Crevice, a naruto fanfic

So basically this was supposed to come out before Chapter 396. Because I had the most terrible feeling this would be considered AU afterwards. I had to make quite a few changes afterwards to make it canon, but nothing too major...

Anyway – much love again to nostalgic-maiden for editing this. It's not what I started out expecting, but I love how it turned out. Sasuke introspective stories are always great fun.

Shoot. I forgot to include a warning. So:

Warning: Spoilers for the most recent manga chapters. Occasional swearing. Mentions of sex. Nothing too explicit.

Enjoy reading!

Crevice

There was the faintest imprint of pressure on his forehead.

Sasuke watched with eyes that were not quite as wide as they should have been as Itachi's fingers – splayed out and covered in his own blood – drew nearer and nearer.

Itachi looked satisfied, happy – if that were a word that Sasuke would ever consider using on Itachi – despite the bleeding from his eyes, the scratches on his face, the sluggish movements of his body.

Sasuke.

Sasuke could see the smooth curves and ridges on the pads of Itachi's fingers. With one wrong move, they could very well gouge into his eyes and rip them out.

Poke.

There was the faintest imprint of pressure on his forehead.

And Itachi was smiling, his eyelids drooping, as the warm trail of red and death traced an unconscious line across the bridge of his nose.

Were you the one who killed me?

A drop of blood trickled down past the tip of his nose, and Sasuke opened his eyes from the dream that wasn't quite a nightmare.

Everyday he walked past Suigetsu's sharp-toothed smile and gave it but a passing glance. He walked by Karin, pulling on a lock of her thick red hair between her fingers as she read a novel, and Juugo, communing with animals as though he could actually hear them speak – and only kept on going forward because he had somewhere to be.

Except that often times he'd find himself standing in the middle of an empty corridor, a snake circling his arm and neck, trying to remember a destination that had existed when he started, but he could not seem to remember now.

Sasuke occasionally wondered why Suigetsu and Juugo and Karin were still there even though his need for them had expired – although nowhere near himself, the three shinobi were extremely talented – but he'd let the thought pass as soon as it came.

Though sometimes he wished he didn't turn away from these idle musings, because it was in those moments he was more aware than ever of the utter blankness in his mind, of the thoughts that should have replaced the one he had just dismissed but never quite managed to come to the forefront of his brain.

"There's something off about you, y'know," Suigetsu said during one of their routine fights, swinging down his sword which Sasuke deftly dodged.

Sasuke didn't answer – he didn't hear – but it wasn't because his focus was fully concentrated on the mock battle. This was all so ingrained in his mind, and his body moved instinctively – left, duck, across, left, right, jump – in response to all of Suigetsu's attacks that he didn't need to pay attention.

His legs were moving automatically, his heart rate was still the same. Sasuke couldn't remember when the last time was when he could actually feel something –

"Frankly, I don't give a fuck if you choke on a piece of shit one of these days and croak," Suigetsu continued. "I guess I might be a little disappointed that my most powerful opponent would be gone to hell, but I'd deal."

There was a pause, in which Suigetsu looked at him thoughtfully. "It'd just be a shame if you snuffed it in a dumbass way like that."

What Suigetsu was saying must've meant something, but it didn't register – conversation had become background noise, even when it was directed to him, and even he had wanted to, Sasuke didn't think he could unscramble the truth behind the words.

He wasn't lazy or ignorant by any means, but there was something in the way the world moved around him lately, like smooth transitions of colour, that Sasuke felt as though he had to slow himself down to fit in with reality.

And it didn't matter if he continuously told himself that no, he was Uchiha Sasuke, goddamnit, and he was not one to compromise himself to align with something else. The voices that he heard grew dimmer and dimmer with each day, as though the nothingness in his mind drowned out the something that existed.

So he answered with what might have been a, "hn," and, "you've still never beaten me yet," before his hand automatically reached and released a kunai in one smooth motion, his eyes registering the slight scrape the edge made against Suigetsu's cheek – the faint drops of red that trickled out – while his mind stayed static, wandering on the nothing that dwelled inside.

There was a moment right then, between Suigetsu tracing a finger down the blood on his face and the smirk that spread on his face. And then the next thing that happened was that he was staring into endless blue, his hair swirling around his face and a smooth and slippery substance was sweeping around him.

And there was a blade against his throat, and Suigetsu's voice against his ear, "Have you beaten me yet, Sasuke?"

He was out of the hold within seconds, he was out of the blue within seconds, although now his clothes were heavier, soaked with water.

"Ah, I guess I'd be disappointed if something like that got to you."

The grin on Suigetsu's face was positively feral.

And then there was an explosion of fire, the drawing of swords, the clashing of metal, and the sparks of residue lightning. The fight continued, and despite the added weight, Sasuke's steps were as light and agile and his techniques were just as flawless as before.

But in that moment while he was in that water-jutsu, a far away part of Sasuke – the one that was lost and locked away as the part of his memories that belonged to another life – acknowledged something.

Surrounded like he was at the bottom of what seemed like the stillest of lakes, the streams of water gliding with his movements, cool and calm around him with the slightest of pressures against his forehead, his mind aware of all of it, yet without any thoughts in response – it wasn't just in the prison of water that he felt it.

This sensation of drowning – this sensation of floating through something that wasn't really there when he moved – was –

– this calmness in himself that wasn't tranquility but rather a lack of anything with substance, this feeling of gliding through a cool sheet of liquid with every step, this beating of his heart that was so slow and steady despite so much physical activity that he may as well have been sleeping –

In the midst of battle, on dry land, fighting with someone who could take his life faster than he could blink should he give him half the chance –

"C'mon, Sasuke," Suigetsu grinned, shouldering his sword. "If you win, I'll shut up the next time you decide torture cats or something."

He was drowning right now as well.

Sasuke may have blinked. "Alright."

And he didn't even know it.

At first there was anger.

There was so much anger and hatred swirling around in him, creating a tornado of overwhelming frustration and despair that was spilling out of him in the worst possible ways.

I loved you, little brother.

He left headquarters everyday, sometimes in bright daylight and sometimes in the middle of the night, and he punched – and punched and punched – the tree until it was reduced to chips sticking into his bloody knuckles, as though if he could turn bark to dust with his bare fists without chakra, it would mean he had finally killed the bastard with his own hands.

No matter how he looked at it, Itachi had brought his death upon himself – even if he had to resort to such drastic measures because of Sasuke.

Had Sasuke not found out the truth, perhaps he would've been happy. Because from the very beginning it wasn't about some selfless cause as getting rid of one of the most dangerous criminals that plagued the five countries.

It was about Sasuke killing Itachi and satisfying his thirst for vengeance.

You're the one that killed me.

He felt the ghostly presence of fingers on his forehead.

Poke.

There was something to be said when the purpose of someone's life was ripped away from them, never to be fulfilled.

And no matter how much rage and loathing there was inside a person, that kind of hatred couldn't continue to burn without a source, regardless of how hard the best of people tried to kindle it. Itachi was gone – Sasuke's reason for living was gone.

He kept that anger and hate burning for long as he could – lies, lies, LIES, Itachi is evil evil evil DEAD – without the presence of the fire that had let it grow – because without anger and hate Sasuke was nothing, and Sasuke would never – could never – be nothing.

The crack that had appeared inside him that fateful day so many years ago – the one with the black hole that craved revenge and justice for the travesty that was done to his family – would never be satisfied.

It must've grown inside him that day when Itachi died, spreading further inside his body in desperation of trying to find something, anything (Itachi dead by my hands – no he loved me – yes I killed him) that would cause it to heal.

Except nothing inside Sasuke healed while everything inside him destroyed, and everyday he was falling further and further into the chasm that was inside him.

That darkness consumed everything, even the anger and hate.

The first time he had sex, Sasuke was seventeen and it was with Karin.

For all the times he had never acknowledged her advances, he didn't know why it was her – a person he saw everyday, a person he worked with – and not some nameless whore he could pick up just by stepping out of the house. But it had happened, and when she breathed, "Sasuke-kun," against his mouth, that faraway part of him stirred – the one with the memories of another life.

Karin was aesthetically pleasing to look at he supposed – he registered the long legs and thick, dark eyelashes and the bright hair falling across her back – but he didn't recall feeling any semblance of attraction when he'd seen her.

"Do you know how long I've wanted this?" she whispered lowly against his ear. "Do you know how long I've wanted you?"

Sasuke stared back at the brown eyes before kissing her fully on the lips. She kissed him back with far too much need, as though it would be able to coax him into smiling or perhaps arouse desire. But Sasuke hadn't smiled in a long, long time, and desire was only a word in his vocabulary. He felt his mind slipping away into that something – the same something that was the reason he was doing this in the first place, to try stop himself from going there.

He had touched her in all the right places but there was something that was wrong. He had sex the same way he did everything else lately – without being there at all.

Each time he brought his mouth upon hers lacked passion, so much so that his lips were just there, as though it was only touching air, and not in contact with the lips of another human being. He couldn't bring himself to appreciate her smooth and delicate skin nor the slight dimples that appeared on her cheeks.

His heart was beating steadily and he could feel the drums of it against Karin's hand which was placed on his chest. But it was all so languid and mechanical and with his mind feeling as though it was submerged in a lake of calm water once again, he could feel himself steadily getting swallowed, and he didn't even try to stop it.

He couldn't focus on the significance of a moment without anything of importance tying him to it.

Because Karin may have been someone who he saw everyday, someone he worked with it – but at the end of the day she was no one but the girl he recruited on a mission and now the girl who was his first fuck.

Not someone who was important.

The whole experience was painful and awkward and not something that Sasuke could fully recall. When he woke up the next morning, Karin wasn't there. It wasn't as though he hadn't expected it.

She smiled at him when they finally saw each other thirty minutes later in the kitchen – it was hard to not run into someone who you were living with – and it was as though nothing had happened. But even underwater Sasuke was aware of everything around him, and he saw that something was different in the way that she never touched him and never looked him in the eye.

If he took the time to think about it, maybe he would've come to the conclusion that underneath the powerful kunoichi there was perhaps some sort of a hopeful girl inside Karin, one who dreamed of love and romance.

But he didn't take the time to ponder – it did not affect him in any way.

Suigetsu looked at them briefly, eyes going from Karin to Sasuke and back to Karin. Sasuke idly thought that maybe, Suigetsu had been screwing Karin ever since that day, months ago, when Suigetsu had grabbed her wrist and roughly threw her against a tree so she wouldn't be the one with three kunai sticking out from the back of her head.

When Sasuke finally left – his food untouched and only a glass of water in his stomach – Karin called out, "Where are you going?"

He didn't reply, but I don't know seemed to be the correct answer.

Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night with his eyes bleeding.

Maybe it was a twusted form of karma for killing his brother – Itachi killed his entire family, and Sasuke killed his only family – which one of them was the bigger monster here?

In those fleeting moments when a thought would actually take form in his head, Sasuke would grab it, and hold on as though his life depended on it – maybe it did – but holding on to something that would lead him no where was like trying to hold on to a handful of water with splayed fingers.

Without any support from the hands, the water fell.

Without any support from Itachi, everything else fell.

Still, he understood that the blood was a by-product from his usage of the sharingan. Of course it had nothing to with Itachi. Nothing to do with the fact that Sasuke killed someone who loved him. But it was still such a horrifying sight to look at once he got to the mirror that had Sasuke not been so detached from reality, he would have been terrified.

You killed me, little brother.

Instead Sasuke looked at the mirror and kept on staring at the reflection of his eyes until the blood stopped pouring. It was so easy to imagine the red as his sharingan, and so easy to get lost in the black of his irises that were so deep and without end that someone could simply drown in it.

You're the reason that I'm dead.

And then Sasuke would wash his face, and go back to sleep.

Juugo was usually a very easy person to deal with.

He was calm (for the most part), polite, and saw Sasuke with the utmost respect that Sasuke had once found oddly flattering and not-so-oddly, ego-boosting.

But then came the, "for the most part," of the situation.

Because no matter how mild-mannered a person he was, no one who was the origin of the curse seal could possibly be as perfect as Juugo was all of the time. And although Sasuke had already been used to having Juugo switch into his other personality at moments so unpredictable such as drinking water, it didn't make it any less of a hassle.

This time, for example, had been early in the morning, right when Suigetsu returned from unfinished business from a wealthy mining village that he had a vendetta of sorts against.

Perhaps it had been the single trail of blood dripping from the crown of Suigetsu's head, a stark contrast from his sword, which was soaking in red. But all that mattered was that Juugo's eyes went black, and only Karin's scream of, "Juugo!" was the only warning that Sasuke got before he had to forcibly restrain Juugo until he returned to normal.

Karin looked supremely unconcerned as she complained but never let her gaze stray from Juugo's sheepish smile. And for all of Suigetsu's apathy and jeers, he looked relieved to see the thick black marks retreat and vanish from Juugo's skin. Sasuke distantly wondered whether the three of them – Suigetsu, Karin, Juugo, three such contrasting and self-involved shinobi – had actually formed a bond of some sort.

He took a moment to ponder if they were holding out that same branch of odd friendship towards him as well. But thinking too deeply about anything when his mind had laid dormant for so long caused a sharp, almost unbearable pain to shoot through his head, and Sasuke submerged himself in his nothingness again.

Because the crack – the water, the nonexistent dreamland – may not have had desire or comfort or life, but it was familiar, it was oblivion, and a nothing that didn't cause any searing ache in him had to be better than the everything that did.

"Sasuke-san," Juugo said hours later, as Sasuke was sharpening his set of kunai.

"Hmm?"

Juugo's eyes were calm and considering as he watched Sasuke. "Over all the time I've known you, I've never seen you smile."

"No," Sasuke replied before going back to work.

"I understand that neither one of us is for conversation," said Juugo. "And I know that I owe almost everything that I have to you and would never do something to show you disrespect."

Here, Juugo paused. "But there's something wrong with you, Sasuke-san. It's like you're not there anymore."

I know that, a distant part of him tried to scream, but the overwhelming pressure of the nothing drowned it out. The old Sasuke, the one that had had something inside of him – anger, hate, ambition, lust, purpose, passion – was so long gone now that the present Sasuke couldn't even hazard a guess at what his reaction would to his current self.

He hadn't smiled in more than a decade.

The last time any semblance of a smile in its rawest form – one from happiness – had passed his lips, Sasuke was seven, and coming home to tell his parents and Big Brother Itachi that he was learning how to use shuriken.

But that didn't matter now. It was all in the past, anyway.

"Don't think useless things, Juugo," he said instead, standing up. "You're looking right at me."

Strangely, it didn't bother Sasuke that the look on Juugo's face clearly said, no, I'm not.

Don't cry, Sasuke-chan.

It was in moments that had no real pattern that Sasuke thought of his mother.

A dull pain always spread over his heart when it happened. There was something wrong, in remembering her sweet smile, but not being able to visualize, remembering that her hair was lustrous, but not being able to recall the feel of it.

To remember that she'd been beautiful, but not be able conjure up the image of her beauty.

It had been so long since he'd last seen a picture of her that the figure of the beautiful, smiling woman in his mind was so distorted that he could hardly make her out.

The warm eyes were blurred beyond the point of recognition and the soft curves of her face and hair and body were drifting away, like loose cotton on a windy day.

The knowledge that his mother – his father his aunt his uncle his cousin his Itachi – were gone and his vengeance – Itachi loved me – 'Kaa-san's dead – he loved me – she's DEAD – caused him to fall far deeper into his chasm of self-deprecation than he thought possible.

Killing Itachi would have brought him satisfaction, Sasuke was so sure of it, if only what Sasuke had thought was reality for nearly half his life had been the truth, and not the story that was revealed to him.

But no. Now Itachi was gone because Sasuke killed him without knowing what was really written in his heart – had Sasuke ever known even a fraction of the man that was both his most beloved hero and worst enemy?

The ache of loneliness burned so deeply within him that it made it difficult for him to breathe. He remembered that he had wept, once, out of anger and frustration and the quickly diminishing faith inside of him as he realized that he had nothing, he hadn't had anything for a long time now, and didn't give a second glance at the people who would've been able to salvage whatever shreds that still remained of his humanity.

The blood on the walls that had stopped haunting him when he was twelve returned with a vengeance and if Sasuke wasn't already so far gone from the sanctuary of sanity inside his own mind, he surely would have done so at the sight of that.

Now, every time he felt that yearning in his heart, searching for something – something, anything, everything – to try and fill that gaping, spreading crack inside of him, it was lost, somewhere between his heart and his mind.

His bond with his family was one that he could never break. With everyone else it was easy, they were still alive. To cut ties with the dead was much harder to accomplish than doing the same with the living, especially since deep down inside, Sasuke didn't think he even wanted to.

But the red still gave him an almost uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. He would retreat even further inside himself in those moments, and when he became aware, in that detached, passionless way, everything was eerily spotless, and the only blood he saw were coming out of his own raw hands.

And then –

And then –

Karin walked into his room one afternoon, with grim eyes and lips set into a straight line. She said, "I recognized their chakra, Sasuke. They're still not that close – and the jackass and Juugo already left to intercept them – but your dream team is coming."

"Are they now?" Sasuke guided one graceful finger across the blade of his sword before sheathing it to his back. "We should get going then."

It was only when Karin had sped along in front of him, letting him take his time into catching up that he realized this was the first time his former team was coming after him in years.

The last time was when he was sixteen, possibly seventeen, if he remembered correctly. The attempts used to be more frequent just a short time after Itachi's death, as though Sasuke would want to come back home now that his life goal had been accomplished.

Except that Konoha wasn't his home anymore – it hardly felt like anything but a prison ever since he had been seven. The day that the Sound Four had come to take him away, he had felt as though it was his first fresh breath of air in a long, long time.

Such was his elation, that finally – finally, finally, finally – his life was going somewhere that he was ready and willing to cut all the ties that made him resemble a human, even though that very act was the catalyst that caused the chasm of emptiness to widen inside him and consume him whole.

Never had Sasuke given himself the chance to look back and question his decision.

Perhaps it was because deep down inside, he knew that he would lose his will if he thought about the things he was leaving behind. Rather, it was better to just close his eyes and take out his figurative knife and cut loose those figurative bonds that connected him to humanity.

His entrance was light, like a landing feather, and he looked at the scene before him with half-lidded eyes.

"Sasuke-kun," said Sakura, and she was just as he remembered, with the pale pink hair and the bright red clothes. Though now, her lips were firm and her eyes more determined. But Sasuke hardly had the time to take any of that in – Kakashi's familiar face, the painter's rigid stance – before –

"Finally," smiled Karin, and there were explosions erupting around Sasuke, the force of which caused a windstorm to blow through his hair.

And all that was left in an instant was a clearing littered with ash coloured smoke and one Naruto.

Sasuke expected this, of course, that it would the two of them again.

"Sasuke," said Naruto, in that grim, resolute way that Naruto always did when they met. Sasuke knew that he would only lose all of that supposed calm just moments into battle, and he would've smiled a smile of reminiscence had he realized the significance.

But he had no time, as the next thing he saw was Naruto racing towards him, a pulsing ball of blue energy in the palm of his hands.

Rasengan.

Sasuke felt just the thinnest trail of the hot chakra singe his cheek as he deftly moved out of the way, and slab of rock behind him burst into millions of tiny rocks and pebbles.

"That was a surprise," said Sasuke offhandedly, even as he dodged a barrage of kunai. "No declaration of the depth of our bonds and the error of my ways this time?"

Naruto bared his teeth in amusement – or perhaps it was a snarl of frustration – and managed to land a solid blow.

"Don't be the dumbass here, Sasuke," he replied, and there was a gleam in his eyes. "We both know that talk isn't going to go anywhere. The only way to bring you back is by beating you."

"Is it, now?"

Sasuke manoeuvred his leg so his heel with the underside of Naruto's jaw, hearing a satisfying crack as Naruto slammed back against a tree.

"Heh," Naruto wiped the trickle of blood that escaped his mouth. "Was wondering when you'd come out and do something other than dance around me. Didn't want our grand battle to have you acting like a coward. Kage Bunshin."

It wasn't only till after every single one of the clones was gone and there were gashes of blood and ripening bruises decorating both their faces that Sasuke responded.

"You need more than that to land a scratch on my forehead, Naruto."

"Don't underestimate me, you bastard," Naruto growled, and the faintest glimmer of red came and escaped his eyes. There was so much anger in Naruto. Sasuke couldn't bring himself to miss it. "I'll break your arms and legs if that's what it takes to finally get it through your head."

"No matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to beat me."

At his own words, Sasuke felt it again – the water that was slowly surrounding him. A part of him was screaming, screaming inside his head towards Naruto to do something, to make Sasuke feel like he was a person again.

"For as long as we've known each other, I've only ever wanted one thing from you, Sasuke," Naruto said, voice loud and full of feeling as his fingers healed themselves. "And I won't ever get that from you if I don't bring you back to Konoha."

"That's a dream that will never come true," replied Sasuke. "Your dream of becoming Hokage is more plausible."

"How can I protect Konoha as Hokage if I can't ever protect my best friend?" Naruto's grin was as feral as it was determined.

"You have to have known," he continued. "Your acknowledgement is the only one that will ever matter so much to me."

And then he smiled.

"What makes you think that something as stupid as chance will stop me from coming after you?"

The gleam was back and Rasengan was once again forming in Naruto's hands when Sasuke finally saw.

The glimmering light that was so apparent in the blue of Naruto's eyes was so easy to recognize now that he had seen it – because it was something that used to be so familiar to him, something that used to define him a long time ago.

Desire.

It was so deep and intense that Sasuke couldn't look away. It didn't matter what it was exactly that Naruto sought after with so much need and longing and want. All that Sasuke knew was that it was something – something vital that he needed, but was so very clearly missing inside of him.

Sasuke realized that there was something hideously wrong with him – he was lacking a lust for life never mind everything else as well – and that recognition felt like a pocket of air, deep under hundreds of kilometres of water.

"Look at me, Sasuke," Naruto's voice echoed in his head. "And fight me like you fucking mean it."

And even though Sasuke was looking straight at Naruto's eyes – it wasn't as though he could very well look away – this was one hit that he did – could not – not dodge.

Sasuke's heart was pounding in exhilaration in a way that he thought he had lost and that fact alone had enthralled his mind completely.

There was something, Sasuke decided, that was different when fighting Naruto than there was with anyone else.

It might have had something to do with the fact that Naruto was so bright – in the worst possible way – that it sometimes hurt Sasuke's eyes to look at him. So many colours were always present – all the orange and yellow and whirlwinds of bright blue and red chakra.

Yes, the visual significance was definitely there. No one else that Sasuke knew was defined in his head as so intensely vivid to look at, when the mark of a shinobi was subtlety and oneness with the shadows.

Except that wasn't the real reason. A lot of things made Sasuke's encounters with Naruto different from anyone else, but most of those could be duplicated if someone tried hard enough.

What made fighting Naruto so damn epic was the fact that it was Naruto.

It was a difficult concept to explain, much less understand, and Sasuke himself tried not to think about it too much. It was the kind of thing that was easy to understand in an abstract sense, and would only serve to waste his time should he give more time to ponder on it.

It wouldn't be so momentous, Sasuke thought, if Naruto didn't give everything he tried his all.

Every time they had faced each other – the anger that overflowed inside him on top of the hospital roof, the desire to win that was pushing him in the Valley of the End – there was something. Something about Naruto's too direct sincerity and determination that never failed to provoke Sasuke into feeling.

Anger, passion, hate, want–

Sasuke had had his fair share of battles. With Haku from the Mist so long ago, then Gaara, then Orochimaru, Deidara, Itachi – those were fights he knew he had to win, knew he was going to win, and had approached them with grim determination and strategic attacks.

There was no shouting or raw kicks and punches and the need to overpower destroy win –

It was completely different, Sasuke thought, to let himself get lost in a whirlwind of his own emotions than letting himself get lost in all of the nothing.

Sasuke went back to the compound for the first time in years.

Slipping into Konoha was much easier than he had expected. But it made only sense to him, since this was his home, a long time ago. He knew exactly which forest phased into the trees that lay beyond the walls of the village, and the only opposition that Sasuke encountered on his way in were in the forms of traps and genjutsu.

He supposed that they would have been difficult to bypass to an average ninja, even of jounin level. But he was Uchiha Sasuke, and all those years he spent with Orochimaru had, if nothing else, taught him how to move as one with his surroundings.

It was beyond midnight when his foot first came in light contact with the pavement. All the buildings were dark ad the lights were out, and everyone was doubtlessly sleeping.

And even if they weren't, Sasuke was no fool, and had taken precautions to hide both his chakra and appearance – though he knew he could take on almost every shinobi that might come his way.

The gates that led to the sector of the village were rusty. It seemed almost like a metaphor to Sasuke: the disintegrating metal, the decaying Uchiha name. The deeper he went into the streets, the more haunted it seemed to become. It was silent, yes, but it was a different sort of silence, and Sasuke could almost hear his younger self screaming in the back of his mind – nii-san, what are you –

Sasuke was met with the sharp edge of a kunai against his neck the moment he stepped inside his house.

"If I knew you came back here," said Naruto airily, almost disappointed, "I wouldn't have bothered all those times trying to get you back."

"Idiot," murmured Sasuke, softly. And before his lips came in contact to make the final, bouncing, 't', he had already drawn his sword, and in one swift motion, it was pierced into Naruto's forehead.

Except no, not really, because the dead Naruto exploded into a puff of smoke, and the real Naruto laughed as he walked in.

"Heh, good thing I sent the phoney one in first," he grinned, and there was something so incredibly naïve in the way that Naruto scratched his cheek sheepishly. "Although I'm kind of pissed to think you'd stab me without even thinking about it for a second."

"What are you doing here, Naruto?" asked Sasuke, straight to the point.

"I came to see you. Obviously," replied Naruto easily. "But what are you doing here?"

"This is my house," said Sasuke, eyes roaming over the room that held elegant paintings, covering up the fingerprints he had once put on the walls.

"It's a nice house," Naruto smiled, and were it anyone else it would've sounded hideously awkward, a statement only said out of politeness. The sincerity in Naruto's voice made Sasuke want to frown.

At the end, Sasuke did end up frowning, but it had more to do with the fact that he and Naruto were just standing there, not doing anything. Sasuke was staring at Naruto, and Naruto was staring back at Sasuke, but there was no tenseness in the air, as though the other was just waiting for the first move to happen.

A little spurt of impatience leaked into him.

"Well?" Sasuke asked finally.

"Well what?" Naruto replied, genuine confusion in his reply.

Sasuke couldn't remember the last time he had felt this frustrated at the level of someone's stupidity. He had almost forgotten why Naruto had irritated him so much in his childhood, as the times Sasuke had seen Naruto in the last few years had been nothing but whirlwinds of power.

"This is ridiculous," Sasuke said out loud, rolling his eyes for the first time since – for the first time since.

"What the hell–" began Naruto, but he didn't get a chance to finish as Sasuke's heel jammed into his stomach.

"Fucker," growled Naruto, and Sasuke barely avoided the fist aimed at his face. This was better, Sasuke thought. He and Naruto were destined to be this – a never ending struggle of power –"What's wrong with you, you jackass? People will be able to figure out you're here if you keep acting like a moron."

And amazingly, Naruto took a deep breath, and clenched his fists together.

"I didn't come here to fight you," Naruto said, and then laughed. "You still don't get it."

Sasuke wanted to say that he got it just fine. Sasuke wasn't the idiot in this scenario. But he restrained himself – because Naruto's level of intelligence was so far underneath his own that Sasuke wasn't exactly sure what it was that he understood.

"Forget it," said Naruto, though he grinned in that obnoxious manner that only he could. "I don't blame you for being so emotionally stunted."

Maybe a long time ago, a blunt statement such as that would have been the spark necessary to start yet another fight with Naruto. But Naruto was too much of a fool to ever want to strike Sasuke where it would count, and Sasuke was no longer the type of person to care for such things.

"Why aren't you trying to get me to stay?" Sasuke asked instead. Naruto's way of thinking was something that Sasuke had never fully understood. He knew that Naruto relied on what he felt rather than intellect, but the problem with that was that emotions were too unpredictable to be classified.

"Maybe I'll tell you one day when you're not as screwed up," Naruto grinned as a reply, reaching forward to tap Sasuke's forehead and blinked when Sasuke's fingers grabbed his wrist before he could. "And can finally start to take a joke."

"Leave." Sasuke dropped his wrist and started to walk deeper into the house. He focused his eyes they only looked ahead. "This is my house, my property, but frankly, I just find your presence here to be irritating."

There was a pause.

"I sometimes come here," said Naruto quietly. He was still in the same spot, and hadn't moved to follow Sasuke. "I sometimes come here and think about my family."

"You don't have a family," was Sasuke's direct response. A strange sense of exhaustion was settling over him as he gave this speech again. "You can't feel the way I do if you've never had a family to grieve over."

But Sasuke never mourned about his family. So many years since they died – more than a decade since they died – and Sasuke didn't recall a single tear being shed for them out of grief.

"I had family." Naruto smiled right then, and there was something wrong about the way he looked – how someone usually so lively could look so reserved. "His name was Sasuke and he used to live here when he was young."

Sasuke barely had time to blink before Naruto turned around and started walking out of the house. "One day I'll make sure I get him back. I'll make sure he realizes that he can still be happy."

Naruto didn't shut the door on his way out, and Sasuke stared through the open space for a long, long time afterwards.

Weeks and months blur together, but there's something different this time around.

And that difference was Naruto.

Sasuke came out of the fights with burned skin and holes in his arm, but there was a something so immensely satisfying in knowing that Naruto had gone back to Konoha once again, this time missing a portion of his side and a leg broken in three places.

Sometimes, it felt to Sasuke that the four, five, six times a year now, that Naruto showed up to fight him – whether it be alone, or with one person, or a whole team – were reason enough. Reason enough to train again, to think again, to find a way to completely crush the idiot.

It was a heavy gamble, putting all of this life he had gained back on the being of one person. It could be like Itachi all over again – Sasuke could very well end up being back there again, in the floating, the numbness – should there come a time where he got what he wanted and stabbed Naruto through the heart that final time.

But in the back of his mind, Sasuke knew. He knew that Naruto would never die, that he was a stubborn bastard who didn't know the meaning of humiliation and defeat and would keep coming back, because he was Naruto, and Naruto wanted Sasuke. As long as Sasuke himself was alive, Sasuke didn't have a doubt in his mind that Naruto would be as well.

It was selfish, definitely, but Sasuke had never pretended to be anything but.

And then suddenly, it was years later, it was his birthday – he was now twenty-three – and he was still, so many years later, sitting on a sofa in the biggest mansion of Sound Country, once again listening to the bantering of his three companions.

"I almost lost an arm back there," Suigetsu groaned, rolling his shoulder blade. It then turned to water and he sighed in contentment. "Who the hell knew that paint could do all that shit?"

"You shouldn't turn yourself to something that's not your original biological structure too much, Suigetsu-san," Juugo frowned. "The details about the experiments are still unclear–"

"Leave him be, Juugo." It was Karin now. "Maybe one day he'll end up as someone's piss. But that form would suit him better than water, if you know what I mean–"

"Karin-san, that is disgusting–"

"Actually, it's kinda flattering to be the motivation behind the most creative thing that ever came out of that mouth."

"That was just so funny. Now let me see you face Sasuke-kun–"

There was noise. So much noise was surrounding him, causing his mind to work on overdrive. There was Juugo's voice, soft and low and calm and Suigetsu, all self-assured arrogance and Karin, so feminine and loud and just plain screechy–

But strangely, it wasn't overwhelming him. Sasuke was absorbing it all in, every miniscule detail, from the change of tone from playful to condescending as she switched talking from Juugo to Suigetsu, to the steady beat of Suigetsu rapping his sword against the wall.

He hadn't realized that something so simple and redundant could be having such an effect on him. But he couldn't stop himself from soaking it all in. He sat still with hooded eyes as Karin scrubbed at his face, and only shoved her hand away in annoyance when the cloth smacked him in the eye.

"Watch it," he said, wondering why he was even letting her do this. And when he was met with sudden silence from the room, he asked, "What?"

"It's nothing, Sasuke-san," Juugo was the first one to smile. "Karin-san, could you please pass me that over there–"

"Sure thing–"

"Bad decision there, Zebra. The bitch causes wounds to reopen from mere eyesight alone, you know."

"I'll show you wounds, you worthless bastard–"

This was such a pointless conversation. It would've been much more practical if one of them just got up and left the room and done something else with their time instead of wasting it griping at each other, especially since both of them knew that it would lead them no where.

In the end, Sasuke decided, that was the difference between the rest of the world and him. Sasuke didn't let himself indulge childish impulses.

Maybe it was because of his complete lack of a childhood, he didn't know what it felt like to have real friends and rivals. Ever since his family died, the first source of warmth and comfort and friendship that was offered to him had been years later, with Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi. But by then he was so far gone that he didn't know how to interact with that kind of – any kind of – a relationship.

He thought about how his heart had raced a few hours ago, how his mind had whirred, and how he had felt that feeling of pounding excitement, being rejuvenated, as though life had been instilled him after so long.

He thought about Naruto, his rival, the person who could have been his best friend, his brother, the only person who managed to inspire something inside of him after years of mindless floating – the person who looked straight at Sasuke, saw the disaster that he was and grinned at him like a fool anyway.

There was something oddly balanced about watching the Suigetsu and Karin and Juugo interact. They were like pieces from three different puzzles that fit with each other because years of eroding had rounded the edges perfectly.

He used to have that once, Sasuke remembered, even though back then he never acknowledged it.

The ache that appeared in his head and his chest and behind his eyes were by products of the sudden, twist of his stomach that entered him at the thought of the last few years of his life – those years that were wasted, where he was waiting at the end of a bottomless chasm waiting for someone to pull him out, for someone to save him.

Had Sasuke been any – any – other person, he would have wept from the overwhelming need in his heart for a second chance at living.

Everyone always said that Sasuke looked like his mother.

And looking at the mirror, Sasuke didn't disagree.

He had the same, soft shaped eyes and the same rounding curves on his cheek. They had the same nose and chin and bone structure, and really, Sasuke didn't know how he ended up looking like a male where his mother looked very much the part of a female.

However, once he started to look a bit closer, Sasuke saw parts of his father in him as well. His father had had rough hands and fingers, made coarse through years of being a first class shinobi. Sasuke's hands were like that as well, with hundreds of tiny scars across his knuckles and his finger pads blunt. It was such a drastic difference from his mother, whose hands were delicate and feminine and smoothly curving fingernails.

Every scar that Sasuke had reminded him of his father. Every jutsu he learned reminded him of the first time he had blown fire from his lungs, and the proud look in his father's eyes when he had done do, never mind the burned leaves of his mother's garden.

And then Sasuke thought about Itachi.

Physically he might have looked like his mother and father, but everything else had been Itachi.

His eyes, the ones that girls thought were the best part about him, the ones that were his mothers, were defined by Itachi. It was because of his brother that they had once been so warm and full of life. It was because of him that they were once full of hate and malice and anger. It was because of him that they were now empty and broken with so little chance of being fixed.

His hands, the ones that were reflective of his father's, the ones that spoke of his strength and determination, were all for Itachi. Each time he punched a tree, each time he had cut himself with a kunai, each time he relentlessly practiced all the jutsu he knew, had been all for Itachi – to try and find a way – any way – to kill him.

In the mirror he saw the life he could have had had everything gone differently. His mother might have been cooking dinner right now, her hair beginning to streak grey. His father might have been drinking tea, calmly going over reports from the day at work. Itachi might have entered the house with a wife, and one or two smiling children.

I love you and I'm sorry, Sasuke told his reflection, seeing something completely different than what was really there. But his words were sincere, and so were whatever emotions that were running through him at that moment. But you're not real. You're all dead.

I'm still alive though. He lifted his hands and the tips of his fingers touched the cool, cool glass. They were lingering on the curve of a happy Itachi's grin. He thought about Naruto, about his never ending desire to live, his unwavering faith in Sasuke, his I'll show him that he can still be happy.

It was almost like a revelation, the thought that occurred to Sasuke at that moment. Sasuke thought he finally understood what Naruto had been trying to say – why Naruto didn't try to fight him that night, when Sasuke was alone in the middle of enemy territory. Why those words registered as meaningful yet he couldn't figure out why.

I've only ever wanted one thing from you, echoed Naruto's voice in his head. I had family. His name was Sasuke.

I'll show him that he can still be happy.

Sasuke took one, final look at the people who had once been his family.

I love you, but I'm still alive, he said again, and Sasuke could literally feel the weight of regret being lifted off of his chest, and now I have to go and live.

He didn't look back as he took a step forward, a step away from the place – that cold and empty place – the darkness in which he'd been trapped ever since he was a child.

For the first time in so many years, Uchiha Sasuke smiled.

Goodbye.