Whenever he had seen his brother, his eyes would open wide, to swallow him whole. He had that power, he thought - probably, certainly - for Itachi had that power - Sasuke knew that power, had been sucked into the world of black and white. And red. And surely Sasuke had that power as well, somewhere. Sometimes he thought he could feel that power, like an itch, an impulse. He wanted to open his eyes and see, and take Itachi into that world, and never release him.
Whenever he had seen his brother, yes. But now his eyelids were not inclined to move - he wanted to open his eyes again, but they wouldn't open, and then he realized that he didn't want them to open at all.
"Sasuke-teme, Sasuke-teme," Naruto chanted. He sounded supremely bored. Sasuke-teme felt like fucking killing him for a moment - bored, that fuck - and then the moment passed. "Wake up."
"I'm awake."
"Get up."
"No."
"Sasuke-teme, Sasuke-teme," he continued. There was an edge to his voice, but it was a Naruto-edge, angry but entirely non-threatening, because what was Naruto going to do anyway, beat the shit out of him? "Don't be such a dick," he snarled.
"Get out, Naruto."
"No," he said, "and you know, I'm fucking sick of this. I hate saying it over and over like a broken record, whatever. Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei and everyone in the fucking world of any importance - Team 7, you ass - loves you and misses you and fucking get out of bed!"
Sasuke sighed, and it sounded like resignation, but of course this was Sasuke, so no, this was not fucking resignation. Sasuke could outwait Uzumaki Naruto any day of the week, thank you, no matter how godawful it was to sit here - lie here - and listen to his voice, his voice which was too loud, too sharp to allow dozing, to allow drifting into memory. And how good that would be, to drift, to go back to kneeling, shaking on the smoking battlefield with his brother's sticky blood on his face and in his hair. To remember the stark misery of that moment, to recall how it felt like there was ice water in his chest, to remember the glassy look in those sharp eyes, the grey film of death over red, how very pathetic Itachi was, as a corpse - his beauty, his strength, gone. Remember pulling bits of dried blood out of his eyelashes, scrubbing it off of his teeth, digging it from underneath his fingernails. How in the middle of washing his hands, he found himself suddenly unable to move or do anything but rock back and forth, remembering - how he came back to himself hours later after the sun had set and finished washing his hands, feeling fragile and sad but somehow good for the first time in years.
"Fuck your brother," said Naruto in that fucking voice of his, "I'm your brother now, Sasuke-teme."
Sasuke's eyes opened slightly, and Naruto looked inside and saw something like amusement and something like pity. "Do you really think you could ever replace him?" he asked.