Warnings: a little fist fighting violence, angst, implied past character deaths. SPOILERS FOR THE MOST RECENT CHAPTERS OF THE MANGA. Takes place one year after manga chapter 439. Naruto and Sasuke friendship, can be shounen-ai if you like (and I definitely like).
Everything Selfish in Me
by vernajast
naruto and sasuke 'friendship'
Have you ever wanted to see someone break?
Someone wound so perfectly tight that you know it would be spectacular
if they finally fell apart one day?
Have you ever wanted to destroy another person so thoroughly
that only you could put them back together?
Have you ever been as selfish as me?
"Ne, Sasuke?" Naruto twirls a piece of grass between his fingers, sending it flying like a small spinning top through the air until it lands halfway across the training field. "Let's go back?"
It isn't that he doesn't enjoy spending time with Sasuke—after all, he'd chased him for three years, and even if he failed, at least he'd tried—it's only that there are uncomfortable silences between them now that an older, more mature, more aware Naruto isn't sure how to fill.
What's worse, in Naruto's opinion, is that Sasuke seems to seek him out for just that purpose. It's as if he believes Naruto possesses some special jutsu for those moments when Sasuke feels haunted and can no longer be alone with himself. Except Naruto doesn't know a damned thing to cure that loneliness, and he never has, and hasn't that been his problem all along?
It's been over a year since Naruto and Pain destroyed Konoha. Naruto isn't as ignorant as the others let themselves believe, and they aren't nearly as discreet as they try to be. He understands that Pain alone wasn't responsible for the death toll that day.
Naruto tries to tell himself that it wasn't him. It was Kyuubi no Kitsune, and now it's gone, and he should be happy that his strength is his own, his speed is his own. He simply has trouble accepting it. He finds it terribly difficult when he still has Kyuubi's memories, including one of the last before its violent chakra was forcibly ripped from his body: Sakura looking up with determined eyes and her mouth set in a firm line that dared him, dared it, to get any closer to what was left of their beloved village. He was spared a view of her death; the beast had lost interest in the girl as soon as it deemed her below contempt and tread over her with glowing eyes set on the home of its former captors, the remnants of Konoha.
The blond tugs another weed and twirls it away, unsurprised by the silence Sasuke offers in response to his question. "Fine, then. I'm going back."
The grass below him springs up when the pressure of his body sprawled out on it is released, and Naruto wonders, in a brief moment of unusual enlightenment, if Konoha will be able to do the same. Can it recover from the weight of death and destruction dealt twice in a lifetime? Like the leaves of grass. Or blades of Leaf. His mind starts turning the pair of odd phrases over and over through his head as he leaves Sasuke behind and makes his way toward the village.
How can Sasuke expect Naruto to fill the silence, distract him, and keep him grounded in the 'here' and 'now' when Naruto himself is drifting?
The old, familiar anger tries to surface, and Naruto extinguishes it with a single thought: Sasuke lying unconscious, face upturned to the sky, hand reaching for the giant, charred gates of the village. For the Sasuke who came back to them, Naruto knows he would do anything, and he can hardly waste their precious time together being angry with him.
He takes an unplanned detour through the Uchiha district. It is no longer the former home of an elite, isolationist clan and no longer populated by severe, ramshackle estates. There is a stand of small houses built for families and a playground where several children hustle over one another trying to win rights to the swing set.
When the rebuilding effort began, Sasuke had volunteered the land without a second thought. He didn't want it, he had said, just as he no longer wanted his family name, his crest, his memories of a clan that would never return no matter how many times he killed his brother in his dreams.
Naruto had been angry then, too, because Sasuke had said it so calmly, as if none of it mattered. He hated the way his own feelings seethed and hissed in his head, a pop-crunch of emotion that ground and ground until it had to be let out. He had always blamed the Kyuubi for his temper; now he can blame no one but himself. And Sasuke—complacent, collected, cold Sasuke...
Naruto's fists tighten at his sides, and he turns away from the playground and the concerned looks of the parents sitting nearby. It's the same as before except, again, there is no Kyuubi to blame. I'm the monster.
Returning to his office, the youngest Hokage in the history of Konoha flops down into his chair. Younger even than his father when he was appointed, and the thought of the other blond makes him smile, if only a little.
There hadn't been any choice, of course.
Even without the Kyuubi, he is, by far, the strongest ninja left alive in the village after...everything. His mind doesn't immediately fill with the faces of those dead who were obviously more qualified, or at least he pretends that he isn't imagining Tsunade, Jiraiya, Kakashi, all the others he misses seeing around the village. As long as he doesn't think of them beyond that one regret—that he can't be with them any longer—he's able to pretend they're on a mission and due to return next week.
As the afternoon sun starts to dip down below the windowsill and the shadows in the office grow longer, Naruto realizes he isn't alone. One of the shadows moves, and he snorts softly when Sasuke leans his hip against the edge of the desk.
"Admit it already."
The rich timber of Sasuke's voice has become such a rare thing that Naruto spends a few moments luxuriating in it before realizing he has no idea what his former teammate means. Instead, he shrugs and jumps up out of his chair. "I'm hungry. Let's go out." It's not a request like before, and the obedient way Sasuke immediately complies by following Naruto out of the office and down the stairs only draws up his anger once more. How the hell can he be so calm all the time?
Oddly enough, it's Sai that Naruto thinks of when he glances at Sasuke out of the corner of his eye, and it hurts to imagine Sasuke has replaced Sai in some way. He remembers a time when..."Sasuke is way cooler than Sai!" He'd been a stupid kid, even if it wasn't that long ago.
They end up at a new tea house. Ichiraku's is no more, and the barbecue stand is still incomplete. Both places, rebuilt or not, will always serve as aching reminders for the last remaining members of Team 7, and are best forgotten.
"Sasuke." The name slips out as easily as ever. Blunt tan fingers play with a chopstick, swirling his stew and creating a whirlpool, an uzumaki, at the center. "Why'd you come back? Why'd you wait so long?" The quiet storm that always brews just below the surface of Naruto's emotions is held steady by force of will. He hasn't asked the question he's been meaning to ask for a year.
Naruto's ears strain to hear the reply when Sasuke's lips move, but nothing comes out. His former best friend sighs and shakes his head, tries again. "I completed my task. I avenged my family."
"You mean, you killed your brother." Naruto fights the way he automatically winces at the taboo words leaving his mouth. Sasuke never says he killed Itachi, only skirts around the truth of it.
Across the table, Sasuke sits with his back straight, hands folded in front of him. His tea has grown tepid, but this isn't unusual.
His lack of reaction is infuriating, and Naruto growls deep in his throat, demanding more, some kind of waver in Sasuke's cold facade. "It's the only reason?"
"Naruto. Sit."
The blond isn't aware he's standing until he looks down at his feet and the table and realizes Sasuke is looking up at him and how right it is that Sasuke should be down on the floor looking up at him and—he stops that line of thought right there, but the image of Sasuke's broken, swollen, bloody lips has him enthralled and he's already gripping his former friend's bicep and yanking him up off the floor. "Come with me." The words grind past the urge to hurt, maim, break this beautiful, cold creature that Sasuke has become, and he drags him bodily out of the teahouse and into the street.
"Why did you come back!" He yells it in the middle of the road and waits for Sasuke's unsatisfactory glare that can only mean 'check the official reports, they haven't changed.' When it comes as expected, Naruto shakes his head and the pair disappear in a soft breeze of leaves and smoke.
They reappear seconds later in Sasuke's apartment and Naruto shoves his former friend away. "I know why you came back, teme."
Before Sasuke can recover from the shock of this treatment, the shock of Naruto finally giving in to the rage he's known was always hovering beneath the surface, the blond steps up and shoves him again, across the room, against a wall. He knows Naruto hasn't gotten started yet. He's barely making a dent in the plaster, after all, and the former Uchiha half-hopes to lose consciousness before it gets to that point.
"Everyone knows why you came back."
The resounding crack of his skull against the floor breaks his daze only to replace it with another, far more dense. "I came back...for..."
"Yeah?" Naruto taps his foot as if impatient, but when Sasuke finds it hard to put the words together through the haze, the blond Hokage kicks him in the side of the head, knocking him back.
Where is cool, collected Sasuke now? Where is his calm, steady former best friend?
The realization that he's broken Sasuke only fuels his anger, building up until, finally, Naruto asks the question he's been meaning to ask since the day it happened, all of it: "Where were you when I needed you?" The words are acid on his tongue and solid ice in his heart, and a tear slips down his scarred cheek. The fading lines are remnants of his life spent as the Kyuubi's host...and everything else. Everything. And when they eventually disappear, he's afraid he'll forget. "Sasuke, where were you when I needed you to stop me!"
And even though Sasuke is here now, it's too late. Naruto's fists smash that beautiful porcelain face and purple finger prints glow dark and ugly on Sasuke's pale neck. Their limbs tangle and Naruto falls down beside Sasuke, huffing for breath, but he can't be bothered to look at his former best friend, former teammate, former...everything.
"Why...won't you fight back?" He addresses the pristine white ceiling, panting softly and ignoring his aching hands.
Sasuke's choked laugh has a distant, wet quality that turns Naruto's stomach. "I deserve it." More quietly, "I was too late."
"No, Sasuke, you don't de—" Naruto's already rolled over and grasped the front of Sasuke's shirt with both hands, already pulled him up and started yelling at him for saying something stupid.
Oh, the tables have turned, haven't they? And a secret, selfish part of Naruto thinks that Sasuke covered in blood and tears and swollen flesh is beautiful and rare. Who has ever seen Sasuke beaten like this? Who alive has ever seen Sasuke broken like this? Only Naruto, and for a silent, sacred moment, it is a gift meant only for himself. "Beautiful."
That word shatters it all, and Naruto tosses Sasuke away in disgust—with himself, with Sasuke, with everything—and disappears.
And surrounded by his own blood and his destroyed apartment, Sasuke inexplicably smiles.
[ .end ]