[Fic] There's Still Hope
Those who participated in naruto_wishlist may recognize this fanfic (feel free to skip over it if you've already read it), but I figured there was no reason not to post it in this community under my actual username, seeing as I have nothing better to do at the moment anyway. Hope you enjoy it!
Title: There's Still Hope
Pairing(s): Hinted SasuNaru, but can easily be interpreted otherwise.
Warning(s): Spoilers past episode 135, small amounts of angst and some minor language.
Genre(s): General/Angst, I suppose.
Rating: PG
Word Length: 4493 words.
Summary: Naruto has had trouble lately dealing with the loss of Sasuke, causing him to have some bizarre dreams that seem to have no relevance at all to anything. And yet, while on a mission with Sakura, suddenly everything makes sense....
There's Still Hope
--
The root of the problem was that Naruto was unaccustomed to losing things.
Before everything happened, he had been accustomed to having nothing at all--nothing to protect but himself, no one to fight for but his own ideals, no inherent purpose that reached beyond the shell of his own life.
That is why--when Uzumaki Naruto ended up in the real world, with friends and enemies and motives and different viewpoints and ideas he never could have imagined on his own--he intended to keep all aspects of that real world forever and ever and never let a single person or a single idea or a single world escape him. It didn’t even occur to him that one could lose a person like one loses anything else-suddenly disappears-not dead, just…gone.
So when Naruto lost Sasuke--lost him in the most painful way, and lost him with a violence he had never experienced before--he didn’t quite know how to react. His initial response was just to angst about it. That only worked for so long, because…well, it was so passive and pointless and, truth be told, it was actually quite boring. Once he reached past that, which was basically just how long it took for the pain pills to wear off, he began obsessing. Get Sasuke back…get Sasuke back…get Sasuke back, His mind chanted to him, half-mad and half-sane and half becoming his life’s motto and his background music and the single idea that swarmed around him like a fly bothering at a horse.
He didn’t know how to lose, and he definitely didn’t know how to lose the most important thing of all.
For a deluded amount of time, this obsessing made him feel better. It didn’t allow him the time to face Sasuke’s empty house or those looks of downright dejection Sakura-chan gave him or the way the townspeople whispered about the one who left Konoha behind without even a single look back or a word of apology. It didn’t let him come to grips with the fact that people moved on with their lives, whether he liked it or not, and that the village continued on despite Sasuke’s disappearance. It made him want to scream--to scream like a bobcat or a madman or a bird caught in a net. Because it was Sasuke--it was his best friend and his worst enemy and his teammate and his adversary and the one person who needed him more than he needed himself.
But intermittently he got so tired of this obsessing that he had to take a break. Take a break and look around him and try to think about how much of his world was still intact instead of dwelling on that one minuscule, gigantic, central piece that was missing. And when he did take these breaks he realized just how tired he was--world-weary, almost--so enthusiastic that he was forgetting what exactly he was so enthusiastic about.
Occasionally when he was thinking about this, he would think about Sasuke. No, not the Sasuke in his head that he was chasing and chasing and chasing even if he didn’t know what direction he was going any more--just…Sasuke. That bastard who always taunted him and never told him anything and acted so stuck-up and fought him constantly and…acknowledged him. And when he remembered who Sasuke was--Sasuke as a person, and not Sasuke as a goal that loomed on the sunset like a spider web--it hurt just a little more and in a slightly different place. He was numb by now to the idealistic, goal-Sasuke in his head, but when he remembered Sasuke-Sasuke, it hit some sort of a strange chord in his mind and he’d typically spend a second or two trying to remember instead of trying to imagine. He’d glance up into the sky and just scowl and his eyes would get all glossy and something that wasn’t quite regret and wasn’t quite bitterness and wasn’t quite nostalgia would reach his features.
Then and only then would it occur to him that Sasuke still existed--just as he did--and that somewhere Sasuke was busy existing and living and not necessarily enjoying it but still being alive and not being dead, not being gone, not being nonexistent. This came almost as a shock to him every time, because in his mind Sasuke was so lost to him that he was almost dead and buried under a gravestone with some stupid euphemistic epitaph carved on it, but the truth was he wasn’t and he was alive, and Naruto had trouble remembering that. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that--he knew it was true--it was just conceptually difficult for him that Sasuke could be gone but not dead and not rotting in the cold ground. That was where everyone else who had disappeared from his life had gone. He used to think that might be the only way to escape him. Not that Sasuke had escaped him for good, mind you, but he had escaped for a while and that was enough to disprove Naruto’s theory and that just wasn’t fair at all.
However, one of the more disturbing things for Naruto to accept (and it was quite small, comparatively) was that in the months following Sasuke’s departure, he never dreamed of him once. Here he devoted so much of his waking time thinking about that bastard and he didn’t even have to courtesy to show up in his dreams. In fact, he barely dreamed anything at all that he could remember, and when he did remember it seemed insignificant and irrelevant to his problems. Weren’t dreams supposed to be enlightening, or at least helpful? His sure weren’t, or at least not in any way he could figure out.
In fact, he kept dreaming about the stupidest thing of all, in his opinion.
A patch of grass, to be exact. Just this dumb, still patch of grass with a sense of cicadas buzzing in the background and summer licking at the air around the haphazard clump. And when he woke up from dreaming about this grass, he could remember every blade, every way the light hit its slender stalks, and even the nonexistent smell of crumbling ground and the feeling of a wide-mouthed sky all around him.
It was even more stupid that this impression lingered in his mind and he couldn’t rid himself of it no matter how hard he tried. It just…clung to him, in the way that a burr clings to fox fur and he found himself thinking about it and being distracted by it at inopportune moments. He was stabbed in the leg by a shuriken during a training session because he was so busy thinking about that patch of grass. Granted, the wound healed by the time he and Sakura left the training grounds, but it was still upsetting. He considered complaining to Kakashi-sensei about the whole business, but he figured it would just cement any doubts Kakashi already had about Naruto’s sanity and that was the last thing he wanted. “Kakashi-sensei, I can’t train because I can’t stop thinking about grass! Kakashi-sensei, is that bad?” was not the most normal conversation to have with your teacher, especially when he’s already worried about how you’re handling the stress of losing your best friend. So, he kept it hidden the best he could under his Sasuke-chanting and ramen-loving and ninja-training and the rest of that chaotic clump that made up Naruto’s mind.
And chaotic it was. For a very long time after Sasuke left, Naruto’s mind was as haphazard as a field of glass shards and velvet. Sometimes, admittedly, he felt like everything was okay and sort of normal and that life could just continue on. Other times--contemplative, delicate times--he wished he had a pause button for the world because everything would hit him like a tsunami across his face, and he’d just wish he could move aside and not have to deal with any of it. Those times worried him a bit, because he was Naruto, and he would be Hokage someday, and he wasn’t one to let gloom get past his yellow hair and lopsided smile, much less tangle itself up in his brain to gnaw on his deepest fears.
To relieve these anxieties, he slept with Sasuke’s hitai-ate on his pillow. Sometimes, though, this wasn’t close enough for him because he couldn’t feel it in his hands and he would wake up from half-dreams believing it had disappeared--left him behind, laughing and violent--just like Sasuke had. So, in order to sleep, he would tangle the fabric sides of it around his arm and stroke up and down the scraped metal surface with his thumb, visiting and revisiting the crossed-out Konoha mark like it was an old scar. This comforted him somehow. Perhaps again it was the physicality of it--a reminder that the memories of Sasuke actually happened, and weren’t fever dreams or stories he read a long time ago.
Sakura didn’t help the whole situation much. For the most part, she remained strong and calm in the face of Sasuke’s absence (and he admired that about her), but occasionally she broke down, too. Something would remind her of Sasuke and she’d either just shut off suddenly (the light flickering out of her eyes), or she’d become very irritable for no good reason. Sometimes she’d even disappear entirely, and when she came back he could tell that she had been crying, and this made him exceptionally uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to say to ease the pain for either of them--it wasn’t like he could make Sasuke out to be some noble martyr. It wasn’t as though Sasuke had died some heroic death, it wasn’t as though Sasuke was taken captive against his will--he had left of his own volition, he had tried to kill Naruto, and that was even more painful to them than if he had been kidnapped. He had left them behind, not caring what their fates would be as a result, not caring that they cared, not caring that he was betraying the very village that he had grown up in and the very friends who would give their lives for him in a second.
-----
The early days of summer came and went carelessly in Konoha. The summer passed in the manner of a suspended reality for Naruto--lacking Sasuke, he was left looking for companionship amongst Sakura, Kiba, Shikamaru, Chouji, and his three teachers, but they only filled so much of the void. Naruto spent so much time going on missions and begging Tsunade to let him go search for Sasuke some more that his summer drained past him in much the same way that water in a bathtub does. Wake, eat, torment Tsunade baa-chan, eat lunch, check for missions, complete said missions if need be, eat dinner, go to sleep.
The day that something finally happened was one of those days, about eight months after Sasuke had left. Naruto woke reluctantly to the sun assaulting his eyes, changed out of his pajamas, and ate some dry cereal for breakfast. When his morning rituals were finished, off to the Hokage office he strutted, confident that this time, Tsunade would be sympathetic to his loud and not entirely eloquent ramblings about why exactly he needed to go after Sasuke. Naturally, she wasn’t (and she even flicked his forehead not-so-lightly to get him to leave her alone), and so after approximately six seconds of sulking, he sprinted off to meet Iruka-sensei at Ichiraku Ramen.
Later in the day, after a bit of tussling with Kiba (in the middle of the street, but that wasn’t the point and they didn’t disturb anyone too much anyway), he received an assignment for a mission. It was nothing special--he and Sakura were to deliver a scroll to a neighboring village. Typical D-rank stuff, and the only thing that made it even the tiniest bit unusual for a D-rank mission was that it was to span across the space of two days. Kakashi had his own business to take care of, so Naruto and Sakura were expected to complete the mission on their own. Also not unusual--Kakashi accompanied them mostly on the dangerous missions lately, and skipped out on the more chore-like of their tasks. He was loaded down with his own vastly more important A- and S-rank missions to complete, so they understood and did the best they could without him.
Naruto packed provisions and a sleeping bag in his backpack and set off to retrieve Sakura from her house just as the sun was beginning to bronze with late afternoon. He left Sasuke’s hitai-ate on his pillow at home, figuring it unreasonable and a little silly to carry it with him even on missions.
The mission went off just as expected-no enemy ambushes, nothing eventful in the slightest. They took the back roads out of Konoha, chatted idly with one another, and set up camp when it got too dark to see the path ahead. Because the summer night was balmy and free of drafts, the two settled down in a field where they could see the expanses of night sky clearly from their sleeping bags. And-as is bound to happen when two friends sit under the stars together-they began to discuss more weighty issues than their earlier chitchat, hoping to untangle some of their feelings.
“Hey, Naruto?”
“Yeah?”
Sakura rustled in her sleeping bag and turned over to look Naruto in the eye as best as she could in the deepening darkness. Her eyes were just bright enough that they shone over the screen of dusk, and her chin rested thoughtfully on her arms. “How are we going to get him back?”
Naruto remained silent and fidgeted with a clasp on his sleeping bag while he tumbled this around in his mind. Subconsciously, it was the question he had been asking himself all along-but when asked by another person, and Sakura, no less, it suddenly took on a new meaning. The question had always been there, in the background of his mind staring at him like a frightened animal, but now it was up in the front of his consciousness, demanding an answer.
Sakura paused in hopes of a response, but continued when none came and Naruto avoided her eye contact while he thought. “He chose of his own free will to leave us, and neither of us could convince him, no matter how hard we tried. What are we going to do that can convince him?”
It didn’t feel like the right answer, but he didn’t know what the right answer was in the first place, so he merely said, “We’ll just have to try harder next time. We’ll…the two of us will… We’ll work together. We’re a team, and he belongs on it, too, dammit.” The ‘dammit’ was supposed to come out sounding determined, but it came out meeker than he wanted it to be-almost a whisper. A pause, a sigh, and a confession followed. “I don’t know, Sakura. I don’t know what we can do-but we’ll figure something out. You, ‘n me, ‘n Kakashi-sensei-we can do it together, right?” He tipped his head endearingly, like a puppy might, and smiled at her a little.
“I hope so, Naruto… I just wish we could do more-just do something to get him back, or even just… I don’t know-I wish we had some sort of a sign or something. Just to know we can do it. It gets really discouraging after so much time has passed, y’know? I just wish we could know somehow that there’s still a chance.”
“There is one,” Naruto intoned stubbornly, biting his lip and crossing his arms under his head. “There’s still a chance. Absolutely. Definitely.”
“It’s easy to say that, but- ”
“Sakura, quit it! We’ll bring him back, even if it kills us! And I mean that!” Naruto asserted, frowning up at the stars before he shifted from his back on to his stomach. He pinned Sakura with an intense blue glare, which she could only barely make out in the gloom.
She couldn’t help but smile at that. It startled her, almost-the passion that he declared that statement with. He had promised her before, and that had been impassioned, too, but this was almost a new level of stubbornness.
After he was sure his assertion was absorbed, he added carefully. “Sasuke’s our teammate. We can never give up on him-no matter what. He’s our friend.”
“I never said I’d give up on him,” Sakura hissed, offended that Naruto would even consider she would give up on him. “I never will-I won’t give up on him any easier than you will.”
“Good,” Naruto turned over again, mind simmering with determination to the point where he was shaking. However, he soon relaxed, and his voice softened finally. “Good night, Sakura-chan.”
“Good night,” she said back, very tenderly, and somewhat comforted. Both of them knew they wouldn’t sleep well.
Naruto thought for a very long time after that-for all his external confidence, his actual plans were jumbled and confused almost beyond repair. How would we he react when he saw Sasuke again? He played over the scenario a few times in his mind, and each time he couldn’t quite decide how it ended. Would his anger overcome his sorrow? Would he be happy to see the bastard again? Would it end up like last time…? Would he be able to save him after all…? And even if he did…what would happen next? It wasn’t like Sasuke could just come back like nothing had ever happened-there was a divide now, wider than a canyon, between former Sasuke and current Sasuke. Would Tsunade even let him back in the first place? He hadn’t thought of that before…Sasuke was a danger to Konoha, after all, and it would be all-too-easy to fake the desire to come back only to betray them again. What if Sasuke came back and changed his mind? Could Naruto survive losing him all over again?
Questions flurried in his head, and no matter how he tried to push them away, they continued tormenting him. He suddenly wished he had the hitai-ate after all, just so he could get some sleep. He eventually distracted himself by counting his breaths, but even with that to aid him, it still took him at least another hour to fall into a fitful sleep.
He dreamed again of the grass patch, and it was even more vivid this time than it had ever been before. It was familiar by now, and as much as he was irritated by it, this time it almost felt nostalgic…comforting, like this was somehow the answer to all of his problems. The air was so still, and the sky so peaceful, and the world just seemed like it was whole again, as opposed to the broken sky and disquiet that now made up such a big part of his life.
He woke when the sensation of the morning sun resting on his cheek leaked into his consciousness. He stirred, straining his eyes into the newborn light that streamed over the still-sleeping form of Sakura and the field that surrounded them. Initially, his mind was a blank slate-still warm and glowing from the grass dream and its strange comfort-but the moment he thought of Sasuke again, he began to feel frustration rise like an ocean swell in his chest. In an attempt to calm himself, he took a deep breath and wriggled out of his sleeping bag, crumpling it up and sitting cross-legged on it. Sakura stirred in her sleep at the sounds of the fabric moving, but she turned over and continued to sleep when he stopped squirming.
Sasuke… He almost said it aloud, but he wasn’t quite sure just how awake Sakura-chan was and he didn’t want to wake or worry her. Sasuke…where are you? He clenched his eyes shut. Sakura-chan was right--he did wish they had some sort of a sign, or at least an idea that could give them even the smallest amount of hope. Not that he believed things like that happened anyway--you know, signs and premonitions and things that show up at just the right time to restore faith--but he figured wishing for one couldn’t do any harm.
As he was thinking about this, a black butterfly wobbled past on a breeze, flitted one lap around his head, and drifted off above a trail leading out of the field.
That’s funny… He thought, his eyes tracking the butterfly. I’ve never seen a black butterfly like that one before.
And maybe because he had just been thinking about signs and fate and all those sorts of things, he figured that maybe this was his sign--albeit a slightly ridiculous one, admittedly.
“Sakura-chan?” He said gently, shaking her shoulder.
She turned over and slitted one green eye at him hazily. “Hm…?” She murmured, brushing a lock of pink hair out of her face as she peered at him drowsily. “What is it, Naruto?”
“I’m…um…going for a little walk, okay?” He said quietly as he tied his hitai-ate on his forehead.
“Okay,” she muttered, cuddling back up to her pillow and closing her eyes. “Just don’t be too long, ‘kay?”
“I won’t,” he promised, keeping the corner of his eye on the butterfly and then trotting off to join it.
Naruto soon discovered that following a butterfly is a harder than it sounds. It lead him in loops and constantly brought him off the trail, but still he followed it as if it were something serious--a mission, or a promise. At one point, it even did an about-face and brought him back to the field where Sakura-chan was just beginning to get out of her sleeping bag. He almost gave up on this ridiculous idea of his at this point, but just as he began to think he really was being silly beyond help, the butterfly straightened out its path and headed back towards the trail.
From here on out, the butterfly’s path followed the trail more-or-less, until--at the last second--it veered on to a sort of side-trail. Naruto followed it faithfully through a grove of birch trees where sunlight twinkled on the ground in dappled yellows and slanted rays, and into a smaller meadow than the one he had left Sakura in.
The moment he stepped into this meadow, a very eerie feeling began to overtake his body. It was almost ghostly in a way--goosebumps raised on his arms, and he felt a profound shiver clutch him in its indistinct grip. The butterfly circled whimsically in the clearing as Naruto came to grips with his feelings, and eventually shook off the escalating feeling that he was being watched by something supernatural.
Cicadas buzzed in the background and the hot, dry sunshine shining on the clearing seemed fixed, adding to the strange stillness in the clearing. It was surrounded by birches on every side and engulfed by a cloudless blue sky--and the smell of warm dirt and thick grass drifted in the meadow like perfume. Something about it seemed very…nostalgic, or strange, or just…too tranquil. There was not a single bent blade of grass in the whole circular clearing, which lead Naruto to wonder just why nothing had stepped in here recently--not even a deer or some other forest animal.
The butterfly suddenly spiraled downwards and landed on a blade of grass as Naruto made the first footprint in the grass. For a moment, he forgot about the butterfly, but when his eyes caught it again, the goosebumps raised again in alarm.
For there--and it was unmistakable--was the patch of grass that had been in his dreams. Exactly how he had dreamed of it--every stalk in place, every bit of sunlight touching the right areas…perfectly the right shade. The only difference was the black butterfly, perched on one blade and moving its wings up and down with the hesitant regularity of a heartbeat.
The eerie feeling that had enveloped him earlier returned tenfold--but even more so, he felt a sort of comfort, more solid and altogether more affecting than it had been when he had dreamed of it the night before. It was like hearing again a song he hadn’t heard since childhood, or finding something important to you after having lost it for many years. Although it scared the butterfly away--off into the spectral depths of the birch forest--he couldn’t help but go over to the little patch of grass and touch it with his fingertips, like a child would investigate the fur of a small animal. Just to make sure it was real and tangible and he could touch it.
He just so happened to glance up as he was crouching over the patch of grass, and if he felt altogether spooked, comforted, and thrilled before this, it was nothing compared to how he felt after. His heart leapt at the walls of his chest as a sight too strange and too wonderful for him to even comprehend met his eyes.
There, on the other side of the clearing, stood Sasuke. His eyes stared back at Naruto in the same aloof manner as they always had before violence had overtaken them, and his elbow was crooked out in a ninety-degree angle, hand resting on one hip, an almost-not-quite-smile flitting somewhere in his facial features somehow. A light wind ruffled his hair and flapped in his clothes.
Before Naruto could even finish saying Sasuke’s name, before it had even registered in his mind exactly what he was seeing, before Naruto could decide what emotion he was feeling at the sight of his best friend, worst enemy… In the blink of an eye, Sasuke was gone, leaving not a footprint or a trace in his wake.
For a moment, Naruto could do nothing but stand and shiver as though a cold wind was blowing through his body. He took a moment to catch his breath, to simplify the train wreck of thoughts in his head into something he could comprehend--and, as he did that, he realized that, of course, there was no way he could have seen Sasuke. Sasuke was miles away by now--in Sound--Sasuke could never, ever be in this field at this moment--Sasuke could never disappear that quickly, and without a trace.
Naruto concluded in great disappointment that he could only be hallucinating. However, out of mere curiosity, he crossed the field to investigate the exact location of where the Sasuke-apparition had been standing
There, nestled among the grass and the dirt and the sunshine, was Sasuke’s hitai-ate, dappled with sunlight, still scarred from their fight--sitting there in material form as if waiting for him.
Naruto picked it up, running his thumb over it like he had always done when trying to fall asleep, stared into the sky, and smiled, a ghost of hope rising in his chest, stronger than it had ever been before.
He had gotten his sign.
Title: There's Still Hope
Pairing(s): Hinted SasuNaru, but can easily be interpreted otherwise.
Warning(s): Spoilers past episode 135, small amounts of angst and some minor language.
Genre(s): General/Angst, I suppose.
Rating: PG
Word Length: 4493 words.
Summary: Naruto has had trouble lately dealing with the loss of Sasuke, causing him to have some bizarre dreams that seem to have no relevance at all to anything. And yet, while on a mission with Sakura, suddenly everything makes sense....
There's Still Hope
--
The root of the problem was that Naruto was unaccustomed to losing things.
Before everything happened, he had been accustomed to having nothing at all--nothing to protect but himself, no one to fight for but his own ideals, no inherent purpose that reached beyond the shell of his own life.
That is why--when Uzumaki Naruto ended up in the real world, with friends and enemies and motives and different viewpoints and ideas he never could have imagined on his own--he intended to keep all aspects of that real world forever and ever and never let a single person or a single idea or a single world escape him. It didn’t even occur to him that one could lose a person like one loses anything else-suddenly disappears-not dead, just…gone.
So when Naruto lost Sasuke--lost him in the most painful way, and lost him with a violence he had never experienced before--he didn’t quite know how to react. His initial response was just to angst about it. That only worked for so long, because…well, it was so passive and pointless and, truth be told, it was actually quite boring. Once he reached past that, which was basically just how long it took for the pain pills to wear off, he began obsessing. Get Sasuke back…get Sasuke back…get Sasuke back, His mind chanted to him, half-mad and half-sane and half becoming his life’s motto and his background music and the single idea that swarmed around him like a fly bothering at a horse.
He didn’t know how to lose, and he definitely didn’t know how to lose the most important thing of all.
For a deluded amount of time, this obsessing made him feel better. It didn’t allow him the time to face Sasuke’s empty house or those looks of downright dejection Sakura-chan gave him or the way the townspeople whispered about the one who left Konoha behind without even a single look back or a word of apology. It didn’t let him come to grips with the fact that people moved on with their lives, whether he liked it or not, and that the village continued on despite Sasuke’s disappearance. It made him want to scream--to scream like a bobcat or a madman or a bird caught in a net. Because it was Sasuke--it was his best friend and his worst enemy and his teammate and his adversary and the one person who needed him more than he needed himself.
But intermittently he got so tired of this obsessing that he had to take a break. Take a break and look around him and try to think about how much of his world was still intact instead of dwelling on that one minuscule, gigantic, central piece that was missing. And when he did take these breaks he realized just how tired he was--world-weary, almost--so enthusiastic that he was forgetting what exactly he was so enthusiastic about.
Occasionally when he was thinking about this, he would think about Sasuke. No, not the Sasuke in his head that he was chasing and chasing and chasing even if he didn’t know what direction he was going any more--just…Sasuke. That bastard who always taunted him and never told him anything and acted so stuck-up and fought him constantly and…acknowledged him. And when he remembered who Sasuke was--Sasuke as a person, and not Sasuke as a goal that loomed on the sunset like a spider web--it hurt just a little more and in a slightly different place. He was numb by now to the idealistic, goal-Sasuke in his head, but when he remembered Sasuke-Sasuke, it hit some sort of a strange chord in his mind and he’d typically spend a second or two trying to remember instead of trying to imagine. He’d glance up into the sky and just scowl and his eyes would get all glossy and something that wasn’t quite regret and wasn’t quite bitterness and wasn’t quite nostalgia would reach his features.
Then and only then would it occur to him that Sasuke still existed--just as he did--and that somewhere Sasuke was busy existing and living and not necessarily enjoying it but still being alive and not being dead, not being gone, not being nonexistent. This came almost as a shock to him every time, because in his mind Sasuke was so lost to him that he was almost dead and buried under a gravestone with some stupid euphemistic epitaph carved on it, but the truth was he wasn’t and he was alive, and Naruto had trouble remembering that. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that--he knew it was true--it was just conceptually difficult for him that Sasuke could be gone but not dead and not rotting in the cold ground. That was where everyone else who had disappeared from his life had gone. He used to think that might be the only way to escape him. Not that Sasuke had escaped him for good, mind you, but he had escaped for a while and that was enough to disprove Naruto’s theory and that just wasn’t fair at all.
However, one of the more disturbing things for Naruto to accept (and it was quite small, comparatively) was that in the months following Sasuke’s departure, he never dreamed of him once. Here he devoted so much of his waking time thinking about that bastard and he didn’t even have to courtesy to show up in his dreams. In fact, he barely dreamed anything at all that he could remember, and when he did remember it seemed insignificant and irrelevant to his problems. Weren’t dreams supposed to be enlightening, or at least helpful? His sure weren’t, or at least not in any way he could figure out.
In fact, he kept dreaming about the stupidest thing of all, in his opinion.
A patch of grass, to be exact. Just this dumb, still patch of grass with a sense of cicadas buzzing in the background and summer licking at the air around the haphazard clump. And when he woke up from dreaming about this grass, he could remember every blade, every way the light hit its slender stalks, and even the nonexistent smell of crumbling ground and the feeling of a wide-mouthed sky all around him.
It was even more stupid that this impression lingered in his mind and he couldn’t rid himself of it no matter how hard he tried. It just…clung to him, in the way that a burr clings to fox fur and he found himself thinking about it and being distracted by it at inopportune moments. He was stabbed in the leg by a shuriken during a training session because he was so busy thinking about that patch of grass. Granted, the wound healed by the time he and Sakura left the training grounds, but it was still upsetting. He considered complaining to Kakashi-sensei about the whole business, but he figured it would just cement any doubts Kakashi already had about Naruto’s sanity and that was the last thing he wanted. “Kakashi-sensei, I can’t train because I can’t stop thinking about grass! Kakashi-sensei, is that bad?” was not the most normal conversation to have with your teacher, especially when he’s already worried about how you’re handling the stress of losing your best friend. So, he kept it hidden the best he could under his Sasuke-chanting and ramen-loving and ninja-training and the rest of that chaotic clump that made up Naruto’s mind.
And chaotic it was. For a very long time after Sasuke left, Naruto’s mind was as haphazard as a field of glass shards and velvet. Sometimes, admittedly, he felt like everything was okay and sort of normal and that life could just continue on. Other times--contemplative, delicate times--he wished he had a pause button for the world because everything would hit him like a tsunami across his face, and he’d just wish he could move aside and not have to deal with any of it. Those times worried him a bit, because he was Naruto, and he would be Hokage someday, and he wasn’t one to let gloom get past his yellow hair and lopsided smile, much less tangle itself up in his brain to gnaw on his deepest fears.
To relieve these anxieties, he slept with Sasuke’s hitai-ate on his pillow. Sometimes, though, this wasn’t close enough for him because he couldn’t feel it in his hands and he would wake up from half-dreams believing it had disappeared--left him behind, laughing and violent--just like Sasuke had. So, in order to sleep, he would tangle the fabric sides of it around his arm and stroke up and down the scraped metal surface with his thumb, visiting and revisiting the crossed-out Konoha mark like it was an old scar. This comforted him somehow. Perhaps again it was the physicality of it--a reminder that the memories of Sasuke actually happened, and weren’t fever dreams or stories he read a long time ago.
Sakura didn’t help the whole situation much. For the most part, she remained strong and calm in the face of Sasuke’s absence (and he admired that about her), but occasionally she broke down, too. Something would remind her of Sasuke and she’d either just shut off suddenly (the light flickering out of her eyes), or she’d become very irritable for no good reason. Sometimes she’d even disappear entirely, and when she came back he could tell that she had been crying, and this made him exceptionally uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to say to ease the pain for either of them--it wasn’t like he could make Sasuke out to be some noble martyr. It wasn’t as though Sasuke had died some heroic death, it wasn’t as though Sasuke was taken captive against his will--he had left of his own volition, he had tried to kill Naruto, and that was even more painful to them than if he had been kidnapped. He had left them behind, not caring what their fates would be as a result, not caring that they cared, not caring that he was betraying the very village that he had grown up in and the very friends who would give their lives for him in a second.
-----
The early days of summer came and went carelessly in Konoha. The summer passed in the manner of a suspended reality for Naruto--lacking Sasuke, he was left looking for companionship amongst Sakura, Kiba, Shikamaru, Chouji, and his three teachers, but they only filled so much of the void. Naruto spent so much time going on missions and begging Tsunade to let him go search for Sasuke some more that his summer drained past him in much the same way that water in a bathtub does. Wake, eat, torment Tsunade baa-chan, eat lunch, check for missions, complete said missions if need be, eat dinner, go to sleep.
The day that something finally happened was one of those days, about eight months after Sasuke had left. Naruto woke reluctantly to the sun assaulting his eyes, changed out of his pajamas, and ate some dry cereal for breakfast. When his morning rituals were finished, off to the Hokage office he strutted, confident that this time, Tsunade would be sympathetic to his loud and not entirely eloquent ramblings about why exactly he needed to go after Sasuke. Naturally, she wasn’t (and she even flicked his forehead not-so-lightly to get him to leave her alone), and so after approximately six seconds of sulking, he sprinted off to meet Iruka-sensei at Ichiraku Ramen.
Later in the day, after a bit of tussling with Kiba (in the middle of the street, but that wasn’t the point and they didn’t disturb anyone too much anyway), he received an assignment for a mission. It was nothing special--he and Sakura were to deliver a scroll to a neighboring village. Typical D-rank stuff, and the only thing that made it even the tiniest bit unusual for a D-rank mission was that it was to span across the space of two days. Kakashi had his own business to take care of, so Naruto and Sakura were expected to complete the mission on their own. Also not unusual--Kakashi accompanied them mostly on the dangerous missions lately, and skipped out on the more chore-like of their tasks. He was loaded down with his own vastly more important A- and S-rank missions to complete, so they understood and did the best they could without him.
Naruto packed provisions and a sleeping bag in his backpack and set off to retrieve Sakura from her house just as the sun was beginning to bronze with late afternoon. He left Sasuke’s hitai-ate on his pillow at home, figuring it unreasonable and a little silly to carry it with him even on missions.
The mission went off just as expected-no enemy ambushes, nothing eventful in the slightest. They took the back roads out of Konoha, chatted idly with one another, and set up camp when it got too dark to see the path ahead. Because the summer night was balmy and free of drafts, the two settled down in a field where they could see the expanses of night sky clearly from their sleeping bags. And-as is bound to happen when two friends sit under the stars together-they began to discuss more weighty issues than their earlier chitchat, hoping to untangle some of their feelings.
“Hey, Naruto?”
“Yeah?”
Sakura rustled in her sleeping bag and turned over to look Naruto in the eye as best as she could in the deepening darkness. Her eyes were just bright enough that they shone over the screen of dusk, and her chin rested thoughtfully on her arms. “How are we going to get him back?”
Naruto remained silent and fidgeted with a clasp on his sleeping bag while he tumbled this around in his mind. Subconsciously, it was the question he had been asking himself all along-but when asked by another person, and Sakura, no less, it suddenly took on a new meaning. The question had always been there, in the background of his mind staring at him like a frightened animal, but now it was up in the front of his consciousness, demanding an answer.
Sakura paused in hopes of a response, but continued when none came and Naruto avoided her eye contact while he thought. “He chose of his own free will to leave us, and neither of us could convince him, no matter how hard we tried. What are we going to do that can convince him?”
It didn’t feel like the right answer, but he didn’t know what the right answer was in the first place, so he merely said, “We’ll just have to try harder next time. We’ll…the two of us will… We’ll work together. We’re a team, and he belongs on it, too, dammit.” The ‘dammit’ was supposed to come out sounding determined, but it came out meeker than he wanted it to be-almost a whisper. A pause, a sigh, and a confession followed. “I don’t know, Sakura. I don’t know what we can do-but we’ll figure something out. You, ‘n me, ‘n Kakashi-sensei-we can do it together, right?” He tipped his head endearingly, like a puppy might, and smiled at her a little.
“I hope so, Naruto… I just wish we could do more-just do something to get him back, or even just… I don’t know-I wish we had some sort of a sign or something. Just to know we can do it. It gets really discouraging after so much time has passed, y’know? I just wish we could know somehow that there’s still a chance.”
“There is one,” Naruto intoned stubbornly, biting his lip and crossing his arms under his head. “There’s still a chance. Absolutely. Definitely.”
“It’s easy to say that, but- ”
“Sakura, quit it! We’ll bring him back, even if it kills us! And I mean that!” Naruto asserted, frowning up at the stars before he shifted from his back on to his stomach. He pinned Sakura with an intense blue glare, which she could only barely make out in the gloom.
She couldn’t help but smile at that. It startled her, almost-the passion that he declared that statement with. He had promised her before, and that had been impassioned, too, but this was almost a new level of stubbornness.
After he was sure his assertion was absorbed, he added carefully. “Sasuke’s our teammate. We can never give up on him-no matter what. He’s our friend.”
“I never said I’d give up on him,” Sakura hissed, offended that Naruto would even consider she would give up on him. “I never will-I won’t give up on him any easier than you will.”
“Good,” Naruto turned over again, mind simmering with determination to the point where he was shaking. However, he soon relaxed, and his voice softened finally. “Good night, Sakura-chan.”
“Good night,” she said back, very tenderly, and somewhat comforted. Both of them knew they wouldn’t sleep well.
Naruto thought for a very long time after that-for all his external confidence, his actual plans were jumbled and confused almost beyond repair. How would we he react when he saw Sasuke again? He played over the scenario a few times in his mind, and each time he couldn’t quite decide how it ended. Would his anger overcome his sorrow? Would he be happy to see the bastard again? Would it end up like last time…? Would he be able to save him after all…? And even if he did…what would happen next? It wasn’t like Sasuke could just come back like nothing had ever happened-there was a divide now, wider than a canyon, between former Sasuke and current Sasuke. Would Tsunade even let him back in the first place? He hadn’t thought of that before…Sasuke was a danger to Konoha, after all, and it would be all-too-easy to fake the desire to come back only to betray them again. What if Sasuke came back and changed his mind? Could Naruto survive losing him all over again?
Questions flurried in his head, and no matter how he tried to push them away, they continued tormenting him. He suddenly wished he had the hitai-ate after all, just so he could get some sleep. He eventually distracted himself by counting his breaths, but even with that to aid him, it still took him at least another hour to fall into a fitful sleep.
He dreamed again of the grass patch, and it was even more vivid this time than it had ever been before. It was familiar by now, and as much as he was irritated by it, this time it almost felt nostalgic…comforting, like this was somehow the answer to all of his problems. The air was so still, and the sky so peaceful, and the world just seemed like it was whole again, as opposed to the broken sky and disquiet that now made up such a big part of his life.
He woke when the sensation of the morning sun resting on his cheek leaked into his consciousness. He stirred, straining his eyes into the newborn light that streamed over the still-sleeping form of Sakura and the field that surrounded them. Initially, his mind was a blank slate-still warm and glowing from the grass dream and its strange comfort-but the moment he thought of Sasuke again, he began to feel frustration rise like an ocean swell in his chest. In an attempt to calm himself, he took a deep breath and wriggled out of his sleeping bag, crumpling it up and sitting cross-legged on it. Sakura stirred in her sleep at the sounds of the fabric moving, but she turned over and continued to sleep when he stopped squirming.
Sasuke… He almost said it aloud, but he wasn’t quite sure just how awake Sakura-chan was and he didn’t want to wake or worry her. Sasuke…where are you? He clenched his eyes shut. Sakura-chan was right--he did wish they had some sort of a sign, or at least an idea that could give them even the smallest amount of hope. Not that he believed things like that happened anyway--you know, signs and premonitions and things that show up at just the right time to restore faith--but he figured wishing for one couldn’t do any harm.
As he was thinking about this, a black butterfly wobbled past on a breeze, flitted one lap around his head, and drifted off above a trail leading out of the field.
That’s funny… He thought, his eyes tracking the butterfly. I’ve never seen a black butterfly like that one before.
And maybe because he had just been thinking about signs and fate and all those sorts of things, he figured that maybe this was his sign--albeit a slightly ridiculous one, admittedly.
“Sakura-chan?” He said gently, shaking her shoulder.
She turned over and slitted one green eye at him hazily. “Hm…?” She murmured, brushing a lock of pink hair out of her face as she peered at him drowsily. “What is it, Naruto?”
“I’m…um…going for a little walk, okay?” He said quietly as he tied his hitai-ate on his forehead.
“Okay,” she muttered, cuddling back up to her pillow and closing her eyes. “Just don’t be too long, ‘kay?”
“I won’t,” he promised, keeping the corner of his eye on the butterfly and then trotting off to join it.
Naruto soon discovered that following a butterfly is a harder than it sounds. It lead him in loops and constantly brought him off the trail, but still he followed it as if it were something serious--a mission, or a promise. At one point, it even did an about-face and brought him back to the field where Sakura-chan was just beginning to get out of her sleeping bag. He almost gave up on this ridiculous idea of his at this point, but just as he began to think he really was being silly beyond help, the butterfly straightened out its path and headed back towards the trail.
From here on out, the butterfly’s path followed the trail more-or-less, until--at the last second--it veered on to a sort of side-trail. Naruto followed it faithfully through a grove of birch trees where sunlight twinkled on the ground in dappled yellows and slanted rays, and into a smaller meadow than the one he had left Sakura in.
The moment he stepped into this meadow, a very eerie feeling began to overtake his body. It was almost ghostly in a way--goosebumps raised on his arms, and he felt a profound shiver clutch him in its indistinct grip. The butterfly circled whimsically in the clearing as Naruto came to grips with his feelings, and eventually shook off the escalating feeling that he was being watched by something supernatural.
Cicadas buzzed in the background and the hot, dry sunshine shining on the clearing seemed fixed, adding to the strange stillness in the clearing. It was surrounded by birches on every side and engulfed by a cloudless blue sky--and the smell of warm dirt and thick grass drifted in the meadow like perfume. Something about it seemed very…nostalgic, or strange, or just…too tranquil. There was not a single bent blade of grass in the whole circular clearing, which lead Naruto to wonder just why nothing had stepped in here recently--not even a deer or some other forest animal.
The butterfly suddenly spiraled downwards and landed on a blade of grass as Naruto made the first footprint in the grass. For a moment, he forgot about the butterfly, but when his eyes caught it again, the goosebumps raised again in alarm.
For there--and it was unmistakable--was the patch of grass that had been in his dreams. Exactly how he had dreamed of it--every stalk in place, every bit of sunlight touching the right areas…perfectly the right shade. The only difference was the black butterfly, perched on one blade and moving its wings up and down with the hesitant regularity of a heartbeat.
The eerie feeling that had enveloped him earlier returned tenfold--but even more so, he felt a sort of comfort, more solid and altogether more affecting than it had been when he had dreamed of it the night before. It was like hearing again a song he hadn’t heard since childhood, or finding something important to you after having lost it for many years. Although it scared the butterfly away--off into the spectral depths of the birch forest--he couldn’t help but go over to the little patch of grass and touch it with his fingertips, like a child would investigate the fur of a small animal. Just to make sure it was real and tangible and he could touch it.
He just so happened to glance up as he was crouching over the patch of grass, and if he felt altogether spooked, comforted, and thrilled before this, it was nothing compared to how he felt after. His heart leapt at the walls of his chest as a sight too strange and too wonderful for him to even comprehend met his eyes.
There, on the other side of the clearing, stood Sasuke. His eyes stared back at Naruto in the same aloof manner as they always had before violence had overtaken them, and his elbow was crooked out in a ninety-degree angle, hand resting on one hip, an almost-not-quite-smile flitting somewhere in his facial features somehow. A light wind ruffled his hair and flapped in his clothes.
Before Naruto could even finish saying Sasuke’s name, before it had even registered in his mind exactly what he was seeing, before Naruto could decide what emotion he was feeling at the sight of his best friend, worst enemy… In the blink of an eye, Sasuke was gone, leaving not a footprint or a trace in his wake.
For a moment, Naruto could do nothing but stand and shiver as though a cold wind was blowing through his body. He took a moment to catch his breath, to simplify the train wreck of thoughts in his head into something he could comprehend--and, as he did that, he realized that, of course, there was no way he could have seen Sasuke. Sasuke was miles away by now--in Sound--Sasuke could never, ever be in this field at this moment--Sasuke could never disappear that quickly, and without a trace.
Naruto concluded in great disappointment that he could only be hallucinating. However, out of mere curiosity, he crossed the field to investigate the exact location of where the Sasuke-apparition had been standing
There, nestled among the grass and the dirt and the sunshine, was Sasuke’s hitai-ate, dappled with sunlight, still scarred from their fight--sitting there in material form as if waiting for him.
Naruto picked it up, running his thumb over it like he had always done when trying to fall asleep, stared into the sky, and smiled, a ghost of hope rising in his chest, stronger than it had ever been before.
He had gotten his sign.