A/N: Written at some ungodly hour Sunday night. Finally got around to looking through it and I figured it was good enough. I was appalled by the lack of SasuLee friendship and had to remedy that immediately.
C h a n c e
Life is like a throw of the dice.
Random.
Unexpected.
Chance.
Everything happens by chance. No hand from the heavens ever reached out and said "Rock Lee, you will never be able to mold chakra the way all ninja should." And it was this single thought, this belief, that had kept Lee going all these years, as close to the chest as he hid it. Everything was merely coincidence. That Gai found him as a child and led him to ninjahood, that was good luck. That he received such a wonderful team- that was near miracle.
But still chance.
And it was a throw of the dice that the girl he loved belonged to him.
Him, with his dark angry eyes that would butcher if looks could kill, with hair like the starless night and skin as pale as blank paper, with that voice like fingernails on the chalkboard to Lee's ears.
It was only terrible, terrible bad luck that she loved him.
And it was a throw of the dice that decided he should continue to live and walk and fight, after what Gaara did to him.
And it was a throw of the dice that decided he should leave, rather than stay that night.
That's what Lee told himself, every day when he saw that look in Sakura's eyes, to cool the anger broiling up in his chest. Just random bad luck, just luck that this happened. (It wasn't his fault and it wasn't his fault and it certainly wasn't hers. He might have stayed, but he might have not. And he didn't. What's done is done.)
And it was just the worst luck in the world when the war came, those one to one hundred odds you always think won't get to you. Every corpse he had to fall he thought in his head, 'chance that you were chosen, chance that I'm alive to topple you, chance that I live at all to grace this planet.'
And then, when it came time to persecute the war criminals, it was chance, good moods and coincidental split second thoughts, that let that traitor live.
Chance that everyone hated him.
Chance that nobody could even look at him anymore.
(Lee didn't like to think that it could be the boy's fault. Just chance his family had to be killed, chance that his brother was born so responsible, chance that Orochimaru caught him in the Forest of Death.
That everyone blamed him.)
And it was a roll of the dice, that August evening, when they happened upon the same training ground at the same time.
"Rock Lee."
He said, in that voice that once upon a time withered flowers to the roots, that voice which, for whatever godforsaken reason, used to send women swooning. Now, it just sounded like he was tired.
"Uchiha." Lee tried not to make his voice anything but cheerful.
(Just chance that thus was his lot in life.)
Sasuke waited, then, for a long time, as if expecting him to just walk away.
"Would you like to train with me?" Lee asked finally, because he was very strong, even now with the chakra seals and the last twelve months on probation leaving him untrained.
"… Sure."
It was bad (good?) luck the next day, when they happened upon each other again.
"I'll beat you this time." Lee said.
"I'd like to see you try." There it was, in his voice, if faint and weak. That white-hot-kunai irritation and aloof amusement.
It took Lee three weeks of fighting every day to beat the boy, and when he did it was like something setting alight in his chest, something he hadn't felt in years. Not anger, but something else. (But he couldn't get too excited. He'd just won by chance. Just chance.)
Two months after they'd first started fighting they were confronted. Well, Lee was, wandering home gasping for breath and nursing a strained wrist as the sun set behind the Hokage monument.
"Why do you spend time with him?"
"Neji," He tried to cool.
"No." Neji pressed, voice that shade of fuming grey that all Hyuuga seemed to possess. "He's a traitor. He's worthless, he cannot be trusted."
"I know what I'm doing." Lee insisted. Still, he felt a little flutter inside him. All he had to do was roll the dice one too many times and that would be it.
(Would it?)
"Is it chance that we're friends?"
Sasuke looked over to Lee, and frowned a little. The Uchiha had aged well, not as well as Lee had, but well enough, lines creasing his cheeks and under his eyes but little else. He looked older, though, when he frowned in slight dismay like that.
"What do you mean?"
Lee picked at the grass in his hands mindlessly.
"That we met. That we fought. That we continued to fight. That we became teammates. That we're still… friends."
"No."
The Uchiha spoke with such conviction Lee was surprised. Life was a roll of the dice, a million trillion rolls of the dice. How could he be so sure?
"No, it isn't." Sasuke continued after a pause in thought. "I met you that day for a reason. We fought because we were born to fight. We continued to fight and became teammates because we were meant to be friends."
Lee found he couldn't respond, but then he smiled. If nothing else, it sounded very nice.
(And a mere roll of the dice could never create a friendship this real, surely.)