[FIC] You and Me - Chapter II
You and Me
Overall rating: R - NC-17
Summary: Uchiha Sasuke has returned to Konohagakure. He's changed of course. But so has everything else...
SPOILERS: Up to current in Anime (i.e. Episode 135).
Chapter 2/?
Pairing: Uchiha Sasuke x Uzumaki Naruto Others may be mentioned
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Naruto and all related characters (c) Masashi Kishimoto -- i.e. They are not mine.
Chapter I
- II -
Unchanging
Dying. Sasuke could never really put Naruto and that word together in the same sentence - especially if that sentence consisted of three words, in the order of ‘Naruto’, ‘is’ and ‘Dying’.
He wasn’t really sure why, but sick bile was creeping up his throat now. Tsunade had let him leave her office unaccompanied. Against her better judgment, he was sure. But he was grateful to the Godaime although he’d pretty much be damned before he admitted it.
Right then, he needed to think.
The Uchiha manor loomed over him and all thoughts of a short blonde, blue-eyed loud-mouth were wiped from his thoughts. Vaguely, at the back of his mind, he noted that a lifetime ago, the afore-mentioned loud-mouth would wipe out thoughts of this place. That the afore-mentioned loud-mouth was the only one who could. The only one who would.
Seven years had passed since he had left and still, the novelty of wanting to throw up every time he entered the manor was still there. The taste of blood and tears were sour at the back of his throat.
He moved silently through the house, not really looking around. Just walking. He shut his eyes. He knew this place like he knew his hand seals. He knew it better than anywhere else.
So he walked with eyes shut. Shut. Because then, he wouldn’t see. Wouldn’t see the bloodstains on the walls, that weren’t even there at all.
He stopped at the end of one hall and raised his hand to press a palm against a door and was surprised when his hand touched air. Opening his eyes, he saw that the door was open.
This door was always closed. Always always closed. Sasuke had always made sure of that.
Keeping the door closed separated it from the rest of the world. Separated it from the rest of everything. Somehow, looking into the bedroom that used to be his parents’, it felt that all of it - all of the screams and the please, please stop! What are you doing? What are you doing - had spilled out.
Sasuke reeled back slightly before turning around and leaving the way he had come back in.
The small apartment within the Uchiha compound that Sasuke had taken up was as cold as he had left it. Cold in all senses of the word.
Dust gathered everywhere and there was a moment of nostalgia which was pushed aside forcefully by Sasuke. The taste of sick still lingered at the back of his throat and it did not mix well with memories.
His bedroom was just as he had left it. But…different, somehow. He glanced over at his windowsill and froze. The picture frame that held the photo of team seven, stood upright, facing the window. Walking over to it, he did not touch the frame. Almost afraid to touch it. He didn’t want to leave his mark on it. That would somehow betray his cause. It would bring him back to where he didn’t want to be.
It was true; he had come back to Konohagakure. But he had no intention of staying. He didn’t really know what had brought him to this place in the first place. At least, he hadn’t. Not until the Godaime had brought him the news of Naruto.
Thinking of Naruto in this place, chosen specifically because this apartment block had been empty, always empty and therefore had never housed an Uchiha before Sasuke had moved in, tainted it. White walls were stained now and as he looked, they weren’t stained red. But they were stained alright.
He looked back at the picture frame. If he leaned forward, just a little, he could see the photo. A gust of wind ruffled through his hair.
It was only now that he realized that the window was open. Looking outside, he remembered the one thing he liked about this room. It looked out to the rest of Konoha and not at the rest of the Uchiha compound.
Konohagakure had changed very little. At least, at first glance. But looking at it closer, there were fewer buildings than he remembered. It was to be expected. The war that had broken out roughly four years after his leaving had lasted for two. It was, overall, very impressive that Konohagakure was in the state it was in, so soon after the war.
To an outsider, very little signs of weakness and loss were shown by the village. But Sasuke was not an outsider. Seven years was not enough time to sever yourself from the place you had grown up in. A place as unchanging, as unfaltering as Konohagakure. And perhaps Sasuke was not the sentimental type - although now, he was beginning to think otherwise and he cursed himself for it - but this place held too much for him to simply forget it.
Sasuke was not an outsider and he saw it. The loss the village suffered. The sorrow on people’s faces as they walked past. The shops that were closed because owners had perished during the war. Or had the ones they lived for perish in the war. Houses whose windows and doors had always been open to the public were shut now. Even in broad daylight.
People were healing. Or trying to. Sasuke had to smirk and feel sorry for all of them.
People rarely ever healed.
Just look at him.
Sasuke closed the window and then wish he hadn’t.
The window reflected the picture frame and now, he could see the photograph. It was new.
Sasuke picked up the picture frame. There were no sparks and Sasuke did not feel the world around him swallow him whole. He turned the picture frame around to see the photograph.
There was a Kakashi, eye curved up into an inverted U that signaled his smile. A Sakura, fifteen, maybe sixteen. She was pretty enough. Her smile was wide and gorgeous as she stood in front of Kakashi. To her right, was a Naruto.
Sasuke stared at the photo. Naruto wasn’t smiling. Perhaps the photographer had caught him unaware, but Naruto wasn’t even looking at the camera at all. He had his head slightly turned away from the camera, tilted backwards. Sasuke could see how the boy had grown. At sixteen, Naruto’s features had strengthened and hardened. He saw the prominence of the other’s jaw. He noted the orange jumpsuit that had black added to it. Naruto was gazing out, past the borders of the photograph, an intensity captured in the luminous blue eyes. He seemed to gaze out, past the brown wooden frame and into a world Sasuke could not see.
Then, to Sakura’s left, a scowling, twelve year old Sasuke. Sasuke nearly dropped the frame. A hole had been cut out of the photograph and put atop the old team seven portrait. There, Sasuke, unchanged by time, stood next to his grown team mates.
This was definitely Sakura’s doing. He found his eyes traveling back over the image of the pink-haired kunoichi but his eyes did not stay there. They went past her sweet smile and Kakashi’s masked grin to settle on the unsmiling blond, who, according to Tsunade, was dying.
In the photograph, Naruto did not look like he was ill. Far from it. He looked incredibly well. But not happy. Sasuke wished that he had been there. He wished he had been there, so he could see what Naruto could and he couldn’t. He wanted to see what was holding Naruto’s attention like that.
He put the frame, facedown, back on the windowsill. He hesitated for a moment, before bringing the frame upright, back to its original position, facing out the window.
As Sasuke left the room, he turned around just in time to see the window open and the frame falling forward. A crack signaled the breaking of glass and Sasuke felt a slight shudder go through him. He did not go back into the room to close the window or set the frame upright again.
He would be sleeping in an inn tonight.