[Fanfic] What is and Will be
Title: What is and Will be
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: T
Pairing: Sasuke and Naruto
Notes: Post chapter 698. Posted in Ao3 and FFnet. I haven't been active in the Naruto fandom for years (aside from reading the manga), but the fact that it's ending and how PERFECT chapter 698 is has woken so much feelings in me. The coming end is so bittersweet and I've been rereading the whole series and so much nostalgia. I thank this community and this fandom and Kishimoto for making such a beautiful work of art that's occupied 15 years of my 25 years. This pairing will always be in my heart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If there is one constant in their friendship, it is the endless need to compete and beat each other in one thing or another.
It surges in the ragged silence between them as they waited for the end. Hearts ragged from the truths and insecurities of their relationship, bared out in the open in the fluid flowing from a silenced kekkei genkai and the wincing laughter tumbling past bruised lips.
It surges when Sasuke's heartbeat speeds up, blood rushing in his ears and vision blurring more than the effects of the sharingan. They've lost too much blood and Naruto's been too quiet, all ragged breathing and random twitches.
"Dying first isn't winning, idiot." Sasuke says after Naruto takes a stuttering breath. It reverberates in his bones and sends an alarm through him, painful in a way his missing arm couldn't compare.
Naruto faces him, right eye shinning in annoyance as the other swells shut. He winces from the effort and the pull of his muscles, tugging at the torn edges of his missing hand. Big blue eyes cloud, wavering in liquid that doesn't spill as blond lashes lower on fatigued cheeks. "Shut up, ass."
"Not a competition," Sasuke snorts, "You sure are racing to the next world."
"Are you trying... to piss me off?"
The wet gasps are impossible to ignore. Both of them have numerous broken bones and torn muscles, vast amounts of lacerations and bruises.
Sasuke remembers kicking hard and fast at a mesh covered chest. Imagined his leg going past the bones and flesh, feeling the echo of bones crunching from the impact as the sensation traveled up his leg. Probably punctured lung in that rage fueled force.
"All those grandiose plans were all talk."
"I'd hit you if I could."
"All talk." Enraging the blond is the last thing Sasuke wants to do after all the aggression hours prior, but it is the best he could do. He does his best to keep his friend's mind active, his eyes opening and closing in concentration and effort. All to keep the other from slipping in the quiet lull, the trap that would steal him away.
It hurts to grin at his friend, but Naruto does it all the same. Sasuke's face is as relaxed as he's ever seen it. His pale face is lax, free of the usual scowl and even glowing with a half smile on his battered face. "Just you wait, teme," it hurts to glare, but the smile blooms bigger and it makes him chuckle and flinch.
God, everything hurts, but they're all right. Sasuke glowing under the morning light, smiling without a care of the world. Face a handsome mix of colors, the red into blues into greens and everything in between painting splotches over pale skin. The oddest feeling, that everything is perfect in this moment, hits Naruto right then and there and everything hurts from his body to his heart. They're bleeding to death with smiles on their faces and it feels right.
His eyesight blurs to nothing but Sasuke's face, softly haloed by the bright rising sun and Naruto wants to pat him on the cheek. His eyelids and chest feels heavy, fatigue and pressure and his mouth tastes like salted copper, but he smiles because they are fine and wishes so much that he could reach out just once.
Sasuke hears Naruto cough and cough, thick fluid sounds building with each inhale and exhale until he stops, wheezing with eyes closed shut.
"Naruto!" Sasuke calls and hears nothing in return.
His body strains, back vibrating tense and abs crunching to push him up, spin him closer, anything to reach the blond breathing deep yet so motionless. He manages to roll on his stomach and sends pinpricks through his chest, spreading outward to his raised, stretching arm. Blood oozes from his mutilated arm and his vision distorts, wavers, Every breath hurts more and more, but Naruto's too still. His right hand shakes and falls just short of touching a tanned, bloody stump just as his vision fades.
Sasuke faces his one and only friend and lets the tears fall, unhidden, just this once.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The rhythmic clicking of something on wood is the first sound Sasuke hears as he wakes from the inky nothingness of recovery. His mind feels sluggish, fuzzy with sleep and drugs for just a second before instincts send his heart racing, pumping to wakefulness, to move his body into action. The surroundings are unfamiliar enough and it makes him tense, body readying to jerk up.
If he could.
He's on fire. Each and every nerve explodes in pain, from his fingers to his toes, paralyzing his muscles in bone creaking tension that makes the aches flare worse.
"Calm down before I drug you up more, Uchiha." Strong fingers dig deep into his skin as it seizes his shoulders and push him down on the bed. Sasuke struggles in the unfamiliar touch until the painful grasp breaks through the all over sting thrumming through his body.
A pitiful sound erupts from his throat, pushes him to struggle more from the secure grip and it isn't fair. None of it.
"Uchiha!" Brown eyes pin him and gives his panicking mind anchor in the present.
"Why?" His voice breaks in the middle and Sasuke wills his right arm to rise and cover his face, but nothing moves. Nothing but his muscles contracting and freezing in place, wound tight and not painful enough.
"What?!"
"Why am," Another sound claws up his chest, morphs into a sound close to a whine, "Why am I alive?"
"Why?" The Godaime's face shutters to annoyance, "Do you know where you are?"
"Why me?!"
"You aren't making sense, Uchiha."
"Naruto-" Sasuke swallows the burning in his throat, sinking it deeper in his chest. He is in Konoha hospital, alone and recovering from wounds he knew were fatal. He tries to open his mouth to continue, but the feeling is unbearable and his chest constricts and none of it is fair.
He can't take in enough air and yet he breathes too much.
Tsunade eyes the child in front of her, the thin thread of control the young Uchiha grasps as he fights against hyperventilating. It is the first time she's seen an emotion on his porcelain face aside from rage and depression. Without context of the battle, she had decided to separate the explosive rivals to prevent any further antagonism before they'd fully healed.
But the shaking form in front of her reminds her too much of herself in the wake of Dan and Nawaki's demise, physically and emotionally weighed down by loss and survivor's guilt. "Calm down and think. Naruto is a couple of doors down the corridor."
The next breath Sasuke takes gets stuck down the wrong pipe. It takes him seconds to recover his lungs and his heart, "What?"
"He's fine."
"But he stopped breathing..."
Black eyes regard at her in suspicion and Tsunade fights the urge to throttle him. Only one kid had the right to question her, "You heard me kid."
"How?"
"Do you think us incompetent?" Silence answers her and Tsunade feels a vein pulse on her forehead. She has to take a meditative second, to sigh at the expectant look she receives, "Sakura found you two and kept you both safe until help arrived."
"And?"
"And what?"
Sasuke growls. His limbs still feel like lead, uselessly lying on the hospital bed. The usual hum he always, always feels with Naruto nearby is absent and it fills his mind with questions and anxieties, too many anxieties to name.
"You will see him when you've both recovered."
"How long have we been sleeping?"
"You were both comatose for six days," Tsunade lifts an eyebrow, at the we Sasuke uses, "Naruto woke up eight hours ago, asking for real food."
Sasuke feels an unbidden twitch at the corner of his lips, "Ramen you mean."
"Yes." She can't help but join his amusement despite how much she blames him for all the pain Naruto willingly suffered. "Now, as much as I'd like to talk about Naruto, I must check you now that you are awake before my other patients need me."
Pale, green tinted cheeks color red, tilting away from her in a huff.
Hysterics out of the way, Tsunade takes note on her second critical patient. She reaches for his intact hand, to form a connection with his chakra, feeling the low buzz of his chakra still dangerously low. She ghosts her fingers over the chakra points of his torso, sending small amounts of healing chakra along the way to aid the process without overwhelming his fragile pathways. Her inspection continues until her fingers travel to his left shoulder. She feels his stare and the solemn blankness as the chakra she sends out spreads through the arm before abruptly stopping at the stump.
She notices the slight difference in his dark eyes, left eye slightly discolored and greyer than the other. The way he squints at the windows at the left when her stare gets too intense.
"Concentrate on recovering and you can talk to him."
Sasuke tsks at her, still looking away, and Tsunade gives into the urge to pinch the arm she's unconsciously comforting.
"I will tell him. Rest and eat, that's all I ask."
Tsunade looks at him, at the small form lying flat on the sterile bed. Her mind remembers the decimated statues and foliage that surrounded him and Naruto, showcasing their monstrous potential for all to fear. So much passionate destruction. Yet alone between clean white sheets, subdued by injuries, she sees a teenager much too young for all the shit he'd been through.
"Tell him to hurry up," Sasuke turns and smirks up at her, reminding her too much of another pale face with just as much bravado.
"I'm not your errand girl," She throws him a frown before slamming the door.
She gives them two weeks. Two weeks before either, or both, leave the hospital without her permission.
She feels it in her gut.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two days pass before Sasuke's body listens to his brain. It stings and hurts to push himself up and off the bed with muscles slightly atrophied from disuse, and hurts even worse when he flings his legs to the side to rest them on the floor, but it's the first step to recovery that feels like triumph.
The stump at his left feels awkward and throws his balance when he takes a hesitating step forward, trusting his will to keep him upright. The stump flails around when he flings both arms out, as if walking on a tightrope, and doesn't add anything but confusion to the sensations he feels after so much time motionless.
He remembers Naruto doing the same, for totally different reasons and it pushes his legs forwards, one stilted step at a time.
Every step feels jarring, yet refreshing. Each step leading a surge of anticipation. Sasuke opens the door and sees the dead end on his left and the long bright corridor on his right. The air outside is just as still and unnerving as within his room and it takes no effort to leave whatever comfort his bed offered.
The trek is slow and grueling, with each opened door containing hapless injured persons he doesn't recognize.
Sasuke feels a thread of anger by the fifth startled face he glares at. That she had been lying to keep him quiet and sedate in the hospital bed. It mixes with the fear and anxiety and anticipation swirling in his gut. He is almost at the end of the corridor, with two doors left, and no where closer to finding the other.
His legs shake with so much effort that his knees almost knock together. His torso burns with the energy it takes to keep him standing. He takes three steps before turning and leaning on the wall, to slide down and calm his nerves.
He doesn't remember the hurried gasps and raging turmoil the last time he'd been in this building. He remembers the roiling rage and bitterness but none of the helpless despair eating away at the hope he'd been fed.
It makes him take a ragged gasp, his head falling down to meet his trembling chest.
"Sasuke?"
He looks up and doesn't know what emotion is on his face and doesn't care enough to hide when Naruto looks just as shitty as he feels, with bruises still blossoming on his skin and sweat dripping all over his face.
"The hell you doin' on the floor?"
"Took you long enough," Sasuke inhales deep and the burn wanes enough for him to raise his hand. There's too much relief in his voice and everything's too raw around the edges when he says, "Dobe."
Naruto gives his hand a dirty look and this understanding between them is new and familiar at once. Both their grips are unsure and slippery with anxiety, their arms trembling from lack of use, but Sasuke holds his hand up and Naruto reaches. Sasuke pushes up with unsteady legs and Naruto pulls with legs just as iffy.
They overestimate their abilities, too used to everything being too easy and Sasuke stumbles, his stump has nothing to grasp and his other hand's occupied. Naruto only has the hand held in Sasuke's grip and his other arm thrashes about as he pulls the other to him and overcompensates.
They both tumble quick to the ground, and Sasuke has enough thought to move their hands behind Naruto's head, which smashes them both to some degree. It hurts and reminds them that they are still, technically, injured and recovering.
The impact jars Naruto's broken ribs. The floor is unyeilding and Sasuke's chest just as merciless. The mix of cold floor and hot body heat multiplying the pain. He cusses into the pale shoulder in front of his face and he is so close to crying if it chest didn't feel like it was being squeezed of all air.
Sasuke cusses as his stump hits the ground to catch himself, thankfully on the underside and not straight flat. He hisses louder when his right hand pulses in pain from taking the brunt of Naruto's head.
Their stupidity is something familiar and it makes Sasuke breath better into the shoulder below him. He lets his body rest a little, legs tangled with the ones below him, arm curled up and edged by a tan arm, hand fully under the blond's head as Naruto's fingers loosely circled his wrist. The position is uncomfortable in it's comfortableness, and Sasuke feels so bone tired from all the effort and action, two days after waking up, so he moves slightly closer, ignores the embarrassment edging his conscious.
"Sasuke," Naruto gasps, "my ribs."
They are, after all, injured.
"Sorry," Sasuke looks him square in the eyes, noses inches from each other. He is sorry for pushing them both to this point, from their fights and this debacle, and the blond's cheeks color a little.
"Ah."
They both imagine a tanned hand scratching a whiskered cheek.
Just standing is a difficult affair. Sasuke tries his best to do it on his own, but one handed requires him to push harder at Naruto's chest and legs, to find purchase to push up and off. His push down centers mostly at his upper thighs and groin, and they both gasp for a different reason that has him feeling like they're twelve again, full of awkwardness and unknowns. Sasuke rests back down on top Naruto and ignores how much his heart is thudding so loud and how Naruto's heart echoes his own, just to remove the pressure of his first try. He contemplates pushing up with his stump for the second try when he feels Naruto's body stiffen, abs turning rock hard under Sasuke's as he pushes up.
Some part of him is a little miffed that Naruto has enough energy to lift both of them off the ground, mostly on his own, while Sasuke pressed at his shoulder to push his back up, giving his legs leeway to gather underneath him. They a more normal position, with Naruto sitting up, thighs warmly caging Sasuke's own. It's still a weird contact, but much more neutral than before.
"Ow," Naruto's heaves and gulps in big lungfuls of air like he hadn't been breathing, and perhaps he hadn't because of his injury.
"Thanks," The foreign word readily leaves his lips and it makes Naruto smile so blindingly that Sasuke vows to use it more in the future.
Naruto laughs and coughs before pushing himself off the ground. He squares his stance after he stands, legs steady and planted flat on the ground, and reaches down, offering his upturned palm near Sasuke's face.
Sasuke frowns at it on principle. It makes Naruto's grin deepen and Sasuke feels so much to be thankful for as he takes that warm palm into his own, much surer than earlier, but still just as disgustingly slick.
~~~~~~~~~~
Tsunade finds them both in Naruto's room, much less orderly and bland than Sasukes. She doesn't look surprised as Naruto sprawled on the bed, while Sasuke sat close enough that their hips touched, but her face does scrunch up in confusion when both their faces, and their clothes, show no signs of a scuffle.
She walks into a silent but tension-less room and stop a couple of steps away from the bed. Two sets of eyes look at her, one curiously and the other it's customary blankness, although both gives her a sense of peace she doesn't really understand.
" 'Baa-chan!" Naruto calls her, still lying down on his back and looking more at ease than she's seen him since he'd woken.
"How the hell did you get here?" Tsunade ignores him in favor of questioning the intruder in the room.
"I walked," Sasuke replies with arrogance dripping in every word and it makes Naruto snigger beside him like it's the best joke in the world. The sniggers trigger an answering smirk on the pale face, annoyingly quiet and confident, and all of it makes Tsunade's head hurt with the urge to smack them both.
"You should be in bed," Tsunade ignores her initial reaction, too detrimental to either of their health and tries her best to be the professional medical nin they need.
"And I am," There's a minute bow from the brunet's head that sends Naruto into a fit of guffaws. She glares at them both, ignored by one and heeded by the other. Naruto's laugher dies down to a manageable level, to hide behind his lone hand, while black eyes stare at her for a blink then back to his companion.
" 'Baa-chan," Naruto has the gall to admonish her, eyes full of disapproval and teasing. "He's just visiting."
"Not when both of you are still recovering," Tsunade feels so much exasperation, from dealing with too many idiots that it's bittersweet. "You both just woke up," she hisses.
"And we both got bored," Naruto says like it explains their relationship to an outsider. Tsunade slightly understands from Orochimaru and Jiraiya, but not so much that health wasn't a concern. Her old team mates were close enough to beat each other to a pulp over arguments or pure fun, but not close enough to visit each other during their numerous hospital stays.
The close contact between the two boys in front of her is possible only because of their missing limbs, arms out of the way from touching something incriminating.
"I take it both of you are healthy enough to move around?"
"No," Sasuke looks down his hands, picking at his fingernails.
"We hobbled back here," Naruto proudly exclaims at the same time.
Their relationship is much more greys and mashing than she understands, "All the more reason to go back."
Sasuke snorts.
"Just a sec," Naruto sniggers, "Teme might pass out if he tries right now."
The glare the dark haired boy throws at him is mild, with no real anger in the gaze, "As if you're any better."
"Hey, I got back to my room."
"Which was only a few steps away."
"Still counts," Naruto blows a raspberry.
"Such a kid," Sasuke says condescendingly.
"Boys!" Tsunade cuts in before anything happens that would make their statuses worse. The air around them still carefree and friendly, but the volatility of their relationship is enough cause to stop them for now. Naruto regards her with surprise, like he'd forgotten about her, while Sasuke glowered, faintly tinged with hostile energy.
"You are both still recovering," She repeats, slowing down for emphasis, "As both your doctor, I need both of you to stay put and let your bodies recover."
"But we walked fine for a while already," Naruto frowns up, sitting up with a grimace. Their shoulders bump each other and both faces crease in pain before Naruto scoots back, closer to the middle of the bed. Sasuke shoots him an annoyed frown as Naruto responds with an apologetic look.
"Be more careful."
"I know!"
And like that, they're back into their own little world.
"Because," Tsunade raises her voice, not yet yelling but close, "you're both too stubborn to lie still. Both of your chakra are too depleted to heal you properly and any stupid movement could ruin days worth of chakra therapy and bones setting."
Naruto hms and Sasuke hns, but neither move from their spot.
"Then can Sasuke stay here?" Naruto innocently asks her while Sasuke turns away from them both, cheeks color red.
There isn't really any reason for her to refuse other than her own fear of history repeating itself. His last stay caused by the other brat is still too fresh in her mind to agree.
" 'Baa-chan! It's so boring here," Naruto whines like he's twelve and not tall enough to stare at her, eye to eye. He pouts and almost raises his arms to cross them, before remembering and just lowers the one hand down again.
"Three days," Tsunade folds, "Give each other three quiet days and we'll see."
Naruto salutes her and Sasuke's head dips. They don't show any inclination to separate until she mentions that both of them need to be examined more thoroughly since they decided to move more than their recovery allowed. They both stare at her with dull expressions, waiting for her to check them, until she the word naked leaves her lips. She can't help but cackle, inside of course she is a professional, when they shift away from each other as if their point of contact burned.
She watches a dark hair bow and, without a word, shuffle slowly out of the room.
Tsunade feels the urge to help the proud Uchiha limp to his room, to fulfill a part of her duty, but watching Naruto's intense blue gaze track the other's movements out of the room roots her on the spot. She has never seen them together, sedate and separate from their personal demons, but seeing them now, embarrassed and tongue-tied and all of their sixteen years, she sees all to well why their relationship is much rockier than her teammates had been.
She feels so much unsaid things between them, hovering in the powerful silence.
Waiting to be let out.