Title: Expectations
Summary: In which nothing meets its expectations. NaruSasu or friendship fic.
Here's my oneshot. I've always wanted to do one but somehow my fics always turn out as multiple chapter, not always completed fics. I intended it to be NaruSasu, but it ended up more friendship fic. Also, THIS SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SO DIFFICULT TO WRITE! Sigh, one day I will get my oneshots right.
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits" - William Shakespeare
The day he killed Itachi was one he'd been dreaming of since his clan had been murdered. Every night, as his brother's words echoed in his mind, he fell asleep fighting and hurting and killing his brother. He had longed for vengeance for so long. He had obsessed over his brother every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Perhaps that's why his death did not bring the closure he had thought he'd wanted.
Just like the fight with his best friend, he stood over his brother. It did not bring him satisfaction, as he thought it would, to see his brother fallen. The world stood still as an icy numbness crept through him, starting in the pit of his stomach and moving down through his legs to his toes and up past his heart and lungs until the roar of the wind and the pelting of the rain on his broken body felt like another life, another world, another person.
As his teacher long ago had predicted, it had left him with nothing.
He had walked away, leaving his brother behind. He had walked, on and on, ignoring the protest of his battered body without so much as a thought as to where he was going. He would have walked forever if his feet hadn't led him back to Konoha.
His pride shouldn't have let him return.
Dull eyes met the tall wooden gate that would take him into Konoha and he stopped mechanically. The rain was still falling hard and the hissing noise of falling water filled his ears and it was all that he could hear. How long he stood there, unnoticed, he did not know. His sense of time had disappeared and now minutes bled into hours and days into weeks and he couldn't discern night from day or dawn from dusk. He would have stood there forever if Naruto hadn't found him.
Neji had told Naruto only he could bring Sasuke out of the darkness, but Sasuke had made his own way home.
The day he found Sasuke was one he'd been dreaming of since he had left. Every night he would think of Sasuke, his best friend, and fall asleep begging and pleading and fighting and hurting and bringing Sasuke back. He had longed to have his friend back for so long. He had thought of Sasuke every second or every minute of every hour of every day.
He had been realistic. Sasuke had changed. That still didn't change the fact that the person standing at the gates of the village, soaking and shivering and bruised and bleeding, was not his Sasuke.
He was injured too, but not badly. He had seen Sasuke from further down the road out of the hidden village of the leaf and had sped up, hoping against that he was not dreaming again and that he wouldn't wake up in hospital, or in his bed, or in the forest on his mission. When he was a few metres away, he slowed to a walk.
He walked until he was next to him and reached out shakily to touch him, his heart in his mouth as he made sure that this was not a dream. That his poor friend really was here, back at last. His hand closed around the torn material of Sasuke's shirt, and he remembered feeling hot tears running down the sides of his face, mingling with the ice cold rain.
The real reunion did not match up to his dreams. But he knew that expectations were only what they were – expectations.
The next few weeks Sasuke spent all of his time in bed recuperating. He was drugged into sleep and slept for long periods of time, yet, whenever he awoke Naruto was always there. Even when he wasn't in the room he was nearby, his voice loud as he talked to those around him.
The first time he'd woken was days after he had returned, but Naruto and Sakura were there, eyes ringed with fatigue and smiling at him. Sakura flung her arms around him and cried, disregarding whether he wanted physical contact or not. Naruto smiled sympathetically at him, trying to convey that it was Sakura's way of showing she cared and that she just didn't understand, not really. Naruto didn't leave the hospital the entire duration of his stay, even when others, including Sakura, came and went.
Time passed and his body healed. He was discharged, and in celebration Naruto treated the old team 7 and Sai to Ichiraku ramen, typically. Sasuke was still subdued and withdrawn, but Naruto spoke enough for the two of them. At the end of the day Naruto insisted firmly on taking Sasuke home.
They had walked around Konoha for an hour or so, Naruto filling him in on what had happened during his absence between glares at the people who pointed or gossiped or looked at them. They were both prolonging their time together, they knew that deep down. Naruto never wanting to let Sasuke out of his sight and Sasuke didn't want to face the empty complex knowing that he really was the only Uchiha left in the world.
By the time the pair stood outside the Uchiha complex, night had fallen. Both had what they wanted, but they didn't feel what they had imagined they would. His friend was physically there, in front of him. His brother was dead, gone. His friend was elsewhere. His brother was still here.
The bitter disappointment of reality after misleading dreams of achieving - they both felt the same way. Impulsively, Naruto embraced his friend tightly, believing with the same conviction he had believed he would retrieve Sasuke, that things would get better soon. Sasuke gripped the fabric of Naruto's clothes, trying to feel the satisfaction he craved for killing his brother and wanting to believe that his life could go back to how it was now, before he filled it with hate.