignation, he continued, “And if you’re actually expecting me to answer that question, I can only say that… I don’t know.”
His brow furrowed, as if trying to recall something important. “I suppose I’ll just have to try.”
Behind his mask, Kakashi smiled.
~*~*~*~
On his way out of the council room of the Hokage tower, Sasuke feels the heated glares that hit his back but pays them no mind. Frankly, he’s surprised to find Naruto nowhere in sight, certain he’d be waiting with an ear pressed to the door or something else idiotic.
He does, however, encounter Sakura, who looks torn between admitting that she had been waiting to hear the verdict and pretending as if she hadn’t tried to press her ear against the door.
She offers him a slight smile, but Sasuke notices the wariness in her eyes. He knows it’s probably the least he deserves. He did knock her unconscious (again) and leave her lying in a field, after all. “Naruto knew you would live,” is what she finally says, her smile growing a touch warmer. He was the only one that never gave up on you.
Sasuke notes that she doesn’t say “we”.
“Where is the idiot, anyway?” Sasuke asks in a way that clearly suggests how little he actually cares.
Sakura tilts her head slightly. “He didn’t tell you? He left for a mission this morning. He’s supposed to be gone for at least a month or two... apparently he requested it.”
“Oh,” Sasuke says. He finds it’s all he can say.
~*~*~*~
The days creep by slowly. The bustle of reconstruction fades into a tranquil murmur, the inhabitants of Konoha knowing far too well that times of peace must be cherished in their rarity and ultimate transience.
In what is left of the Uchiha district, however, there is only ceaseless, aching silence.
As much as Sasuke had not wanted to return to the compound, there had been nowhere else to go. (Many properties had been damaged during Pain’s attack, and landlords tend to be unwilling to rent you an apartment when you’ve recently been imprisoned for treason after spending years as an S-class missing nin.) Yet he does not return to his home-or what used to be his home-and instead settles into a smaller property on the outer fringes of the district, one not damaged in the attack and one of the few that had not been inhabited in the time of the massacre.
It spares him from having to scrub away bloodstains along with the years of dust.
The dust chokes him as he wipes it away, a veneer of filth obscuring everything beneath it-like the veil of lies draped across his entire life, ripped down only now.
Later, when he steps back and watches the old wooden floors gleam dully in the low light stealing through the dirty windows, Sasuke wishes that curses could be lifted as easily as dust.
~*~*~*~
The day Sasuke finally summons the resolve to venture into his family’s home, he treads softly through it, his presence confirmed only by the dusty footprints he leaves behind.
(a living ghost among the dead)
He visits Itachi’s room last, and blames the dust for the stinging of his eyes.
~*~*~*~
Between sips of tea, Sakura regards Sasuke with contemplative look. He notices but ignores it, wanting to evade another bout of her meddling.
She’d taken to dropping by every so often to check up on him; that is, on the rare occasions she could find the time. Though Tsunade had woken up from her coma, her strength had been greatly reduced, causing her to step down from her position as Hokage and spend less time working in the hospital. As a result, Sakura had inherited her dropped shifts and patients.
Though a part of her can’t help but be resentful, Sakura still worries about Sasuke. She knows that, aside from the odd mission thrown his way, he barely leaves the Uchiha district. He’d even admitted to her once that he hadn’t been sleeping much. Watching him drink his tea methodically, his face more blank and closed off than ever, she thinks that he seems… completely at a loss. Almost depressed.
She sets her cup down on the table gently, wiping a stray drop spilling over the side with her thumb. “I heard that a messenger hawk came today with Naruto’s mission report,” she reveals almost absentmindedly, while watching from the corner of her eye as Sasuke unconsciously tenses and sits up a little straighter.
“Apparently he managed to finish his mission pretty quickly, but has requested a little time off, which was granted to him.” She sees Sasuke’s brow crinkle almost imperceptibly. Naruto had already been gone for just over two months.
When he offers no response, she has to suppress the urge to smack him. Instead, she balls up her fist and rests her chin against it, propped up on her elbow. Finally managing to catch his eye, she asks, “Time moves slowly when you’re waiting for something, doesn’t it?”
Sasuke looks impassively at the wall behind her. “I wouldn’t know. I have nothing left to wait for.”
The fist slams down against the tabletop, making tea slosh out of her cup and Sasuke’s topple over.
“Shit,” Sasuke hisses, jumping up before the hot tea spills into his lap. (He’s lucky Sakura didn’t put any force behind it, or it would have been the table that shattered. And the floor as well.) He stares at her, more surprised than agitated.
Sakura looks about ready to start pulling her hair out. “Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?!” she growls.
When he just keeps staring at her, with a look that suggests that he thinks she’s been sniffing formaldehyde in the hospital morgue, she stands, throwing up her arms with an exasperated huff.
“You miss him, you idiot!”
With that, she storms off, slamming the door behind her so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t swing off of its hinges.
Sasuke stands alone in his living room for what feels like hours, peering down at the tea leaves drifting across the table.
~*~*~*~
Two weeks later, Sasuke finds himself about to sneak out of Konoha for the second time in his life.
For the first time in his life, however, Sasuke doesn’t think too much about what he’s doing. (Or, perhaps more pivotally, why he’s doing…whatever it is he’s doing.)
“I would laugh at how familiar this is, if only it were the least bit funny.”
Truth be told, he isn’t the least bit surprised she’s here. The seconds tick by with Sakura’s eyes baring holes into his back, her words hanging between them like so many fragments of shattered hope.
“I’m not running away,” he says, and receives a snort in response.
“Oh? That’s sure what it looks like. And it is what you do best, after all.”
Her words, though not sharp enough to crack his stone defenses, carve into them nonetheless. He’s still not used to her this fierce, this irascible; a vision passes before his eyes of the weak young girl that stood here on that dark night, tearfully declaring her schoolgirl love and pleading that he stay. He pictures the absurdly strong young woman standing behind him, the love and innocence long extinguished from her eyes, and can only think of all the things he’s damaged beyond repair.
It’s the foreign taste of guilt that makes him turn around and meet her gaze head on. “I’m not running away this time.”
“Oh?” she murmurs, one brow quirked, and there’s a light of comprehension in her eyes that suggests she understands a lot more than he’s ever given her credit for.
“I’m not here to stop you, you know. Nor am I naïve enough to be surprised to find you here, or to really believe you’re telling me the truth right now. I haven’t been that naïve since I foolishly thought I could stop you that night. Since I watched my best friend waste years slowly destroying himself over you while letting myself stupidly believe that it was all still because of some inane promise to me.
“So go. That might be the stupidest thing I could say after all that’s happened, but go. If you don’t come back, they’re sure as hell not going to send a search party to chase after you this time.” She places her hands on her hips in a defiant stance, as if daring him to argue.
You’re not worth it anymore is what she doesn’t say, but he hears it clearly.
When he does nothing but look back at her stoically, her frown gradually softens at the edges until it threatens to twist into a smirk. “…And if you do come back, it’d better be by this time next week, with that damn idiot in tow.”
As if I’ll need a full week, he almost replies. But the words don’t come out; he knows he owes her more than some dismissive, haughty remark.
She cuts him off just as his lips start to form two words he rarely utters. “Don’t tell me ‘thank you’ or I’ll knock you unconscious this time.” There’s a layer of resentment behind her faint smile, but he can’t help but notice that, more than anything, she looks so very tired.
“Go. I’m still waiting for you to deserve that ‘you’re welcome’ I never got to say.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Maybe when you come back, you finally will.”
He nods, slowly, deliberately. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, he’s gone. She sinks down and seats herself on the bench this time, runs her palms over the night-chilled stone.
“Looks like you haven’t given up on him either,” she muses quietly to the empty air where Sasuke just stood, and fights to suppress the sudden mirth that bubbles up inside of her. When she finds that she cannot, she puts her head in her hands and laughs until tears are streaming down her face.
~*~*~*~
It’s after three solid days of running without any real sense of destination that Sasuke begins to realize the futility of what he’s doing. He hadn’t expected Naruto to be so difficult to track down.
Yet with a significant portion of his chakra still sealed away, including the use of his Sharingan, finding Naruto is like locating a particularly stupid needle in a very large haystack.
He senses Naruto nowhere and everywhere all at once. It makes him skulk through towns, dart through forests, and venture wherever his feet take him. Yet on the fourth day, the impossibility of his task begins to settle in, and his footfalls slow against the forest floor he’s zipping through.
He hears the rush of water in the distance, and the urge to potentially drink some and clean up a bit compels him to follow the sound. His exact location swiftly becomes apparent to him, however. The looming figures of Madara and Hashirama cause a momentary chill to skitter down his spine, stopping him in his tracks.
There’s a twisted kind of beauty even in this place of ugly memories. The roar of the waterfall echoes hauntingly throughout the Valley, the curtain of water glinting with tremulous light against the dark rocks. On a day like this, one could almost be fooled into believing that the water washes away all traces of what has transpired here.
But Sasuke knows that sins aren’t cleansed so easily.
As he steps out from the underbrush and draws closer, he notices that one thing is decidedly different. Peering up into the stone face of his most malevolent (and freshly deceased) ancestor, it appears that much of the statue’s face has been blasted away. He nearly smirks, thinking it looks like something the idiot would do with his Rasengan.
And then he sees Naruto.
At first he thinks it’s an illusion, a shadow supplied by his mind, a ghost from his past lingering in this desecrated land. Then the ghost lifts its head, and Naruto stares back at him.
He’s sitting on an outcrop of rock, skipping stones across the pool of water, breaking the surface into countless ripples. He lets the stone in his hand fly out, but the force with which he throws it sends it cutting through the water like a kunai.
They stare at each other for what seems like hours. Naruto’s eyes drift over Sasuke, who is strung out and dirty. Then Naruto throws back his head and laughs.
“Took you long enough,” he snickers.
And Sharingan or no, Sasuke sees red. He launches himself at Naruto, and they go rolling across the rocks, years of training and finesse dissolved in the face of single-minded fury. Naruto catches Sasuke’s fist before it can dislocate his face and glares up at him.
“What the fuck, bastard?!”
“You left,” Sasuke snarls, and the glimpse he gets of the one-man tent set up on the edge of the clearing only fuels his inexplicable anger.
“Aww, did you miss me, Sasuke?” Naruto smirks, and takes advantage of the split second in which Sasuke stiffens to flip them over and pin him to the ground. The stone grates harshly against Sasuke’s spine, causing a hiss of breath to escape from between his teeth.
“You give me shit for years about deserting Konoha, and then you leave. Skip town
on some imbecilic vacation, no less. After all your fucking talk, you didn’t even stick around to see what my sentence was,” Sasuke hisses, and aims a kick at Naruto’s stomach that sends him flying backwards.
Naruto manages to land on his feet in a crouch. He lets out a wheezing breath and coughs, spattering specks of blood against the stone below. Sasuke pushes himself to his feet, feeling blood beading at the fresh contusions and scrapes on his back, air stinging the skin in a few patches where his shirt had been ripped because of their tumble.
When Naruto rises a moment later, all traces of joviality are drained from his face. “And after all your fucking talk, it almost sounds like you cared whether I was there or not,” he sneers, spitting out his words harshly, as if their unexpected bitterness is too foul to let linger on his tongue. “But that’s impossible, since you refuse to care about anything.”
Sasuke charges at him again but Naruto is just as quick, if not quicker. They fall into circling each other in a vicious dance, moving so rapidly that all Sasuke sees is disorienting blurs where the Sharingan would have captured every detail in hyper-definition.
“How’d it feel to be chasing after me?” Naruto yells from somewhere behind him, before they meet with a clang of kunai and spring apart again. “How’d it feel to be left behind?!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Sasuke rages, and Naruto is able to sneak in a punch that makes Sasuke’s field of vision cloud momentarily. Through the ringing in his head drowning out the sound of the waterfall, Sasuke has the detached thought that nothing feels shattered or dislocated; Naruto had hit him hard enough to leave a vicious bruise, but not to break anything. Somehow, that only makes him angrier.
His leg snaps out and manages to upset Naruto’s footing enough for Sasuke to grab him and slam him against the wall of stone behind them. At their feet, he spits out the blood welling up from the gash his teeth had cut into the inside of his cheek when Naruto punched him. His blood is boiling so molten hot in his veins he’s halfway convinced he’ll start bleeding steam. Sasuke hasn’t felt this livid in months, hasn’t felt this anything in months.
He searches almost hungrily for the telltale tint of incendiary crimson in Naruto’s eyes, but finds only icy blue slits glaring back at him. He’s fighting Naruto and not the Kyuubi-and somehow, that’s more… unnerving? Intimidating? (…Invigorating?)
“What, come to finish the job this time?” Naruto rasps darkly, and only then does Sasuke realize that his hands have crept up tightly around Naruto’s neck.
Sasuke wrenches his hands away as if burned, and fights down the bile threatening to creep up his throat-an unexpectedly automatic reaction. But he doesn’t have time to think about it as Naruto grabs his wrists tightly, fingers clenching hard enough to bruise.
Sasuke could easily jerk out of his grasp, but something in Naruto’s expression freezes him in place. “The day of your trial, I was more afraid than I think I’ve ever been in my life,” Naruto avows fervently, eyes narrowing further and his grip tightening even more. They’re almost nose-to-nose now, and puffs of Naruto’s breath wash hotly over Sasuke’s face as he speaks. “But with that fear was also more hope. I didn’t spend years chasing you just to give up in the final stretch, bastard.”
“I never asked you to chase after me!” Sasuke all but shouts, cursing Naruto and all his goddammed righteousness.
“And I never asked you to chase after me. But you did.”
Sasuke’s mouth falls open in a mix of indignation and shock-because as much as he wants to deny it, it is undeniably true.
Then Naruto leans in just a fraction closer, and the ground under Sasuke’s feet suddenly doesn’t feel so solid anymore. Everything else shifts out of focus with Naruto’s blue, blue eyes so startlingly close.
“Took you long enough too, but you’ve always been slow where it really matters, huh bastard?” Naruto whispers, and Sasuke feels every expelled word fan against his lips.
The next sensation he’s aware of is his back colliding painfully with the wall, knocking the air out of his lungs with a whoosh. Before he can gasp in a necessary breath-when his world stops spinning and the blackness recedes from the corners of his vision-he becomes acutely aware that doing so is impossible, because Naruto’s kissing him like he’s content to let him asphyxiate.
Then the world tilts sharply on its axis and Sasuke’s sure he’s dying, sure he’s dying because Naruto’s stealing all his air and the lack of oxygen to his brain has him pressing back just as hard.
Naruto only becomes conscious of what he’s doing about the minute he feels Sasuke’s unresponsive lips under his. Sasuke is frozen under his touch, shocked into stillness. Already planning his escape route and hoping Sasuke will at least be decent enough to take him to a hospital after he maims him, Naruto starts to lean back.
He never expects Sasuke to surge forward and kiss him back fiercely.
God, what is it with Uchihas shoving things down my throat? is his last dazed thought, before turning his full attention to more pressing matters. Like Sasuke’s tongue.
The kiss is brutal, bruising; as entrenched in fury and desperation as any one of their fights. They execute kisses like they would attacks-Naruto, at turns imprecise and achingly accurate, unfailingly impassioned; Sasuke, swift and ruthless, yet no less fervid. The blood in their mouths taints the kiss with the taste of copper, but it doesn’t stop them.
Like two objects caught in a powerful orbit around each other finally, finally converging, there’s an energy that’s been pulling them together for years, perhaps all their lives.
When Naruto breaks the kiss for air, Sasuke draws in a shuddering breath before Naruto dives back to slant his mouth back over his. Realizing he still has his hands around Sasuke’s wrists, Naruto lets go and runs his hands over Sasuke’s sides. Sasuke is all bone and corded muscle under his hands and the thin fabric of his shirt. He runs his hands over the body he has fought against more times than he can count, reveling in how unexpectedly warm it is.
He feels a fine, involuntary tremor pulse through Sasuke, and it only makes him groan and try to meld them closer together.
Sasuke’s hands come up and grip blindly at Naruto’s shoulders. He isn’t sure why Naruto is doing this, or why he himself is letting this happen, or why he’s responding to it so enthusiastically, for that matter. Maybe this, his last functioning brain cell supplies-whatever this is-explains why he had laid awake so many nights while the idiot had been “missing”, unable to sleep. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a seventeen-year-old boy and not a former S-class criminal-maybe this is what it feels like to be everyone but them, to be young and unburdened.
And maybe he isn’t the best authority on the matter of right and wrong, but he knows how unequivocally right this feels.
But he can’t be bothered to think about that too much right now because Naruto’s hips are making tight, unconscious circles against his own, and it’s all he can do not to let his knees buckle embarrassingly.
A particular movement of Naruto’s pelvis suddenly has them perfectly, gloriously aligned, and Sasuke registers through the haze in his mind that he is painfully, achingly hard. And, by the feel of it, so is Naruto.
Naruto apparently realizes this too, for he shifts and gives a deep, forceful thrust forward, grinding Sasuke into the wall.
Sasuke’s knuckles strain white against Naruto’s shoulders with the effort to keep himself standing, and he rips his mouth away from Naruto’s with a gasp. “Nnnhh,” he moans from behind his clenched teeth, his head tilting back.
He feels Naruto’s answering groan rumble straight through to his own chest, and it only makes their pace more frantic. Each crash of their hips has Naruto’s cock rubbing thrillingly, gratifyingly over his own, separated by only a few thin layers of cloth. Sasuke’s blood is boiling in an entirely new way, to the point where he’s half convinced Naruto is actually trying to kill him.
They don’t last long. For once, they are not skilled ninjas or experienced warriors, but two boys, seventeen and stupid, fumbling desperately for release in their clumsy inexperience.
Naruto leans down and bites Sasuke’s neck right in the spot where the curse mark used to be, tastes Sasuke’s skin under the sheen of sweat and grime. It’s enough to make Sasuke suddenly feel like he’s about to go careening over the edge of some treacherous precipice. All Naruto has to do is run a hand down Sasuke’s body to brush over the cloth covering the straining bulge and Sasuke comes to a shuddering release, gasping out involuntary little noises that make Naruto’s insides clench with longing.
“Nhh, fuck!” Naruto pants, watching Sasuke’s normally cold face twist up in pleasure from under lowered eyelids. He fists a hand in the hair at Sasuke’s sweaty nape and kisses him with everything he has, with everything he had to walk through hell to realize. The sensation of Sasuke’s lips parting willingly under his own, the realization that Sasuke is kissing him back, makes him come abruptly.
They stay slumped together for several minutes, shaking. Naruto rests his forehead against Sasuke’s equally sweaty one, trying to will his heartbeat down to a survivable pace. Almost unable to believe what just happened, he manages to suppress the face-splitting grin wanting to emerge.
Sasuke is faring little better; his eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving. When his eyes peel back open and rise to meet Naruto’s, Naruto cannot recall a time that he has seen Sasuke more unraveled. It makes him look endearingly… human.
Naruto lowers his head and trails a series of kisses down Sasuke’s jaw and neck. It’s such a tender gesture that Sasuke doesn’t know what to do. It’s infinitely more frightening than if Naruto were to hold a kunai against his jugular.
“Why did you leave?” he breathes out instead a few minutes later, when the ability to think and talk returns to him, ignoring for the moment the wetness seeping unpleasantly through his pants. He needs the answer to this question.
Naruto chuckles softly into his neck. “It was… sort of a test.”
“A test?”
“Yeah, a test. And,” Naruto says, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping Sasuke won’t take this the wrong way (because when has he ever done that?), “you, uh, passed.”
He’s met with a tense, suspicious silence. (Naruto has to resist rolling his eyes; Sasuke will let him dry hump him against a rough rock wall, but talking is out of the question? Typical.)
“I’d already left for my mission when I got a message from Kakashi. He told me they’d decided to left you live-heh, which I totally called, by the way-but that the council wanted to test your loyalties to the village, to determine if you still felt connected to it… That’s why they sent me away on a mission. When I finished early, Kakashi asked me to stay away from Konoha for a while longer, to ‘take a little vacation’. And I agreed,” Naruto murmurs, licking his dry lips. “Sakura was the only other person that knew about it. Kakashi said you were hardly leaving your house, that Sakura thought you seemed… sad? I didn’t know what to think when I heard that. He said he wanted to see what you’d do, that he thought you might come after me. I couldn’t even imagine you doing that,” Naruto swallows thickly. “I just… really hoped you would.”
Standing here, pressed against Sasuke like this, so new but so familiar, Naruto is reminded of that day in the rubble of Orochimaru’s lair. He has to will away the nausea summoned by the haunting similarity, by the painful memories that flash on the insides of his eyelids. But when he opens his eyes, Sasuke is here, here under his hands, here and real.
The thought makes his eyes moist.
Instead, he drops a soft kiss against the spot where the curse mark once stained Sasuke’s skin. “You can’t escape your bonds, Sasuke. You wouldn’t be here if you could.”
Without warning, Sasuke fists a hand in Naruto’s hair and yanks his head up. Sasuke’s eyes are narrowed. “It was a test for me too, in a way,” Naruto blurts out, suppressing a wince, before Sasuke can make up his mind about just how irritated he should be. “For the past four years, I’ve almost single-handedly chased after you, literally and otherwise, and now that you’re back… I needed to think about some things. I… I needed to take a little time to figure out who I am without you. If that makes sense.”
Sasuke isn’t sure why that’s difficult to hear, but he doesn’t want to think about it. He means to sneer, Haven’t you been without me this whole time? But instead it comes out, in nearly a whisper: “And what are you?”
Naruto grins nervously, and though he’s dying to look away, he keeps his eyes level with Sasuke’s. “…I would say empty, but that’s too dramatic, and not entirely true,” Naruto swallows, his throat fighting to keep his words there. “But I’m sure as hell not whole either,” he concludes softly.
Sasuke starts to scoff, but Naruto swallows his disbelief with his lips. He kisses him slowly, lazily this time, as if they’re allowed to do things like take their time and explore and be happy and experience that four-letter feeling he only recently started to admit to himself.
And they will be, at least if he has anything to do with it.
“I’m tired of chasing. I’m tired of running. And I think you are too,” he murmurs against Sasuke’s mouth.
Sasuke sighs and drops his head down until his forehead is resting against Naruto’s neck. It’s such an uncharacteristic action that Naruto’s hands hover hesitantly over Sasuke’s shoulders, afraid to move too much and break whatever spell or genjutsu is at work.
Sasuke is close enough to feel Naruto’s heartbeat, steady and unfailing. He has the odd thought that it would drown out the sound of the waterfall if he pressed his ear to it, but quickly dismisses it as nonsense, a consequence of spending too much time around Naruto. He blames Naruto’s big, stupid heart for all of this; for keeping too much room in it for him all these years, a space he never deserved.
Here, in the Valley of the End and here, mere inches from Naruto’s heart, Sasuke is so close to where everything could have gone irreparably wrong. Here, where one life came so horribly close to ending, is the chance for another to start anew.
“Idiot,” he mumbles. And somehow, as Naruto glances up at the two stone figures towering over the Valley, he takes that to mean that things have a chance of finally being okay.
~*~*~*~
On the way back to Konoha, Sasuke informs Naruto that there is a stop they should make. (“On the way home” is what Sasuke actually says, albeit unconsciously, and Naruto has to hide his grin the entire way there.)
Sasuke knows that he’ll go blind one day, likely even soon. But he’s pretty sure that the look on Naruto’s face when he first sees the Great Naruto Bridge-the image of Naruto, resplendent and smiling and framed by a backdrop of glimmering sea-will be enough to sustain him in the darkness.
He isn’t exactly sure how they got to this point, and even less sure about what tomorrow will bring. And for some reason, that’s alright.
He thinks that maybe this is what Naruto meant about living. That maybe living to learn is impossible without first learning to live.
After all, the most important bridges are not those burnt, but those rebuilt.
The End.
~*~*~*~
A/N: Where to begin? First of all, I’m sure that my action scenes are shaky and somewhat choppy at best. And not nearly epic enough i.e. I think they suck DX … meh. I wasn’t able to put the amount of detail into them that I would have liked because I had to rush a little bit. I hope they were at least tolerable, and made an iota of sense…
I also was continually conscious of making them as IC as possible, given that right now it’s difficult to imagine an “after” to what’s going on right now (let alone a potentially “happy” and satisfyingly gay scenario XD).
As you’ve probably noticed, I’m fascinated by the notion of repetition: Sasuke and Sakura’s encounter as Sasuke’s leaving Konoha, Valley of the End, the bridge… And I like the idea of Sasuke and Naruto resolving things at the Valley of the End. There’s so much symbolism too, regarding how the Rikudou’s sons inherited his “eyes” (physical strength/strength as a key to peace) and his “body” (strength of heart/love as a key to peace), respectively. Thus, the Uchiha and Senju finally coming together in Sasuke and Naruto, strength and love combined. …I’m such a sap.
Anyway, I hope you liked this!