In the middle of being disgusted and shocked that his lips would ever touch that idiot Sasuke's lips, Naruto felt a tug of something that made no sense: deja vu. He forgot about it a second later, dismissing in the process thousands of years of unseen history.

This is not a story they will remember, even though it has happened before and will happen again.

Heian-kyō, 1171

Sasuke was probably the most beautiful descendant out of the Uchiha line, rivaling even his older brother with his brooding good looks, accentuated by his small beard and blackened teeth (even if the taste of the mixture applied to them made him want to gargle from the nearest river). He spent his days studying, reading whatever he could get his hands on, as well as keeping his body as fit as his mind. His father expected him to succeed as the head of the family in case Itachi fell ill and could not perform his duties once he succeeded; even if the position of "back-up" would be humiliating to most, Sasuke felt proud to serve underneath his beloved older brother.

The Uchiha household had been entertaining a traveling band of Buddhist monks staying at their complex for a week before moving on to worship at Mount Hiei. One of them had a child from before his conversion, a boy with blond hair and marks on his face like a demon. Sasuke kept away from him and saw how the other children threw rocks at him, tripped him up, called him names and filled his clothes with dirt. But the boy - Uzumaki Naruto, if he heard correctly - just kept on grinning and going on. Must have been that buoyant spirit so many holy men walked around with, as if Buddha Himself was raising up their smiles with invisible fingers. It was . . . irritating.

He found the boy one day holed up in the storage shed, face smeared in dirt, poring over a large book. The Tales of Genji. Sasuke frowned. Somehow this irritating little boy had gotten the one book he had wanted to read before he did.

"You can read?" Sasuke asked, breaking the other boy's concentration. He looked up and gave him a cocky smile.

"Surprise you that I can read?"

Sasuke resisted the urge to knock Naruto's mocking smile out. "You don't seem the type."

"What type is that?"

"The reading type."

"Hey!" Naruto seemed mockingly offended. "I am a monk's son, after all! If Minato hears you, I'll make him beat you up!"

"So you let your father do the fighting on your behalf? Even though he is a monk?" Sasuke's eyes grazed over Naruto as if inspecting a lower class being, an ant or some other kind of bug. He found it oddly easy to dismiss him as less than a human being.

Naruto stuck out his tongue in response; he was used to it. "Yeah, well, at least I don't hide behind my big brother's legs when I'm scared!"

Sasuke reeled back slightly, as if he had been struck across the face. Such impudence - and against a member of the Uchiha family! "Shut up! You don't know anything!"

The boy grinned, and Sasuke was reminded of a mischievous fox spirit, just come out from his den to mock the living. "Nyah! What, did I hurt your feelings? You gonna run for Itachi now?"

Later, as Itachi was sighing and applying more salve to the scratches on Sasuke's knees, he would remember the fight that ensued, not so much a rough and tumble brawl but something awkwardly choreographed between them. In that cramped storage shed, they had somehow managed to land deft punches and kicks on the other, force the other onto the ground and turn dirty as rats, even then continuing to battle until some people passing by heard the ruckus and pulled them apart, sending them to their respective guardians. For Sasuke, it would always be Itachi, not his father. Never his father.

A few days afterward, the monks would leave to continue their journey to Mount Hiei, leaving Sasuke to face a house that was no longer filled with the sounds of men's bare feet padding against the hardwood floor, no more quiet chanting in the mornings or stories from the old monks about their travels. No more raucous laughter and bubbly energy and unnatural blond hair drooping low against the shoulder of a dark orange kimono as he napped against a tree in the middle of the day, sunlight filtering through the leaves and falling upon his marked face. Sasuke shook his head, wondering why the image of Naruto sleeping had gotten into his head so easily, before moving onto his daily duties.

It would be the image Sasuke would hold onto months later as he knelt in his own father's blood, shaking as Itachi's blade drew closer to his neck, the only thing that kept him from losing control before losing his life.

When he opened his eyes and saw that he was alive, that Haku had not killed him after all, the first person he asked about was Naruto. Naruto, who hated him and yet protected him.

Naruto saw that the other boy was all right, and tears of something like joy gathered at the corners of his eyes. Sasuke wanted to tell the idiot to stop crying over someone like him, but couldn't bring himself to do it. It had been a while since someone had shed tears over a Uchiha. He wondered if it would happen again.

Kyoto, 1860

"We're finally in!" Naruto grinned then winced as Sasuke pulled his tatsuki a little too tight as he tied it at the back. "Hey, be careful back there, Sasuke!" Sasuke grunted then shook his head in disbelief, standing back slightly to examine his own handiwork. He had been capable of getting dressed in his new Shinsengumi uniform all by himself, even the tatsuki and kimono slip, both things that Naruto had trouble with. Sasuke wondered how Naruto was going to handle using his sword if he could not even grasp tying straps of fabric together.

"How pathetic," Sasuke lamented, earning him a glare from Naruto before stomping out of the room, almost catching the hem of his dark orange hakama pants in the process with his heavy feet. Despite himself, he smiled and adjusted his headband with one hand as he watched Naruto's silhouette go past down the hallway.

From then on, when Sasuke and Naruto patrolled the bustling streets of Kyoto, they were seldom bothered. People would quickly get out of the way as they walked down the road, being careful not to offend the two. Those who tried to pick a fight usually went after Naruto because of his unnatural features (the same features that had been keeping him out of the Shinsengumi ranks for so long until someone higher up finally relented), then quickly learned why it was so few messed with the blond swordsman. Or Sasuke, for that matter. They were both highly skilled with the sword as well as many other weapons.

On late nights they would head over to the nearest tea house with positive ties to the Shinsengumi captain, Sakura-chaya, and talked lightly over tea and rice balls. Sometimes, however, when they knew no one could overhear them, Naruto would confess that being a member of Shinsengumi was rather . . . lonely.

"Y'know?" he admitted, looking sheepishly into his tea. "No one will talk to us 'cause we're part of the police force. We're too scary or something."

"Would you prefer we went back to being just samurai?" Sasuke asked. He nibbled on the corner of a rice ball, slowly, mulling over Naruto's words.

Naruto looked up from his tea and gave Sasuke a cocky grin. "Hey, there's nothing "just" 'bout being a samurai!" He frowned. "But even then, we were respected."

"Are we not respected now?"

"We're feared now, Sasuke! It's not the same . . ." Naruto's voice trailed off as he remembered what ordeals Sasuke had had to go through to join the Shinsengumi: even though he was a born samurai and member of the respected Uchiha clan, he had been ordered by Danzou-taichou to kill his own brother, a supposed rebellious agent, in order to assure his own spot in the squad. It had been hard. Sasuke still did not like talking about it, but Naruto could still tell that there was a great deal of regret and agony still lingering inside of him. Naruto did his best to smile and laugh and make Sasuke feel better, but nothing seemed to ring true to the other man. There were just things one could tell when they've been with one person for so long; it was their long-standing friendship that allowed them to be partners in the ranks. A pair that could never be broken apart.

Later that night, Sasuke lay awake on his futon, watching the moonlight stream through the slightly ajar sliding doors and across Naruto's sleeping face. He felt as if he had spent lifetimes waiting for night to come, to watch his comrade in arms sleep peacefully. He felt content for the first time in a while; his dreams for once did not contain images of his dead family, of Itachi's face stained in his own blood, but were mercifully blank.

Weeks passed, and Sasuke was sent on a mission by Danzou-taichou to retrieve some important artifacts from a neighboring city; contact was finally declared lost after thirteen days of no relay messages. Angry, Naruto left to bring back Sasuke as well as the artifacts; he came back in time to bury what was left of Sasuke's body. It was revealed that Naruto engaged in a private fight with the man who had ordered Sasuke's death. It was deemed unacceptable by the Shinsengumi as a whole.

He had no final wishes, no swan song poem to leave behind. The short blade felt heavy in his hand. Naruto gritted his teeth, not feeling very honorable as he prepared himself for the inevitable. At his side, fellow samurai Sai observed dutifully but silently, holding his own sword at the ready. This was what he had to do. For something that was going to absolve his soul of guilt, it didn't feel very cleansing. The blade came closer to his exposed stomach, and Naruto took a deep breath before realizing what he would have to do to make everything right again.

From that point on, stories get tangled up and confused with conflicting narratives and points of views and muddled memories, as many stories did. Some say he killed Sai before killing himself in a horribly bloody way unfitting of his position. Others say he went through with the seppuku, only to still be alive even after his near-decapitation, and spent the rest of his life as a deformed hermit on top of Mt Kitayama, Sai as his faithful servant that fetched him food from the villages below.

And then there is the story that Naruto quickly knocked Sai out and escaped the Shinsengumi building without detection, that he ran away and became a rogue samurai, honoring the bushido code despite his status of traitor in the capital. People who saw him say that he fought with two swords, and that one of them had been marked on the handle, in red, the name of a man long dead, as if it had been written in blood. Nevertheless, it is said he is still out there, fighting in the name of honor and loyalty, doomed forever to wander the countryside alone. It is his curse, and it is his gift.

In the Forest of Death, Sasuke had been willing to sacrifice their goal in order to save his teammates lives. It had been Sasuke who had allowed Naruto to fight on, and it was Naruto's own willpower which had allowed Sasuke to fight as well. It was their combined determinations that drove Team Seven past the second phase and into the preliminaries.

Naruto wanted to win above anything else, to prove to Konoha that he was worthy of having the headband and becoming a Chūnin. But most of all he was looking forward to beating Sasuke in the finals and showing him that the loud-mouthed ninja could be as strong as him and then some. Naruto grinned; he was looking forward to it, and he imagined so was Sasuke.

When Sasuke went astray, one of his few regrets was not being able to face off against his former team member in the arena.

Tokyo, 1964

He was only nine years old when Fugaku Uchiha died of acute radiation syndrome, leaving him in the care of his older brother Sasuke. His mother had died several years earlier. Sasuke cried at her funeral, and cried at his father's funeral as well. That was the last time. They had loved him, but he had always felt second-best. Itachi said it was different, but Sasuke never knew when to trust his brother at face value. When he turned sixteen, Sasuke moved out and started sleeping on friends' couches, anything to keep some semblance of independence from the remnants of his family.

This is how he met Naruto Uzumaki: at the record store, too busy looking for the newest LP by the Kinks to see where he was going until he collided shoulder-to-shoulder with some blond haired kid in a torn up orange jacket and blue jeans holding an LP that he tried to cover up with his hands.

"What is that crap?"

"It's 'Surfin' Bird' and shut your face!"

They locked gazes for a moment, both boys glaring so intently into the other's face that the owner finally made them pay for their stuff and leave before something serious happened and something important got broken. The two young boys ended up walking around Shibuya and shooting the breeze about music and school and life in general. For someone who looked like he had been fathered by a fox, Naruto knew his stuff. Sasuke saw himself tolerating the boy's company for quite a while.

When school started again, Sasuke was mildly surprised to see that Naruto is in his class. The blond boy made fast friends with most of his classmates; he even managed to make the loner from Okinawa, Gaara Sunaga, open up somewhat. He started noticing things about Naruto that he hadn't before on the streets, that he didn't really get along with school authorities, but was awfully bright for such a goof-off. He made his own lunch because, as Sasuke later found out, he lived alone with no one else to do it for him. When Sasuke asked what had happened to his parents, Naruto mumbled something about his mom dying when he was born. He never talked about his father for some reason; Sasuke never found out why. To be fair, Sasuke rarely if ever talked about his brother, Itachi - probably for the same reasons, he figured.

One night when the temperature in Tokyo was near freezing and Sasuke had used up the last ounce of his few acquaintances' generosity, he slept on the benches in the local park, using the coin lockers at the train station to hold his stuff overnight. He didn't know that Naruto occasionally jogged around the park at night when he couldn't fall asleep; it was Naruto who found him lying under a thick layer of glued-together newspapers trying to sleep and it was Naruto who practically dragged the dark-haired boy back to his apartment to sleep for the night. Later, Sasuke would return to the train station and check out his belongings for the last time, all the while telling Naruto that it was not permanent and that when his job search came through he would get his own place. Naruto just grinned and said, "Yeah, sure," as if he didn't believe him.

Still, living in Naruto's apartment was not half bad. He had his own futon to sleep on and a hot meal to look forward to every night, and there was even a TV - a rare commodity back when he lived with Itachi. Naruto had a kotatsu, of all things, that he dragged out during the winter months no matter what. He spent much of his winter underneath the kotatsu, eating soba noodles and reading books while Naruto watched television. They got on as well as two teenage boys can in a two-room apartment --- cleaning up after each other only because it got in the way, eating dinner together then doing Jan-ken-pon to decide who cleaned the dishes, having study parties with friends from school that had more partying than studying. Even at home, Sasuke watched with his usual non-interested look at whatever Naruto was doing at the time, keeping mental check of all the little things that went into his daily activities. He was the kind of guy to wake up before the sun rose and do sit-ups and push-ups, then end up falling asleep in first period because he did too much too soon in the day.

They fought, of course. Not all the time, but on occasion their tempers flared too brightly and too hotly to be contained to just words. The next day, they'd arrive at school with faint bruises and, on one occasion, matching broken noses, but never looking cross with one another; after all, they had perfected in just a short few months the fine art of erasing anger with quick brute violence. The other times they fought weren't about arguments at all: because of Naruto's incessant love for cartoons of the super-charged shonen variety with their brightly-clad heroes and heroines, he would get really hyper, jumping about and imitating the action on tv. There was only one way to bring down Naruto's energy levels when this happened: fight. They would clear the room of everything big and breakable before coming at each other like ninjas, leaping and kicking and twisting their bodies about to avoid the other's blows. It got so bad at times that their downstairs neighbor, a big bulky old man who made a living writing dirty novels, would begin pounding his apartment ceiling with a long-handled broom to try to get the two of them to stop. It was bloody and messy and wonderful. Everything about living with Naruto was wonderful, even if he didn't realize it most of the time.

Everything came together months later when, under the duvet of the kotatsu, they watched the Summer Olympics on the television set - Naruto insisted, saying it was a special occasion and a special occasion, for whatever arbitrary reason he had decided on his own, demanded the kotatsu's presence.

"Okay, but I'm not plugging the thing in. I'm not dropping dead from heat while watching swimming." Sasuke got his way, even if it felt weird to be sitting under it with the heat off. At least there were satsumas and sodas while they waited for the games to start.

Out of all the festivities on opening day, the part that he remembered most clearly was when they lit the flame in the giant Olympic cauldron. Naruto said as it happened live that the guy had been born in Hiroshima the day the bomb dropped.

"And now here he is, lighting the torch!" Naruto grinned toothily at Sasuke from across the table. "Pretty cool huh? --- hey, Sasuke, why do you look so weird? Are you gonna be sick?"

"You idiot," Sasuke hiccuped, wondering when it had started raining in the apartment, "I miss my father."

"So do I." Naruto's sudden honesty was startling. To be fair, it was far more startling when Naruto started kissing him during the playing of the theme song. He was honestly sure what he was supposed to do, so he did the first thing that came to mind: he kissed back. When it started feeling right, feeling good, Sasuke knew he had done the right thing. Even if it meant kissing a blond idiot. They didn't talk about it later, but it was noticeable that something had happened. A strange sort of energy kept sparking between them whenever they were in the same room.

It did not last, whatever it was. As soon as Sasuke realized what it was that had grown between him and his friend, he backed off, became distant. Naruto was frustrated but found his efforts to open up Sasuke's true feelings up had no effect. They were both angry - Naruto at Sasuke, and Sasuke at himself - and their anger eventually blew up one disastrous night that ended with Naruto kicking Sasuke out of his apartment, belongings and all. That was fine by Sasuke - it meant that his plan had worked. Naruto hated him too much to love him. Sasuke would never have to worry about becoming too attached to the other boy to be hurt. However, there was one bad part to his plan: nowhere to sleep for the night. So he went back to the one place that would always accept him, no matter what, even if it killed him to admit it.

It was a little past ten at night when he knocked on Itachi's front door, head held high despite the crushing shame in his heart. He saw a bloodshot eye look out from the peephole, and then the door opened to reveal the last thing Sasuke would ever see: Itachi, eyes red from sleep deprivation, smiling.

"You came back, little brother."

Sasuke nodded. "Itachi ---" That's when he noticed the kitchen knife in Itachi's hand. He faintly heard the words, "And now you'll never leave me again," before all he felt was pain, and then nothing.

After the exams were over and the dust had settled, Sasuke became colder than ever before. He started actively pushing people away, slowly destroying the close-knit dynamics of Team Seven from the inside out. It was impossible for him to clearly express just why he was doing these things. The hurt and fear from long ago that had been re-opened by Itachi were eating him up with a dangerous ferocity.

'If I had known sooner,' Naruto thought, 'I could have saved him.' If he had gotten Sasuke to open up about his feelings. If he had listened to Sasuke's troubles, given him an open ear and a sturdy shoulder. His whole life was a mountain of ifs and few resolutions - until now.

Okayama Prefecture, 2046

This is the way the world ended: not with a bang but a whimper. War broke out on a massive scale and the bombs kept on falling all over the world until there was no one left alive to set them off. The people left behind, the ones who had managed to evade death by nuclear warfare, could not even consider themselves survivors. Slowly, at a snail's pace, the world tried to get back on its feet and rebuild. From those people who survived, a new generation of people were born, children who never knew what the world was like before the fall of empires. One man had been eighteen when the bomb fell. He lost his father to the explosion, his mother to an illness from an accidental water poisoning, and his only true friend to the lure of a thing called "hope" on the other side of the country. After a few years of trying to make a new life in his old town, he knew that he had to go find his old friend. That is when Naruto began walking in the direction of Okayama-ken: the place he first met Sasuke. And after twenty some years, with several pit stops along the way, he finally made it there.

After days of trudging through what was left of downtown Okayama, picking through the rubble to find food and supplies, Naruto had reached the remaining husk of the defunct train station. He took a moment to rest, sitting against the burnt base of the old Momotaro statue that was still standing against all odds. It was taking him a few seconds longer than usual to catch his breath after walking so long; despite all the training he had back before the bombs, a regime he did his damnedest to keep up on even afterward, being forty-one years old and spending most of his waking hours walking in the heat of endless summer was slowly taking its toll. Naruto cursed his aging body, then smirked, wondering what his past teachers Kakashi and Jiraiya would say about him now. Something amusingly aggravating, he was sure.

The sound of footsteps on broken concrete brought Naruto to attention. In a few seconds, he was on his feet and discreetly checking his body to make sure his weapons were in order, all hidden in various places under his coat. It had been hard walking around in his only good long coat, bright orange in color with a shape like a spiral on the back, but for the stragglers that crossed his path with ill intent they quickly learned not to mess with him. Naruto removed the sunglasses which had been protecting his eyes from the wind; anyone who wanted to keep their sight did the same.

He heard the footsteps, growing louder with every second. Then they stopped. A wisp of a breeze grazed Naruto's cheek, and he fell to his knees, looking up only briefly to see the short knife that was sticking out of the statue's base where his head would have been. In the horizon: a tall, dark-haired man in a gray robe. Light reflected off of the long blade in his hand.

"Sasuke." No response. "Sasuke!"

Naruto found his own sword and pulled it out, readying himself as the figure drew nearer. Even in the light of mid-day behind him, he could clearly make out Sasuke's features coming closer to him, even if his face was now scarred by a thin cut on his jaw from some past fight unknown. He wanted, more than anything else, to reach out and trace the thinly cut scar with his fingertips, touch all the places he would never see through that one small connection. He never got a chance.

They danced by the dying light of the Okayama sun, blade clashing against blade, their feet pounding out even beats in the dirt and rock. Even after so many years, it was the Sasuke from before that was fighting Naruto, as if only days had passed since the last time they saw each other. He watched Sasuke's blood-red eyes, alert as ever, follow the arc of his sword as it fell through the air, meeting the other's blade in a harsh strike of steel on steel. This wasn't working.

"Sasuke!" Naruto spun about on his heel to avoid the thrust of Sasuke's sword, before pushing the other man back with a series of strikes that were all blocked in quick succession. "Come back with me! There's nothing left here anymore! Everyone in Okayama-ken is dead!"

"Naruto," he snarled, and Naruto found himself knocked flat onto his back, the only thing keeping him on the ground being the sharp sides of two twin blades being held dangerously close to his exposed neck; Sasuke had hidden another long blade somewhere on his person and pulled it out without Naruto noticing. Somehow, he was not surprised. "Look at me, foolish fox."

Naruto looked up into Sasuke's face, saw the age and regret that lined the man's face, saw the scar that ran across his jaw and spoke more of a story than words ever could. His eyes were still the same unnatural red as before, slightly dulled in hue by the passing of time but still as threatening as ever. He had the same magnetic energy that had attracted the two boys together so many years ago. The wind picked up slightly, tossing Sasuke's graying fringe in the air; Naruto fought the urge to laugh.

"It's over." The harsh look in Sasuke's eyes softened for a second. "I never thought you would come and find me."

Despite everything going on, Naruto grinned. "I told ya once, I'm never gonna leave you alone. Okay?" He reached up with one hand as if to brush away the strands of air out of Sasuke's face.

"No!" Sasuke threw his head back as his hands lunged forward. He tasted blood and it wasn't his; he returned his swords to their sheaths still wet. He was the only one left after all. It felt off, as if he should have died instead. He managed to close Naruto's eyes before rising to his feet and taking a few long shaky steps, then fell to his knees and dry heaved until his lungs felt as if they were on fire; even after so many years, he still had a weak stomach in the face of blood.

Next time, he thought, it would be different. He took his own life with the sword still stained by the blood of the only one who had understood him, and died as he had lived for so long - alone and longing for the one thing he could never have.

Konohagakure, ????

The village didn't feel like home anymore, now that Team Seven was no more. Sasuke was gone. Sakura had gone her own way. For Naruto, his own path was clear: training with Jiraiya; three years to become strong enough to save his most precious person. He took his time packing the essentials away in his bag, remembering all the moments that came with every piece of clothing or sharp-edged kunai. With every item that went into the knapsack went another piece of his connection to his new life. He was not alone anymore --- there was Sakura and Kakashi and Iruka and Gaara and Ino and --- well, everyone in the village. Every person that passed by him on the streets carried a fragment of his heart, whether they knew it or not. That's why it hurt to leave the place that both shunned him and adored him.

Still, Naruto had a job to do. Somewhere, out there, Sasuke was surely waiting for him, alone and without any true friends. Orochimaru could never understand him, not like he did. (Did that sound corny? Yeah, probably, but he still thought it was true.) Sasuke needed Naruto, and the opposite was also true.

Naruto tied on his headband last, his fingers brushing against the leaf logo as he did. The council of village elders probably expected him to bring back Sasuke in the name of Konoha, to bring him back to the village for some sort of justice. Maybe they were right in assuming Sasuke was tantamount to a criminal, but he did not care. He wasn't doing anything for Konoha, just for himself. Selfish, selfish Naruto. He did not care. He wanted Sasuke back; nothing else would do.

He imagined how he would greet Sasuke when they saw each other again, and decided that maybe it was time to wear a less-neon shade of orange. It was a time for change, after all.

In the cycle of death and rebirth, two souls continually cross paths at crucial moments, grow close, come apart, do it all again. It is a never-ending dance that always ends with the spilling of blood. On rare occasions, it has a happy ending. But there is always heartache and regret, and someone always gets hurt – it just depends on who is doing the hurting.

This is not a story they will remember, even though it has happened before and will happen again. It is their story, and they have heard it a hundred times. They are standing on the thin line between tragic defeat and joyous reunion, and they are not afraid to find out which side they will fall on.

Surprisingly enough, this is a love story.