Author's note:. Hello, unsuspecting readers, and welcome to my fanfic! The big hunk of words you may glimpse down there was originally the byproduct of a bad case of holiday fever, but was readily replaced by something of even less value: a plot! Yes, it is no longer the senseless fluff that reigns fandom, but it shall not be forever so! I give my word that there will be plenty of bellybutton-clogging material in the future. That is all.

(edited 1x)

Summary:. There's something amiss in Konoha, and Naruto is determined to find out what's going on even if it means dealing with a less-than-sane Sasuke.

Pairings:. SasuNaru/NaruSasu/SaNa/NaSa/WhoCares

Warnings:. Swearing, shounen-ai/yaoi (later), het, randomness, possibly adult situations, and some very slow updating, to say the least.

Disclaimer:. When I looked in the mirror this morning, I was not Masashi Kishimoto, and I don't think that fact has changed since then.

Locked Crimsons

Unit one: The Source of Abnormality

The grounds of Konoha were dressed in white, snow littering the top of every building from Ichiraku to the hospital. The usual bustling activity of the village seemed almost lethargic as the cold seeped in through the fractures in clothes and walls. The sky was a pleasant shade of gray, the clouds not heavy enough to form precipitation again quite yet, but promising another snowstorm sometime soon.

A boy walked patiently through the slush, trying hard to focus on his errand instead of how thin his coat was. Every once in a while, he'd look up to the clouds to see if they'd moved in the past few minutes, but alas, they seemed to go at the speed of cold molasses.

It was too bad, really. It was so cold that he actually wished the sun would come out, if only to warm him up a little. Suddenly, a new distraction made its way to his ears.

"Hey, Shikamaru!"

The chuunin paused at the sound of his friend's voice, though not turning around. That would've been trivial and bothersome, as he already knew Naruto was headed his way and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Not that he particularly minded the energetic boy's companyhe just didn't want to be out in the cold any longer than absolutely necessary.

A figure in a familiar orange jacket abruptly came to rest at his side. "Hey, Shikamaru! Long time no see!"

"Hey Naruto," the lazy boy nodded in greeting. "What's going on?"

The blonde shrugged noncommittally. "Nothing much, really. I just wanted to give you something. Are you in a hurry?" Not that Shikamaru was ever in a hurry, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"No, I'm just on my way to the store for more eggnog. My father and mother are entertaining guests."

"Oh," the blue-eyed boy dropped his gaze for a moment before stuffing a hand in his pocket and digging a bit. Grinning widely upon finding what he was looking for, he pulled out a small, white envelope and held it out to the lazy boy. "Well, here you go. I hope you can come, Sakura-chan is helping me decorate and everything!"

Shikamaru smiled slightly and accepted what he supposed must be an invitation of some sort, eyeing it carefully within his gloved hands. This was the first time he'd gotten an invite of any kind from his friend. "Thanks, Naruto. I'll see what I can do."

The blonde's face seemed to light up even more. "Really? Thanks! I mean, you're welcome!" He laughed a little then, and turned to face the direction he'd come in. "I'll see you around, Shikamaru!"

"See ya," the brunette replied, watching as the blonde ran off to his next destination, wherever that was. Taking a last, hasty glance at the envelope in his hand, Shikamaru thrust it into his pocket and continued on his way, shivering just a little. "Damn, it's cold."

"Naruto's throwing a Christmas party," Sasuke affirmed what he'd just heard before asking his question. "So what?"

Shikamaru sighed; talking to the Uchiha was so troublesome sometimes. "I was just wondering if you knew why the invitation said Iruka-sensei's house instead of Naruto's."

The dark-haired shinobi shrugged, a bit irritated that anyone would come to him of all people for information on the blonde. They hadn't been on great terms since he'd been brought back from... the darkness, or whatever. "How should I know? I didn't even get one."

"You didn't, eh?" This surprised Shikamaru a bit, but he did his best to remain as inoffensive as possible, considering how volatile Sasuke had been lately. After all, if talking to him now was troublesome, talking to him when he was angry was ten times worse. "Well, thanks anyway. I'll talk to you later, I guess."

A faint nod was given in return to the farewell, and then both went their separate directions: one back into the snow and the other back inside his house. Sasuke slipped his shoes back off and left them neatly by the door before resuming his seat in front of the fireplace. It was the first time a flame had burned there in ages. The wood was so decrepit and unusable that he'd had to go out and get more just to light it. It was worth the trouble, though.

The soft glow surrounded him in the darkness, whereas everything outside the dim orb of light was near pitch black, the only thing preventing total obscurity being the small lamp that rested a few feet away from where Sasuke sat.

The firelight danced and reflected off his obsidian eyes, playing tricks with the refraction and relying on the unmoving gaze of its subject in order for the game to stay steady. And every once in a while, the light would move just right across the glazed surface of his eyes to stain them a fierce red, a mock Sharingan.

Sasuke had tried his hardest to avoid using his bloodline limit whenever possible since he'd returned to Konoha. He never said why.

There were a lot of things he never said:

Why he'd gone in the first place.

Why he hadn't at least tried to come back.

Why he was found half-dead a mile or so outside Hidden Sound on a clear, sunny morning about two and a half years later.

He remembered the day vividly, though he was barely conscious at the time. A flash of yellow and blue. A blur of white. He remembered hearing the yelling and the laughing, then the gasps of surprise as they relayed to each other how they'd barely even noticed the presence it was so weak. He remembered the gentle arms that lifted him from the ground and how he'd wanted so desperately to beat them away, yell, scream, fight... but didn't have the energy.

He had found out later that Naruto and that old pervert Jiraiya had been on their way back to Konoha after a long training trip. They'd figured to make a quick pass by Sound to see if anything suspicious was going on, and had come across him, bloody, emaciated, and overall barely alive.

It had taken him a couple of months to "fully" recover, clinically, that is. Emotionally, he couldn't say he was any better off than he had been when he was found. When he was rescued.

Rescued.

Naruto said once that one day he would be the one to rescue Sasuke instead of the other way around, didn't he? Well, he'd officially achieved that goal. The Uchiha spent the next six months watching him achieve other ones.

Naruto had real friends, now.

Naruto had been recently promoted to chuunin level.

Naruto had a family, mostly consisting of a powerful, blonde hag, an emotional schoolteacher, a perverted old geezer, and an idiotic, but wise jounin sensei.

There was a time when he was considered a part of that family. Naruto had asked if what he felt when he was around Sasuke was what if felt like to have a brother. Not that the Uchiha could truly answer. He'd forgotten a long time ago what it really felt like to have a brother.

Itachi...

Uchiha Itachi was still out there, or at least he hoped. And for two main reasons:

One: It was his job to kill the wretched bastard, to avenge the souls of his massacred family.

Two: The only other person after his brother that was perhaps actually strong enough to defeat him would not use the power he acquired for the forces of good.

He really should tell the Hokage, but it wasn't like he wanted to remember all that anyway.

The once raging flames were slowly dying down, leaving the wide room dimly lit and much colder.

Without waiting for the last embers to go out, the somber boy rose from his place. He flicked out the lamp and made his way to the stairs, more than ready to go to bed, even if it would just result in tossing and turning and nightmares that he couldn't remember in the morning.

"So, Naruto's having a Christmas party..." He mumbled vaguely to himself as he ascended.

An unruly mop of yellow flopped onto the pillow reserved solely for it. The body attached to it was still in the clothing it put on itself in the morning, and the face half covered by threads of blonde seemed to be smiling incoherently at nothing in general.

"I can't believe it," the boy mumbled to himself through his grin, "I'm gonna have a real party, with people and food and smiling and laughing..."

Naruto sighed to himself, tiredly. After training a bit in the morning, he'd spent the rest of the day running practically all over Konoha, tracking people down to give them invitations to his special party personally. Surprisingly enough, he'd gotten to nearly everyone.

A smooth-skinned hand rummaged around inside his pants pocket, searching for what he knew was there. He'd known it was there the entire day. How could he forget, when it had been plaguing him throughout most of it?

He pulled out the small envelope and held it over him, so as to look at it properly. It was clean, white, and crisp, with a small, wreath-shaped sticker in place to hold down the flap, since he hated licking that horrible glue. He noticed with displeasure that the tiny, green sticker was off-center just a bit. He never could do things 100 percent right.

Turning it over, he saw his own messy handwriting, though he'd tried to make it a bit neater for this occasion. Scrawled in the middle of the back side of the envelope were the words "Uchiha Sasuke." Naruto stared at the name, for a moment, almost as if he couldn't place it in his mind. No, he knew the name very well, just not the boy to whom it applied. He'd thought he knew him, but he'd made a mistake.

Uchiha Sasuke had been his best friend once. Sasuke himself had admitted it, just before nearly killing him.

Despite that, the words he said still rang and bounced around inside his head, even to that very day. He never gave up on the dark-eyed boy. Even as he had lain in the hospital, even as the haunting image of the spinning Sharingan had ghosted across his mind, he didn't give up. He swore he'd bring the Uchiha back.

It was ironic, in the end, just how he did. He hadn't even had to do anything, other than sling him gently over his shoulder and run. He'd actually been afraid, more than anything, that Sasuke was dead. Then again, he might as well have been. He knew better than anyone that even as physical wounds heal, psychological wounds can become infected and immutable.

He'd seen it within Sasuke, the moment the boy woke up and their eyes locked.

He chuckled a bit as he recalled how he'd woken the Uchiha, much to the dismay of Tsunade, who had demanded that Naruto not visit alone. He just couldn't help it; when he saw his rival lying there stupidly, he just had to go over there and bring him back to his senses.

'Stop shaking him!' He remembered the hag shouting at him. 'Do you want to worsen his condition, brat?'

But oh, how surprised she was when Sasuke grunted and his brows creased together. 'Finally!' he'd yelled in impatience, still not removing his hands from the patient's shoulders, just in case he needed another shake or two.

And that was when it had happened. Sasuke's long eyelashes had lifted, revealing tired, glazed eyes that looked wearily into Naruto's. The blonde remembered how it felt to look into those eyes, how his breath hitched in his throat at the hopelessness and despair he could see so plainly, so openly. And then recognition seemed to set in and Sasuke's visage began to harden into the expression his ex-rival remembered so well.

'Is he awake?' Tsunade had exclaimed as she violently shoved Naruto out of the way to examine the now conscious Uchiha.

Naruto had wondered then, as he wondered occasionally now whether Sasuke had been through something particularly terrible during the three years they'd been apart or if that hopelessness had been breeding hidden inside the boy since before they'd even met.

He never asked about it; the Sasuke he'd known in the past would have undoubtedly preferred to be left alone, regardless of how unhealthy it was to keep everything bottled up inside him. Or maybe Naruto was just terrified of what he'd dig up.

Perhaps that was why he hadn't attempted to get any closer to his former best friend since he'd found him. And perhaps that was why he still hesitated while holding the small, white envelope in his hand.

"But isn't it about time?" He asked himself quietly. "Isn't it about time we work this out? Give it a shot?" He sighed again.

He glanced at his alarm clock. 10:14. "I wonder if he's still up...?"

Naruto heaved his messy blonde head from the pillow once again and hopped off his bed. After one more weary look toward the envelope he held, he stuffed it back into his pocket and made for the door, hopefully for the last time that night.

Sasuke could not sleep. He'd been trying for over an hour, but still had gained no peace; he just kept lying in bed doing absolutely nothing. Often, he remembered, when he was part of Team 7 and couldn't sleep, he would go outside and train until he forcibly passed out. The first time he'd done it, he'd wound up sleeping outside, but after a week or so, he'd had it down so well that he could leave himself exactly enough time and energy to make it into the house, upstairs, and into his bed before he promptly fell unconscious.

He didn't feel like training right now. He hadn't really felt like training for the past six months. He trained anyway, even if his "heart wasn't in it", because, hell, he couldn't let himself get rusty, and he still had that far off goal of killing his brother. He used to be so much more adamant about it, though... Now, after everything that happened, so much of his motivation, so much of his energy felt like it was just stripped away, he wanted to just fall asleep and never wake up.

Could fate not even grant him a fraction of that?

Suddenly, a pounding resounded throughout the room. Origin: the front door.

At first, Sasuke thought he was merely imagining things, so he ignored it.

Then he heard that same pounding again. He wondered briefly if construction could be going on outside his home, but at this time of night? Not likely. Perhaps someone was at the door? No one ever came to visit him.

Well, Shikamaru had, earlier that day, to ask about Naruto's party.

He raised himself tiredly from his mattress, half-dragging the covers with him. He allowed them to drop to the floor as he descended the staircase. The clothes he'd worn that day still draped over his lean figure, contorting his shape in the darkness until he made his way to the front, flicking a light switch to ignite the whole, wide entrance.

Opening the door without a hint of hurry, he was soon face to face with blue eyes, tanned skin, and blonde hair.

"Naruto," he stated plainly, without conviction, annoyance, or really anything.

Naruto greeted the boy politely with a small grin. "Sasuke. It's been a while."

Hm, isn't it amazing that this one boy is the source of nearly every abnormality of my life? People visit me because of him. Itachi appears because of him. I went to Orochimaru... inadvertently because of him, and to get right down to it, I'm alive because of him. Would it not be prudent of me to give due process to one with such influence?

Sasuke dispelled his innate hesitance and opened the door a bit wider, a gesture for Naruto to enter.

tbc...

Well yeah. What odd ideas I get.

(edited 1x)