Fic - The Sealed Room
Title: The sealed room
Author: Hakka (prue84)
Beta: none
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke. And when I say NaruSasu I mean Naruto toppy. If your Naruto is a prudish virgin uke, then close the page, thank you.
Rating: NC-17 for dark themes. No violence or sex, anyway.
Warnings: As above, dark themes.
Timeline: Semi-AU because I’m sure the manga won’t end this way.
Summary: There is a secret in the Hokage’s house, a secret that lies behind a the doors of a sealed room...
Dedicated to: blue_jack. For having written the unforgettable and unforgotten “Pet” series, which have opened my mind on BDSM’s fics. One of the few authors writing NaruSasu with a not-ukeish Sasuke. Thank you for all your works!
Notes 1: I wrote this one long time ago, somewhere around the second half of January 2010. At that time the last published chapter was the 477 and, following this chapter, this fic was able to fit in the continuity; as things stand now (and as far as I know) it hasn’t happened yet something to make it strictly AU (besides the “Kyuubi/Naruto” last developments). We’ll see. Anyway, there are no references to make it an alternative timeline.
Notes 2: I have - quite stubbornly - decided that the Uchiha would have a traditional Japanese residence so I had to ask for help to our friend Google... to then discover that in Naruto fandom the clan’s houses have western beds and tables with chairs (or, at least, this is how has been depicted the Uchiha’s house in the anime). -.-
Crossposted: AO3, Dreamwidth and SquidgeWorld.
Links crossposted also at Tumblr.
Notes 3 (Original notes of January 2010):
It should have been a short drabble...
It should have been a scene between D/S and dark...
It shouldn’t have been this dark...
All was born when I’ve got the bad idea to mix the dominative Naruto of Ivvymoon with the fucked up world that had become lately the manga. I believe - no, I’m sure - askerian and her Teamwork series have unintentionally influenced me, even if what happens in her marvelous series (It’s a must: read it if you haven’t already done it so!) has nothing to do with it. An image just came into my mind and, if I were able to draw, I would’ve put on paper the idea with a simple fan art (or, better, a brief doujinshi of one, two pages)...
I hope I’ve been able to convey something that, with a couple of pencil’s lines, would have offered a better result.
Notes on Japanese words and some thoughts about the story may be found at the end of the fic but, for your convenience, you should be able to see the words’ meaning by hovering on the word itself. ;)
He’s walking down the street, the sun low on the horizon by now.
He’s quiet and relaxed, at peace with himself and with the whole world that surrounds him. He feels almost ready to cheerfully whistle.
Dull day, boring in its daily humdrum: being Hokage it has always been his dream, a target he has been able to fulfill and of which he is proud, but sometimes he just gets bored. Even today the same routine: assign missions, signing some paper, reading reports...
Sometime he finds himself missing the times of the Team 7 and the mission he was able to take part in.
Children are running toward him, heading home, and they cheerfully greet him addressing him with a brief “Hokage-sama”, a couple of mothers hint at a bow as he passes by, a “Nanadaime-sama” ready on their lips.
With a wide smile on his lips he returns the greetings while with a hand ruffles with affection the hairs of a mischievous brat who has addressed him with a flippant sneer. The boy reminds him of the times when he was the resident brat.
Everyone at the village loves him, the kind and brave seventh Hokage who has protected and leaded them over the last few years.
A tall stone-wall stands out at his right and he turns at the street that cuts it in half, his blue eyes full of cheerfulness for the sight of happy children who play tag together.
He crosses a gate always open, marching under a carved wood arch on which stands out the symbol of an ancient clan by now extinct.
He lives there.
An odd choice everyone had questioned and hadn’t understood: why take home at a traditional residence part a district deserted since the Uchiha’s Massacre?
Why him, such noisy and sunny, had ended up to choose for his home a corner of the village that was preserving such dark memories and which land was still soaked with blood? Where, despite the recent renovations, nobody wished to live to repopulate those houses uninhabited for too long time?
When asked, his reply had always been simple and straightforward.
That house, that could be now be seen standing out in front of him, has everything a ninja could wish and appreciate: quietness, good defences, broad spaces and a dojo to train, and the whole of it surrounded by a garden in traditional style, with a clear pond, the relaxing flowing of water and the rhythmic hitting of the kakehi’s bamboo pipe on the water basin.
Actually nobody had ever believed such an explanation. Everybody knew that the real reason behind this choice is another.
That is the home of a long-gone friend, killed by his own darkness that had blinded him, died because of a curse which, as the last heir of the clan, he had carried on his back, choked by a hatred that, by the end, had asked to be washed away with blood.
Silence welcomes him as the sliding door opens on the large and plain hall.
He gets rid of the sandals and the long red and black coat that marks him as Hokage and went through a long corridor enclosed between two rows of wood panels and pale rice paper.
Nobody has ever reached its end since the rooms open to guests are the first on his right and every person who has been granted access to the residence knows they are forbidden to wander around, not when parts of the house still belonged to the ghosts of the former landlords.
He passes by a study seldom used, the ceremonial tea room where sometimes he has spent an afternoon with the Kazekage, the large irori’s room where once in a while he likes to arrange an informal lunch for his closest friends, the utility room, the shrine room where only once he has allowed to Sakura and Kakashi to enter and pray and many other fusuma decorated the white and red paper fan symbol of the clan behind of which there were unused rooms.
As he walks down furthermore the corridor, he reaches the master’s room, the farthest one somebody has free access to, even though he has never brought women there.
The latest two panels at the end of his path are protected by heavy seals and access is forbidden in sign of respect for who had inhabited those rooms. Nobody has ever seen what’s been stored inside, nobody has ever visited them.
The seal on the panel to his right recognizes his chakra and shines just a moment of bright light blue; he slowly slides the fusuma, making no sound.
Dark. The feeble glimmer of light, that filters through the shoji always covered by the amado that armors the environment, isn’t sufficient to illuminate every corner of the wide room.
The blurred outline of a piece of furniture here, a low table there and, further on, a futon laid out on the tatami.
The Hokage’s shadow is standing out on the floor, menacingly.
The light coming from the corridor forcefully crosses the room, piercing the thick darkness and stopping once hitting a crouched figure.
Bared chest, a dark leather band around a pale neck; kneeling on the tatami, harms at his sides to balance himself, elegant as a samurai of other times.
He is watching the newcomer, without raising his face.
Black eyes, unreadable, pupils constricted for the sudden light flooding the eyes.
Seals protecting the room can be seen on the panels, interweaved with another elaborate pattern to suppress the use of chakra between the walls, and another one delicately burned on the leather’s collar, to prevent who is wearing it from leaving the room, to escape from that golden prison.
All inhabitants of that house are dead, and no Uchiha can claim that big mansion. Not Uchiha Fugaku or his wife Mikoto - whom the master’s room he is occupying now belonged to - killed during the Uchiha Massacre. Not Uchiha Itachi, died at the hands of his younger brother during a disastrous duel - all his belongings sealed in the room behind his back that had never been touched again since that bloody night. And not the youngest one of the family, Uchiha Sasuke, died at the own hands of the Seventh Hokage and whose corpse had vanished during the blast that ended the life of Uchiha Madara.
He takes a step forward in the room, the room that had been Sasuke’s, and a series of marks on the panels shines, diffusing a feeble light in the spare space. He keeps a hand on the fusuma, ready to close it behind himself, and on his unreadable traits makes its appearance the shadow of a sneer, so different from the image of the friendly and gentle Hokage the village knows.
Betrayal ruins even the most generous person, changing them, shaping them into new people, no more perfect in their hero halo and neither wicked or gloomy. Only different, able to caress an unknown child’s hair and, at the same time, to viciously hurt the person they love the most.
“I’m back.” he murmurs, his voice unrecognizable, similar to the low sound of an animal purring in front of his trapped prey before attacking it to then tear it apart.
The sneer morphs for a brief moment, his blue eyes coloring for a second of deep red.
Hurting who you love because they hurt you to the point of no return, until you can’t forgive and forget anymore.
Scratching, wounding, breaking the one who made you suffer. Betrayal, when they have gone away leaving you behind to lick your wounds; betrayal, when they have gone against everything you believed into; betrayal, when the have choosen vengeance over you; betrayal, when they have decided to fight instead of taking your offered hand, stubbornly opting for a death with their head held high instead of a life swallowing down the pride and all the hate.
Nobody knows about the figure partially engulfed by darkness that is now watching him with emotionless indifference, nobody will ever know: that ancient house will keep this secret between walls of precious rice paper and polished wood as it has always guarded the dark secrets of the noble clan of the powerful Sharingan.
Those black eyes are watching him: there is hate, for the bloodline’s ability blocked off to not be used again and for the pride being wounded, grudge, for being deprived of his clan’s legacy, and shame for being confined there, as a privileged prisoner. But there is more, hidden behind the deep black of eyes that won’t see the sunlight again and pale skin that won’t feel fresh air caress it anymore. Perhaps there is some twisted love, that odd, inexplicable emotion a captive develops towards his tormentor, and the shadow of an old feeling, maybe longing for a bond never fully broken despite the efforts.
A person who won’t be able to ever get out of that house, to free himself from the chains that keeps him in that half-lit room, because out there he is dead, he doesn’t exist anymore if not in the guise of a name carved on a black memorial stone few people pay a visit to, memento of a bloody time and of a war now ended that everyone wish only to forget.
Only there, in a house full of ghosts that call him, that whisper words in his ears and breath cold air on his pale skin, he can - and must - carry on living, because of the will of someone who has answered to betrayal with a stubborn love, little by little tainted and become somehow perverted.
Tormentor and victim.
Hokage and genius nukenin.
Hero and traitor.
Only for him, only for the missing-nin of Konoha, the Hokage - the kind and friendly Naruto, always ready to give his life for the sake of his village, his home - has broken the rules, sparing the life of someone who should have died.
“Hello Sasuke.”
The panel is shut again, and the corridor is once again silent, empty and quiet.
Notes on the Japanese words:
- Amado: doors for rain. Outer sliding doors used to close the house during night.
- Fusuma: sliding panel that divide two rooms. It has the same function of western doors.
- Irori: the sunken heart, usually placed at the center of a room, used to cook food and heating the house.
- Kakehi: the average fountain made with bamboo pipes that moves unloading the water in a water basin made of stone.
- Shoji: sliding door that look onto the outside; it’s made of a wood frame covered of translucent paper. Usually works as western French windows, since they overlook the outer corridor.
- Tatami: unit for a Japanese styled room’s, made by a wood frame covered externally by a thin mat and padded with rice stubble’s bundles.
I’ve stressed on the “back to home” part - that originally should have been shorter - to make the reader understand who Naruto really is, to make the reader understand that Naruto hasn’t all of a sudden radically changed or become crazy: he still is the ninja we all know (and love), not anymore the excited kid of the first series but more “adult” as shown in the last tankobons. :D
Naruto here has been able to fulfill his dream - becoming Hokage - but he has paid a high price in giving up his friend, his rival, his Sasuke. We all know that actually Naruto is highly selfish and stubborn, in the most childish and sweet way, and, even if now he has understood that he and Sasuke are walking on different, opposite paths and that, sooner or later, they will fatally collide, I believe he won’t ever completely give up the idea of being able to save Sasuke, to take him back and smooth out things, even if that would mean fight everyone.
This Naruto has been able to bring Sasuke back and, knowing fully well he can’t be able to redeem his rival, he has decided to keep him locked away for himself.
I’ve left everything else vague and everyone is free to choose if Naruto really loves - in the purest meaning of the word - Sasuke and has done all of this to not have to personally sign his beloved’s death sentence, or if, instead, he keeps Sasuke prisoner only for the mere personal pleasure without any interest for Sasuke’s mental health.
You choose if you want to see Naruto as a demonic or kind tormentor, if he deserves some extenuations or if he is completely guilty.
And what about Sasuke? What he really feels for Naruto? Has he some sincere feeling for the other? Even on this matter... every reader can draw their own favorite conclusions. It is up to you to choose the “seriousness” levels of the fic, if you want to see it as darkness with a flicker of light or as a slow descent to hell. :)
I may have thought about a sequel with my beloved Naruto Madda, but I’m not going to write it as Madda offered me a wonderful prompt I won’t be able to put on paper - well, on file.
Author: Hakka (prue84)
Beta: none
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke. And when I say NaruSasu I mean Naruto toppy. If your Naruto is a prudish virgin uke, then close the page, thank you.
Rating: NC-17 for dark themes. No violence or sex, anyway.
Warnings: As above, dark themes.
Timeline: Semi-AU because I’m sure the manga won’t end this way.
Summary: There is a secret in the Hokage’s house, a secret that lies behind a the doors of a sealed room...
Dedicated to: blue_jack. For having written the unforgettable and unforgotten “Pet” series, which have opened my mind on BDSM’s fics. One of the few authors writing NaruSasu with a not-ukeish Sasuke. Thank you for all your works!
Notes 1: I wrote this one long time ago, somewhere around the second half of January 2010. At that time the last published chapter was the 477 and, following this chapter, this fic was able to fit in the continuity; as things stand now (and as far as I know) it hasn’t happened yet something to make it strictly AU (besides the “Kyuubi/Naruto” last developments). We’ll see. Anyway, there are no references to make it an alternative timeline.
Notes 2: I have - quite stubbornly - decided that the Uchiha would have a traditional Japanese residence so I had to ask for help to our friend Google... to then discover that in Naruto fandom the clan’s houses have western beds and tables with chairs (or, at least, this is how has been depicted the Uchiha’s house in the anime). -.-
Crossposted: AO3, Dreamwidth and SquidgeWorld.
Links crossposted also at Tumblr.
Notes 3 (Original notes of January 2010):
It should have been a short drabble...
It should have been a scene between D/S and dark...
It shouldn’t have been this dark...
All was born when I’ve got the bad idea to mix the dominative Naruto of Ivvymoon with the fucked up world that had become lately the manga. I believe - no, I’m sure - askerian and her Teamwork series have unintentionally influenced me, even if what happens in her marvelous series (It’s a must: read it if you haven’t already done it so!) has nothing to do with it. An image just came into my mind and, if I were able to draw, I would’ve put on paper the idea with a simple fan art (or, better, a brief doujinshi of one, two pages)...
I hope I’ve been able to convey something that, with a couple of pencil’s lines, would have offered a better result.
Notes on Japanese words and some thoughts about the story may be found at the end of the fic but, for your convenience, you should be able to see the words’ meaning by hovering on the word itself. ;)
He’s walking down the street, the sun low on the horizon by now.
He’s quiet and relaxed, at peace with himself and with the whole world that surrounds him. He feels almost ready to cheerfully whistle.
Dull day, boring in its daily humdrum: being Hokage it has always been his dream, a target he has been able to fulfill and of which he is proud, but sometimes he just gets bored. Even today the same routine: assign missions, signing some paper, reading reports...
Sometime he finds himself missing the times of the Team 7 and the mission he was able to take part in.
Children are running toward him, heading home, and they cheerfully greet him addressing him with a brief “Hokage-sama”, a couple of mothers hint at a bow as he passes by, a “Nanadaime-sama” ready on their lips.
With a wide smile on his lips he returns the greetings while with a hand ruffles with affection the hairs of a mischievous brat who has addressed him with a flippant sneer. The boy reminds him of the times when he was the resident brat.
Everyone at the village loves him, the kind and brave seventh Hokage who has protected and leaded them over the last few years.
A tall stone-wall stands out at his right and he turns at the street that cuts it in half, his blue eyes full of cheerfulness for the sight of happy children who play tag together.
He crosses a gate always open, marching under a carved wood arch on which stands out the symbol of an ancient clan by now extinct.
He lives there.
An odd choice everyone had questioned and hadn’t understood: why take home at a traditional residence part a district deserted since the Uchiha’s Massacre?
Why him, such noisy and sunny, had ended up to choose for his home a corner of the village that was preserving such dark memories and which land was still soaked with blood? Where, despite the recent renovations, nobody wished to live to repopulate those houses uninhabited for too long time?
When asked, his reply had always been simple and straightforward.
That house, that could be now be seen standing out in front of him, has everything a ninja could wish and appreciate: quietness, good defences, broad spaces and a dojo to train, and the whole of it surrounded by a garden in traditional style, with a clear pond, the relaxing flowing of water and the rhythmic hitting of the kakehi’s bamboo pipe on the water basin.
Actually nobody had ever believed such an explanation. Everybody knew that the real reason behind this choice is another.
That is the home of a long-gone friend, killed by his own darkness that had blinded him, died because of a curse which, as the last heir of the clan, he had carried on his back, choked by a hatred that, by the end, had asked to be washed away with blood.
Silence welcomes him as the sliding door opens on the large and plain hall.
He gets rid of the sandals and the long red and black coat that marks him as Hokage and went through a long corridor enclosed between two rows of wood panels and pale rice paper.
Nobody has ever reached its end since the rooms open to guests are the first on his right and every person who has been granted access to the residence knows they are forbidden to wander around, not when parts of the house still belonged to the ghosts of the former landlords.
He passes by a study seldom used, the ceremonial tea room where sometimes he has spent an afternoon with the Kazekage, the large irori’s room where once in a while he likes to arrange an informal lunch for his closest friends, the utility room, the shrine room where only once he has allowed to Sakura and Kakashi to enter and pray and many other fusuma decorated the white and red paper fan symbol of the clan behind of which there were unused rooms.
As he walks down furthermore the corridor, he reaches the master’s room, the farthest one somebody has free access to, even though he has never brought women there.
The latest two panels at the end of his path are protected by heavy seals and access is forbidden in sign of respect for who had inhabited those rooms. Nobody has ever seen what’s been stored inside, nobody has ever visited them.
The seal on the panel to his right recognizes his chakra and shines just a moment of bright light blue; he slowly slides the fusuma, making no sound.
Dark. The feeble glimmer of light, that filters through the shoji always covered by the amado that armors the environment, isn’t sufficient to illuminate every corner of the wide room.
The blurred outline of a piece of furniture here, a low table there and, further on, a futon laid out on the tatami.
The Hokage’s shadow is standing out on the floor, menacingly.
The light coming from the corridor forcefully crosses the room, piercing the thick darkness and stopping once hitting a crouched figure.
Bared chest, a dark leather band around a pale neck; kneeling on the tatami, harms at his sides to balance himself, elegant as a samurai of other times.
He is watching the newcomer, without raising his face.
Black eyes, unreadable, pupils constricted for the sudden light flooding the eyes.
Seals protecting the room can be seen on the panels, interweaved with another elaborate pattern to suppress the use of chakra between the walls, and another one delicately burned on the leather’s collar, to prevent who is wearing it from leaving the room, to escape from that golden prison.
All inhabitants of that house are dead, and no Uchiha can claim that big mansion. Not Uchiha Fugaku or his wife Mikoto - whom the master’s room he is occupying now belonged to - killed during the Uchiha Massacre. Not Uchiha Itachi, died at the hands of his younger brother during a disastrous duel - all his belongings sealed in the room behind his back that had never been touched again since that bloody night. And not the youngest one of the family, Uchiha Sasuke, died at the own hands of the Seventh Hokage and whose corpse had vanished during the blast that ended the life of Uchiha Madara.
He takes a step forward in the room, the room that had been Sasuke’s, and a series of marks on the panels shines, diffusing a feeble light in the spare space. He keeps a hand on the fusuma, ready to close it behind himself, and on his unreadable traits makes its appearance the shadow of a sneer, so different from the image of the friendly and gentle Hokage the village knows.
Betrayal ruins even the most generous person, changing them, shaping them into new people, no more perfect in their hero halo and neither wicked or gloomy. Only different, able to caress an unknown child’s hair and, at the same time, to viciously hurt the person they love the most.
“I’m back.” he murmurs, his voice unrecognizable, similar to the low sound of an animal purring in front of his trapped prey before attacking it to then tear it apart.
The sneer morphs for a brief moment, his blue eyes coloring for a second of deep red.
Hurting who you love because they hurt you to the point of no return, until you can’t forgive and forget anymore.
Scratching, wounding, breaking the one who made you suffer. Betrayal, when they have gone away leaving you behind to lick your wounds; betrayal, when they have gone against everything you believed into; betrayal, when the have choosen vengeance over you; betrayal, when they have decided to fight instead of taking your offered hand, stubbornly opting for a death with their head held high instead of a life swallowing down the pride and all the hate.
Nobody knows about the figure partially engulfed by darkness that is now watching him with emotionless indifference, nobody will ever know: that ancient house will keep this secret between walls of precious rice paper and polished wood as it has always guarded the dark secrets of the noble clan of the powerful Sharingan.
Those black eyes are watching him: there is hate, for the bloodline’s ability blocked off to not be used again and for the pride being wounded, grudge, for being deprived of his clan’s legacy, and shame for being confined there, as a privileged prisoner. But there is more, hidden behind the deep black of eyes that won’t see the sunlight again and pale skin that won’t feel fresh air caress it anymore. Perhaps there is some twisted love, that odd, inexplicable emotion a captive develops towards his tormentor, and the shadow of an old feeling, maybe longing for a bond never fully broken despite the efforts.
A person who won’t be able to ever get out of that house, to free himself from the chains that keeps him in that half-lit room, because out there he is dead, he doesn’t exist anymore if not in the guise of a name carved on a black memorial stone few people pay a visit to, memento of a bloody time and of a war now ended that everyone wish only to forget.
Only there, in a house full of ghosts that call him, that whisper words in his ears and breath cold air on his pale skin, he can - and must - carry on living, because of the will of someone who has answered to betrayal with a stubborn love, little by little tainted and become somehow perverted.
Tormentor and victim.
Hokage and genius nukenin.
Hero and traitor.
Only for him, only for the missing-nin of Konoha, the Hokage - the kind and friendly Naruto, always ready to give his life for the sake of his village, his home - has broken the rules, sparing the life of someone who should have died.
“Hello Sasuke.”
The panel is shut again, and the corridor is once again silent, empty and quiet.
Notes on the Japanese words:
- Amado: doors for rain. Outer sliding doors used to close the house during night.
- Fusuma: sliding panel that divide two rooms. It has the same function of western doors.
- Irori: the sunken heart, usually placed at the center of a room, used to cook food and heating the house.
- Kakehi: the average fountain made with bamboo pipes that moves unloading the water in a water basin made of stone.
- Shoji: sliding door that look onto the outside; it’s made of a wood frame covered of translucent paper. Usually works as western French windows, since they overlook the outer corridor.
- Tatami: unit for a Japanese styled room’s, made by a wood frame covered externally by a thin mat and padded with rice stubble’s bundles.
I’ve stressed on the “back to home” part - that originally should have been shorter - to make the reader understand who Naruto really is, to make the reader understand that Naruto hasn’t all of a sudden radically changed or become crazy: he still is the ninja we all know (and love), not anymore the excited kid of the first series but more “adult” as shown in the last tankobons. :D
Naruto here has been able to fulfill his dream - becoming Hokage - but he has paid a high price in giving up his friend, his rival, his Sasuke. We all know that actually Naruto is highly selfish and stubborn, in the most childish and sweet way, and, even if now he has understood that he and Sasuke are walking on different, opposite paths and that, sooner or later, they will fatally collide, I believe he won’t ever completely give up the idea of being able to save Sasuke, to take him back and smooth out things, even if that would mean fight everyone.
This Naruto has been able to bring Sasuke back and, knowing fully well he can’t be able to redeem his rival, he has decided to keep him locked away for himself.
I’ve left everything else vague and everyone is free to choose if Naruto really loves - in the purest meaning of the word - Sasuke and has done all of this to not have to personally sign his beloved’s death sentence, or if, instead, he keeps Sasuke prisoner only for the mere personal pleasure without any interest for Sasuke’s mental health.
You choose if you want to see Naruto as a demonic or kind tormentor, if he deserves some extenuations or if he is completely guilty.
And what about Sasuke? What he really feels for Naruto? Has he some sincere feeling for the other? Even on this matter... every reader can draw their own favorite conclusions. It is up to you to choose the “seriousness” levels of the fic, if you want to see it as darkness with a flicker of light or as a slow descent to hell. :)
I may have thought about a sequel with my beloved Naruto Madda, but I’m not going to write it as Madda offered me a wonderful prompt I won’t be able to put on paper - well, on file.