Notes: It's my 18th birthday today, so I hastily typed this as midnight present to myself. A bit of nostalgia, I haven't written for Naruto in a long time. Title from the September 9, 2010 prompt for the lj community 31_days.
It wasn't the end or the beginning, everything was caught up in now. His eyes spun wildly in their red darkness, Naruto was a smear of red and blue chakra lines now, tangled up in his eyes. He didn't need to see, he hadn't forgotten. The smell of skin and clothing, the sound of breathing and the voice that rasped now, disbelieving - "Sasuke". He didn't forget what belonged to him. He leaned against the bark of the tree, drawing the strings of Naruto into his hands, twisting and unraveling. He found the familiar knots, the skin broke into life as if he'd never been gone. He coaxed the red from his blood and the blue from his eyes, Naruto's breath hitched as his tongue swept over an earlobe. He might have missed this, the way the strands predictably fell into his lap and rose into his hands. He pulled at the snarled coils of Naruto none too gently, untied loops and knit their fibers together, tearing out the stitches that had always been his.