Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
AN: A short piece that I've been working on for a little while as a break from TFB. Essentially, Sasuke goes straight back to Konoha after getting rid of Orochimaru. Written from Naruto's point of view.
He just showed up at the gates one day, and smiled. He didn't stop smiling when he had about thirty weapons at his throat and I already had one of Kyuubi's tails swinging behind me and the Godaime looked like she wanted to break his face. He just smiled a little bit more and said, "I missed you, Naruto."
I knew it wasn't him who showed up at our gates asking for a second chance, because in his pockets they found a Sound headband. It was scratched out, but so what. The curse seal that had permanently spread out onto his chest was good enough to prove that at one time it hadn't been scratched.
They put him under interrogation and the story came in that he had killed Orochimaru just before getting possessed, had killed everybody in the secret base, and blown it up on his way out. Then he just came straight back here.
And all clues said that it was to see me.
He was put in the civilian jail under heavy watch for a long time, and then they would have put under house arrest – the only problem being that he didn't have a house to be confined to. So, as an S-class mission that I wasn't allowed to refuse, they gave him to me to watch.
Nothing about him was the same, I found. He acted so different… he talked a lot more, and lighter, as if he had forgotten completely about taking revenge on his brother. I even tried mentioning it once, but he just blinked and said that revenge was the best way to ruin your life without realizing it. I might have believed it, if I hadn't seen his tongue one time. It was much, much longer than normal, and eerily reminiscent of Orochimaru's.
Who am I kidding, it was exactly like Orochimaru's tongue. Exactly.
I avoided looking at him for almost a week after I saw it. I tried to get Tsunade to give me a different mission, but she refused and said that this was the best way for the village to find out why he had come back. So I even tried asking him, "Why did you come back?"
The answer was only half expected; "I missed you." I already knew he would say that. He said it enough by himself already. "If he did nothing else, he made me see that I did have something to live for besides revenge. And revenge is what I went to him for, so I simply changed my mind at the last second." I was almost satisfied with that answer until I saw the little patch of purple scales on his right shoulder.
This time, I didn't have to wait a whole week to talk to him; I ended up shouting at him for an explanation the next day. He just smiled – Uchiha Sasuke didn't smile at anybody, not ever – and said, "You can't battle with one of the legendary Sannin for possession of your body and come out on top with no ill effects." I didn't take that for an answer, though, and asked what else had happened to him that I hadn't seen yet. He got a strange look at that and asked me if I really wanted to see.
It freaked me out enough that I said no.
Ino offered her totally undesired advice when she came over one time; she said that Sasuke was acting like his memories had been tampered with, and he probably needed a good shock to wake up the person he had been before. There was only one thing I could think of, so the next time he told me he had missed me, I said, "I didn't miss you."
He looked up in the middle of his meal, and dropped his fork back onto the plate. "I didn't miss this you one bit, Sasuke," I said, harsh though it may have been. "Because this you didn't exist to me at all. I missed the person you used to be." He tried to make the predicted response – 'I haven't changed' – but I interrupted him, voice raised. "I don't know who you think you are, but this isn't Sasuke. This isn't the person that I missed for two and a half years. As far as I'm concerned, Sasuke died when he willingly stepped after Orochimaru for the first time. This is somebody else using his body."
"Then what do you think of me now?" he asked, more subdued than I had expected from the Sasuke I knew.
I knew my response already. "This isn't you. Not anymore. I can wait for however long it takes, but hurry up and bring back the you that is part of Team Kakashi, that Sakura cried over every day for a long, long time, and that I promised to bring back. Until then, you're simply an Uchiha to me."
He didn't talk to me for a long time after that, and I saw him meditating a lot in the room that I let him use. When he finally did talk to me, to my horror I saw that he had tried to copy the Sasuke that he remembered being.
I only threw the table at him the first time he tried to call me 'dead last.' And only once because he didn't try it again.
Kakashi and Tsunade stopped in to visit a little after that, since for the most part I had to stay here with him, and before they left they pulled me aside and asked why I was calling him by his family name now. I told them quite clearly that he wasn't Sasuke, so he had no right to be called it either. They understood, but didn't try to do it themselves. It wouldn't have had an impact, I told them – the person he was now was completely fixated on Uzumaki Naruto, so I doubted he even knew anybody else anymore.
But I hated it. That bastard looked like Sasuke when he was meditating or asleep or eating (as long as he wasn't looking at me), and the part of me that had Kyuubi's chakra in its veins said so often, it's close enough. He's close enough. Or better yet, it doesn't matter. The only thing keeping me from believing that part of me was the way he looked every time he smiled at me. Disgustingly different. Sasuke didn't smile like that.
"What made you change?" I asked him a lot. He didn't seem to understand what I was asking; or maybe it was a front saying, 'I haven't changed.' What made you change? Did Orochimaru train it into you, or did you actually realize that Itachi doesn't matter, or are you really a different person? He didn't understand what I was asking. I wasn't sure I completely understood either.
The first time Sakura came over since his return, she was crying. She had been crying every time I saw her in the last two weeks, after she got back from her mission and learned about him coming back. I was really, really careful not to call him 'Uchiha' in front of her, because it would break what little faith she had left in him. Lee didn't like it when she went to see him, but he wasn't going to stop her. The person who had been Sasuke was her teammate, for all that she knew, and I wasn't going to tell her that he was different if she didn't want to see it for herself.
But he ignored her completely. Completely. Didn't look at her the entire time. Answered with the almost familiar grunt that made her smile a little bit and try like she had when she was twelve to catch his eye. When she stepped outside to leave, I followed her and gave her a hug, because she had seen that he was different. She broke down and stayed in her room for the rest of the weekend, Lee told me later.
I felt awful about it. He didn't even remember her name.
During that entire duration, I didn't touch him; we used to spar. But then, we used to be a team. He mentioned a couple times that he would like to spar again, but I refused every time. He accused me of being scared. I said that yes, I was probably scared, but if I was I was scared that I wouldn't be able to recognize the style that I had fought with and along-side as a kid. He didn't like that very much, and holed up in his room for a couple days.
A couple more people came around after that, and he didn't even acknowledge their presence. They were people he knew, too; Gaara even stopped in, and he looked up once, but just returned his gaze to the floor. I hate, hate, hated his indifference, but I had no idea what to do to break it. It was worse than Sasuke ignoring everyone. But the only person he ever responded to was me.
… Me. Me who was getting increasingly frustrated with the person who used to be Sasuke, and wanted the old Sasuke back.
It was actually my birthday. What an awful day, my birthday; the villagers had long since learned to leave me alone, but they still celebrated the Kyuubi's fall anyway. That Uchiha had made a lot of small, paper flowers, and spread them out all over the kitchen table before I got up. And there he was, smiling and looking absolutely pleased with himself for making a present without having to go out and buy anything.
I got angry. Kyuubi was even angrier, and that was part of the problem and not the solution. "Stop it already," I growled at him, clearing most of the flowers off of the table in one sweep. "This isn't Sasuke. Either stop pretending to be him or change back. This isn't Sasuke."
He backed off and looked surprised – hurt – and tried to make some excuse that I didn't want to hear. I shoved him against the wall and pulled his shirt down over his left shoulder, brushing the little black marks tattooed on his skin. Paler than I remembered from living underground. "This might be part of Sasuke. It could be sealed away and it could still be part of him." I heard the seams crack as I pulled it down over his other shoulder, stretching it. "But this isn't. Not at all. The only person that this could be part of is Orochimaru."
Again, he tried to protest, and when he opened his mouth I grabbed at the tip of his tongue, slightly more slippery than I had anticipated so it slipped out of my fingers. "God damn it, whoever you are…! This isn't Sasuke. I needed that you; I only want this you. So who are you?"
He smiled faintly, and murmured, "I missed you, Naruto."
I growled and lunged forward, biting his neck. It was more than hard enough to make him bleed, and I was angry at how the scarlet didn't look out of place on his really pale skin and purple scales. I won't accept it, I wanted to say as I pulled his head sideways and bit his earlobe. He gasped, and I brushed off the hands that tried to grab my shirt. Wake up already, Sasuke, I wanted to say as I not-so-accidentally ripped his shirt and threw it aside and tripped him over so he fell into the living room.
He didn't look like he wanted it, hiccupping into the carpet, but it was my birthday and this wasn't really Sasuke so I didn't care a whole lot. But when I got the rest of his – rightfully my – clothes off of him, I managed to get out the words that I wanted to say to him, and just breathed them in his ear the entire time. He was rightfully crying by the time I pushed into him with very little preparation, and I decided it was the Kyuubi's fault and I'd go talk to Jiraiya later but this wasn't Sasuke so I couldn't make myself stop now.
When I came – he did too, there was some part of Sasuke in there that loved me and felt me even if this shell around him wasn't feeling anything nice – I hissed his name, Sasuke, Sasuke, and I said I loved him but of course I wasn't saying it to him, and he didn't stop crying as I got dressed and dropped a wet towel on him and before I had left the room, I heard him. Same light-hearted enunciation, same disgusting not-Sasuke smile, same tongue flickering out just too far… "I missed you, Naruto."
He didn't fucking miss me.