Complete and total rambling...Nothing important here. Obviously I don't own Naruto or any characters therein.
What Might Have Been...
He didn't know at what point he stopped searching, but sometime after he'd seen those empty eyes, Naruto finally went his own way. He had lost a friend to the snake-man, and what the monster had molded Sasuke into, it wasn't the same person anymore. It wasn't just about the strength or the constant pledge of revenge; some spark inside had gone missing, and Naruto knew it. He had his own to contend with, after all.
So he left the village because who would want to stay in a town that could only hope to hate, or at best ignore. He would never be liked, and knowing it, the blond man picked up his things and went the other way. He wasn't a genin anymore, he could hold his own in the world well enough, and though that loss hurt almost as bad Sasuke, he walked onwards into the sunset.
They say it takes something to grow up. You wake up one day, and the world is crystal clear before your eyes. The teenager who harbored a fox demon inside had to laugh at this—his revelations usually came at night, by the light of the moon, right around the time his fire refused to light for the fourth time. He used to hate the villagers for their sneers, but as he sat there, that night, before the logs that just wouldn't burst into flames, he thought he didn't anymore. Hate was too strong a word and reserved, it seemed, for Sasuke and his brother.
"Damn it!" he muttered, looking dejected, and unrolled his sleeping bag.
Slipping inside still fully dressed because it was late fall and the nights turned chilly fast, he closed his eyes and slept. Let Sasuke battle it out with the village hidden among the leaves, let the brothers stare each other down through eternity. He was done. Sakura complained about it sometimes, when they saw each other every so often—she didn't let him disappear—but she did it gently.
Last time she had tried the oldest tactic. They had been sitting together on a grassy hill a few miles from town. It had been one of those sunny days early in the spring when the cool breeze still meant something.
"You should forgive him, you know," she said.
"Done!"
The pink haired teen frowned and looked at him with those wide, eyes. "You're lying, and I can tell."
He threw his hands up in the air, glad he was eighteen and she couldn't drag him back to the hokage by force. "It's true."
She had gotten over the raven-haired ninja long ago, at some point between becoming a medic and finding love in someone else's arms. Naruto didn't pry because he didn't honestly want to know, but he wasn't blind either.
"You should find him, for your own peace of mind."
The puzzled teen raised one eyebrow. "I don't care anymore, Sakura. I am not going to say the bastard broke my heart because he, in fact, did not. Yeah, it'd be super nice if he got off his high horse and realize what he did, but what are the odds?"
"I've never seen you give up before."
Naruto shrugged and stared at the ground. "Is it still giving up if he's gone?"
She would never know the answer to that, no matter how often the blond asked, and that day proved no different. That had been nearly eight months ago, and he hadn't come back since then. It wasn't any fear of Sakura that kept him at bay so much as guilt. Was it really giving up?
Out of nowhere, a voice said, "Wake up, idiot!"
This sounded a little too familiar and not at all like his dreams, so of course, blue eyes popped up open and stared up into the night, into a park of red ones. Laugh or cry thought the blond man's befuddled brain. Wouldn't matter either way.
"Bastard!" it was the first word out of his mouth. The second turned out to be no better. "Fuck!"
Three in the morning, and the pale Uchiha was smiling. "Good morning to you, too."
He wasn't wearing the snake's uniform, nor anything out of Leaf. Nope, for once the clothes were truly nondescript, not even a family insignia to grace them, and no headband either. He was holding a kunai in one hand but at least it wasn't at anyone's throat, yet. Just Sasuke, of the plain old, human variety.
"What in the name of the nine demons do you want?" Not quite a curse, but he wasn't a believer.
"Your help."
That had the blue-eyed teen up and in a defensive stance in under two seconds, all thoughts of sleep pushed to the farthest corners of the universe. He watched the raven for a moment longer before relaxing. Standing not ten feet apart, the two were taller—adults now where once they had been children—and so vastly different.
Naruto sighed and glared at the non-starter fire once more. "Since when have you ever needed anyone's help?"
"Orochimaru." Sasuke reached out with one thin finger, and the logs began to burn.
"Didn't you eat him or something?"
The dark one sighed in exasperation. "Or something."
"Well, fuck."
"You could start by asking what I want," suggested the missing ninja with a ghost of a smile.
"All right, I'm game. It's the middle of the night, supposedly no one knows where I am, and here you stand. So, what the hell do you want?"
By the light of the newly fixed fire, the raven looked too thin, the clothe strangely loose on a frame that had never been anything if not willowy. There were circles under his eyes, and he carried no backpack and thus no supplies. Naruto reached into his own stash and pulled out a can of stew.
"I'd like your assistance in exterminating a ghost."
The blonde empted its contents into a pot and stuck it over the fire. "No such thing."
"Not literally, you moron." Dark eyes focused on the blonde. "It's an assassin, a shadow walker."
"And you need my help why?"
The dark one laughed, then coughed a few times as his lungs protested. "I don't need it."
"Then why..." His voice trailed away, the word game suddenly clear. "You want it. Not a requirement, but..."
"Yeah."
The soup warmed up enough to eat, and Naruto poured it into two bowls, handed one to Sasuke. "Eat." He frowned. "Why me?"
"According to the hokage, you're the best the leaf village has. More to the point, you've been drifting aimlessly. This should prove a nice change."
"You spoke to her?"
The shorter of the two boys nodded. "In a manner of speaking."
Naruto shrugged and ate the rest of his food in silence, watching his companion do the same. This wasn't the Sasuke he remembered, but it also wasn't the boy out to kill his brother. This was something new and entirely different, or as he was starting to suspect, the first sparks of what should have been. What might have been...
