Okay. I've never posted a fanfic before. So go easy on me. It's SasuNaru or whatever the order is; I don't think that matters much. This little drabble-y thing came to me in English, when our teacher was debating whether to give us an essay with the title "Never a lender or borrower be". In the end she didn't.

Me, own Naruto? I wish.


"Never a lender or a borrower be," that's what Fugaku had always said to Sasuke. Always the businessman, Fugaku. Always the perfect Uchiha clan chief, never a father. And Sasuke had taken his word as gospel, followed his advice to a letter. He wanted to make his proud, as proud as they were of Itachi. He wanted to make Itachi proud too, and absorbed all that his brother said.

And even when Itachi had slowly torn their bonds apart, ripping Sasuke's heart inch by inch until it fell apart at the centre and the young boy's love tumbled out, Sasuke still couldn't help but listen.

Itachi taught him to hate.

And by the time his clan were buried, by the time he'd seen his parents' too pale faces, heaped in a crimson puddle, his heart was nothing more than shimmering motes, shattered and ground with hatred and loathing into dust.

And all Sasuke had ever really wanted was to borrow happiness, for someone, anyone, to lend him some comfort. But his father had forbid him that, and avengers cannot afford to become distracted. So Sasuke could do was steal more hate.

And then he noticed Naruto.

He often wonders, what it feels like to have such fiery emotions, to have such a heat burning inside you. He thinks that Naruto's insides must be twisted and charred from the inferno in there, a melted black mess, steaming with love and hate and fear and courage and so many other things that Sasuke barely remembers feeling. If Naruto is a flame, then Sasuke must be a glacier, a solitary block of hateful ice sailing on a silent, lonely sea.

And Sasuke feels Naruto's warmth and intensity and clings on, and the closer Sasuke becomes to him, the warmer Naruto becomes and soon Sasuke can feel the glittering particles of his weathered, lonely heart change and heat and melt and cool and solidify until the motes have become beautifully sculpted glass. And through Naruto's borrowed heat, Sasuke feels whole. Sasuke feels happy.

Sasuke didn't think he could ever love again.

But this heat isn't Sasuke's own, it's borrowed, and happiness isn't a fate fitting for an avenger. So Sasuke distances Naruto, puts a valley wide gap of hate and pain between them and waits for the cracks to form in his little glass heart.

And Sasuke wishes that he could break his life's vicious cycle. But the past dictates the future and Sasuke's always obedient, even to ghosts.


Reviews are welcomed, but constructive criticism is praised.