Author: cowritten by Lyricale and Oenanthe

Rating: T

Story Notes: The AU takes place in a country modeled after the United States, because it was that or butcher the Japanese school system and culture in our ignorance. The level of technology we're assuming Sasuke has encountered is taken from a comment by Kishimoto that he may someday include automobiles, aircraft, and low-processing computers in the manga. So Sasuke may have seen an automobile once or twice in his life, but it wouldn't be anything he encounters much in the shinobi world.

Spoilers: Through chapter 402 of the manga.

Disclaimer: The Naruto universe and all its characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

Expanded Summary: A new twist on the old high school AU cliche. The day after Sasuke watches his brother die, he wakes up in a world where his family is alive, Naruto's his best friend, everyone loves his older brother, Sakura hardly knows him, and he's a student at Hidden Valley High. Could this be a chance for him to find happiness, or is this new world less ideal than it seems? SasuSaku

Falling Awake

Chapter One: This is Not a Dream

Sasuke wasn't sure if he was dreaming or dead, but he suspected the latter. His dreams were usually less pleasant and certainly less strange.

It was early morning, but the level of light in the unfamiliar room wasn't what gave it away. It was his brother, standing at the side of his bed, shaking him awake with an amused smile.

"Trying to be late on our first day back?"

Then again, this was a bit too strange to be death, either, which put him back at dream, because there were way too many things wrong with this to be anything else. For one, the last place he'd fallen asleep in was an Akatsuki hideout, and that bed wasn't nearly as soft and uncomfortable. For another, his brother was more than just a few years older than him. And lastly, his brother was dead--had died right in front of him not even twenty-four hours ago. And he had, as far as Sasuke knew, never worn the color white in his life.

He couldn't help it. He just stared for a long moment, looking from his brother's khaki slacks to his white-collared shirt to a face that wasn't covered in blood. It was long enough for his brother's eyebrows to lift in apparent confusion. "What, is there something on my face?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Kai."

The room around him didn't disappear in a swirl, so that ruled out genjutsu and left him back at staring.

"I think I'll stick with Itachi," his brother said, reaching for the window and opening the blinds. The flood of early morning light made Sasuke wince, and, apparently satisfied that he was now awake, Itachi walked to the door. He paused in the doorframe to call from behind his shoulder, "Breakfast in five. Mom's making waffles."

The door closed behind him, so Sasuke was left staring at that while he processed his brother's words. Waffles, his mother--alive? He sat up, kicking off the stifling blankets, still too stunned to feel anything but numb confusion.

"Kai!" he said more forcefully, with as much success as last time, which was to say: none.

It had to be a dream. A happy dream for once, maybe, though that was the last thing he would have expected after learning that his brother had loved him after all and hadn't murdered the clan out of hatred or bloodlust, but on orders given by Sandaime himself. Then again, his nightmares could hardly have gotten much worse than replaying the night of his clan's death. His own brother's death, he might have expected, but this--

"Sasuke!"

It had been years since he last heard that voice, and he closed his eyes, a painful lump forming in his throat. He almost would have preferred a nightmare to this, because at least then he knew the world he woke to wasn't any worse. It was dreams like this he'd had as a child that hurt the most, until he managed to bury those happy memories beneath the relentless drive to kill his brother.

It made a certain sense, then, that the dreams would return now that he knew the truth. Even if they'd never been quite so strange. He took a few calming breaths and opened his eyes, pushing the ache of memory down where it couldn't bother him anymore. He would enjoy this dream while he could, and when it was over--

"Sasuke, your waffles are getting cold!"

He slipped out of bed and looked around for a dresser. He found it against the wall across from the door, beneath a mirror that he avoided with his gaze while he rifled through the drawers for something to wear. He pulled out the first shirt he could find and a pair of jeans and changed quickly. He glanced briefly at the mirror to make sure his hair wasn't standing on end and then, after a second's hesitation, made for the door.

There was a set of stairs at the end of the hall, and he experienced a moment's gratitude that this house wasn't nearly as large as the Uchiha compound. He took the stairs slowly, though he didn't know why he was dragging this out. Every step he took notched the tension in his limbs that much higher. Who would he find in the kitchen? If his brother and mother were alive, that meant his father could also be.

He turned at the bottom of the staircase and found himself facing the kitchen table. His brother was attacking a tall stack of waffles with fork and knife while his mother transferred a fresh waffle from the waffle iron to an empty plate. His father's stack was only half-touched. His face was partially obscured by a newspaper and his hand was curled around a cup of what smelled strongly like coffee.

Sasuke stared at the scene, transfixed at the domesticity that his family presented. His gaze traveled back to his mother, who poured more batter into the waffle iron and then returned to her own plate, which was flooded with syrup. She looked up, met his eyes, and smiled. It sent a shiver of memory down his spine.

"There you are, sleepyhead," she said, voice warm and teasing. "School starts in another thirty minutes, so hurry and eat your waffles." She held out the recently filled plate, waffles still steaming. Sasuke kept staring, his arms trembling slightly, and he had to clutch the stair railing tighter to brace himself.

He had always been good at suppressing his emotions; it was part of what made him a great shinobi. He had been taught to hide any feelings that might reveal weakness to the enemy behind an emotionless mask. Telegraphing one's next move could mean death to a shinobi.

But in dreams, there was no need to worry about any sudden ambushes or fights to the death. They disappeared upon waking. That, plus the fact that no one he knew was around to witness the act, was reasoning enough for him to step forward and crush his mother in a tight hug.

He could feel her stiffen slightly, as though taken aback at the sudden move, but it lasted for no more than a second before she returned the hug with gentle force, balancing the plate of waffles in her left hand.

"What brought this on?" she asked with mild amusement. "I thought this was the age where you teenagers are supposed to want to distance yourselves from your parents as much as possible."

Sasuke said nothing in return, instead burying his head in the crook of her neck. His mother even smelled the same as he remembered, of apple blossoms and ginger.

"I think it's the stage where they try to separate themselves from the normal status quo, Mom," Itachi commented, taking a small bite of waffles. "Or are you trying to get yourself sent to the principal's office on the first day of school for failure to follow the dress code, Sasuke?"

"Dress code," he repeated, giving his brother's clothing a second glance over his mother's shoulder. He thought he could remember seeing a similar pair of khaki slacks in the dresser.

His mother stepped back and gave him a searching look. "Are you feeling okay?"

Somehow, he remembered how to smile. "Yes. I'll--go change. I think I'm still half-asleep."

Actually, he was certain of it. He set his plate down on the table, between his brother and father--something he never thought he'd see, even in dreams--and raced up the stairs. He found a white shirt in another drawer to match the slacks, changed, and hurried back to the kitchen. He didn't want to waste any moment of this dream.

"Pass the butter?" he said to Itachi once he was seated at the table, the surreality of asking his brother that of all questions nearly overwhelming him. He couldn't prevent himself from tensing when Itachi handed it over with a butter knife, part of him still wired to regard his brother as a threat. He took it--it was really too dull to do any damage anyway--and spread a generous dollop of butter across the uneven surface of his waffles.

His father cleared his throat meaningfully from behind his newspaper.

"Thanks," Sasuke muttered.

Itachi kept glancing at him for the rest of breakfast, as if expecting him to say something, but he looked back down at his waffles every time Sasuke caught him at it. His mother held up the plate of extra waffles in silent offering, but Sasuke shook his head, stomach warm and full. Strange, he couldn't remember ever having a dream so vivid or coherent.

Itachi rose from his seat. "We should probably get going."

"The Audi's low on gas," she said in what was clearly meant to be a warning; Sasuke was unable to make much sense of it.

"Enough for today. We can gas up on the way back." He cleared his plate, gave their mother a quick peck on the cheek, and grabbed a chain full of keys from the counter. "Thanks for breakfast, Mom."

He was clearly meant to follow, so Sasuke mimicked his brother, sans kiss, and followed him through two sets of doors into a large room. There were three vehicles--automobiles, Sasuke knew they were called, though he'd only seen one once as a child when his family visited Otafuku City. His mother's warning made sudden sense; if he recalled correctly, they were powered by gasoline.

Itachi tossed the keychain to him, and he caught it automatically. "You can drive."

Sasuke stared at the keys in his hand and tried to look like he knew what to do with them. It wasn't too hard. Clearly, one of them unlocked the automobile--Audi for short?--and then it was a matter of operating the control mechanisms. If he thought about it as a complicated jutsu, he should be fine. He was good at mastering those quickly.

"Sometime today, preferably," Itachi said, moving towards one of the doors.

Sasuke peered through the window on the front and could make out a wheel and several controls and buttons. Maybe not so much like a jutsu. "I don't feel like driving," he said quickly, tossing the keys back before Itachi could sit down.

"You sure?"

Sasuke glanced at the complicated interior again. "Yes."

He opened the door and sat down, taking special care not to hit his head on the way in. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Itachi reach to one side and pull a belt-like attachment across his shoulder and lap. He inserted it into a red-buttoned attachment with an audible click, and Sasuke reached for his and did the same. He wasn't clear on the purpose of tying oneself to a chair; perhaps it was some safety measure. These things were supposed to be fast.

Itachi pressed something near the roof of the Audi and a loud, grating noise reverberated through the large room. Sasuke would have leapt out of his seat if he hadn't been restrained, and he reached for a kunai at his belt that wasn't there. His head twisted, seeking out the source of the noise, and he finally noticed that the large door at the opposite end of the room was slowly raising. He battled a mix of adrenaline and self-consciousness, trying to look as though this was normal to him.

"You seem jumpy today," Itachi said, inserting one of the keys into the base of the wheel and turning. A stuttering sound came from the vehicle, but Sasuke limited his reaction to merely tensing this time. The Audi began to move backwards, out of the room and down a long, narrow pathway.

Sasuke kept his focus fixed on his brother's movements. It would be useful to know how to operate the Audi, if this dream lasted for much longer. He activated his sharingan, and waited for the familiar sensation of time slowing and details sharpening.

It never came. There was a mirror on his side of the car, and he peered at his reflection. Nothing. His eyes were dark and normal, the tell-tale red entirely absent. This had never happened in any of his dreams before. He tried again, ignoring a quiver of panic that stirred at the bottom of his stomach. Still nothing.

He had no sharingan, and this dream was too detailed, too coherent. Dreams skipped forward and backward in time, shapes morphed into other shapes, stepping through a door could take you halfway across the country--

But it had to be a dream.

"Are you mad at me?" his brother asked, eyes fixed on the road in front of them.

Sasuke wondered if his brother had any idea how loaded with meaning that sentence was to him. For a second, it was like his Itachi, the brother he had watched die, had asked him the question, and he thought about it seriously. There was still a residual anger, ingrained from years of hating his brother. Half a day couldn't cure that; only more time would.

He studied his brother in profile. His brother had killed himself to save Sasuke. As much as he hated the Elders of Konoha for their role in the massacre of his clan, he was also angry at Itachi for leaving him to deal with the truth alone. He had never wanted him to know, Madara had said. Up to his last breath, he had kept up the act, when he could have said something, anything. Even just goodbye.

"Yes," he said roughly, because if his subconscious was willing to provide him with a chance to vent at his brother, then he was going to take it, damn it.

Itachi frowned. "Why?"

His brother, his cool, unflappable brother, actually sounded hurt. Sasuke felt his anger deflate. He could let the angry words out, but it would spoil the pleasant atmosphere of this dream, and this dream-Itachi had done nothing. But what could he say?

He thought about the real world he had left behind, where he was now truly alone. "You woke me up." He smiled tightly, feeling the irony like an ache in his bones. "I was having a bad dream."

Itachi glanced away from the wheel briefly to flash him an odd look. "Mom's orders. Set your alarm next time, and it won't happen again."

Sasuke passed the rest of the trip in a silent daze. Other vehicles turned and swerved; some of them emitted loud, piercing shrieks seemingly at random. Lights flashed different colors in some signalling system he didn't have the energy to care about.

They pulled up in front of a tall, square brick building that was several floors high. A large marble placard stood above the main entrance, inscribed with the words "Hidden Valley High School." Between the road and the door was a wide expanse of green grass and carefully manicured trees, broken by three paths that joined together at the entrance.

Hidden Valley High School, he mused. His subconscious was either making a play on Hidden Leaf, or was making an ironic statement, given that the school was located right in the middle of a large, sprawling city and thus was neither hidden nor in a valley.

"I'll let you off here," Itachi said, slowing the Audi to a stop at the curb. "Meet you at the usual spot after school."

Sasuke looked down at the belt contraption holding him in place. Making a guess, he pressed the red button where he inserted the metal end and, to his relief, it detached and retracted back into the vehicle. He found the door handle within the car and pulled; thankfully, it opened without any hitches, and he stepped out, closing the door behind him.

Several white paths led up to a large set of double doors at the front of the building, and dozens of teenagers milled around. Some clumped together in small groups, but most were heading for the doors. Feeling lost and extremely out of place, he followed their example.

Halfway to the door, he caught a glimpse of familiar bright yellow and froze in place, torn between surprise and relief. He didn't know if his subconscious had summoned his former teammate out of a need for faces that didn't belong to dead people or not; whatever the reason, he was grateful.

"Naruto," he called.

The yellow-haired boy turned at the sound of his name, and Sasuke watched him scan the courtyard for the source of the shout. Sasuke weaved through the throngs of teenagers streaming into the building. When he was finally close enough, he tapped Naruto on the shoulder.

"Sasuke!" Naruto said enthusiastically. "What's up? I tried calling you this morning but you never answered. Did you forget your cell?"

He resumed walking, and Sasuke fell into pace with him, mentally sighing to himself. Clearly, dream-Naruto was as different as everyone else he'd met so far. Cell? Was that code for some sort of communication device? If it was, he certainly didn't have this "cell" on his person.

Sasuke decided to lump this new piece of jargon with "Audi" and ignore it for now. "Yeah, I guess. Woke up late today."

He tried not to look like he was seeing everything for the first time as they walked through the inside of the school. It wasn't too hard with Naruto talking excessively like he always did, but that suited him just fine. It meant he was distracted enough that Sasuke could focus on everything going on around him instead of listening. Not like that was anything new.

From what Sasuke could tell, this was a very nice school. Certainly nicer than the Ninja Academy; the carpetting could be useful in muffling the sound of his footsteps if he needed to leave quickly. That, along with the fact that they had to wear uniforms, seemed to suggest that the school was upper-class.

As they turned one corner, Sasuke's gaze fell upon a taller figure with silver hair, the lower half of his face buried in a novel of some sort. Could that really be--?

"Sasuke? Hello? We have to pick up our schedules and get to homeroom. I hope we're in the same section this year; last year was no fun without you."

Naruto's words pulled Sasuke out of his daze. He followed Naruto through double doors into a large room with a ceiling that stretched to thirty feet above them. As in the courtyard, it was full of students standing in less than perfect lines. To pick up their schedules, Sasuke presumed.

On each side of the room Sasuke could see words written on the wall: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior. Naruto led them to the area in front of the "Sophomore" sign. Adults he could only assume were teachers sat behind several desks there, each with a taped piece of paper in front of it. They joined the line for the desk designated "U-Z," which was quite short compared to the others.

"Name?" the woman at the desk asked Naruto when he reached the front of the line.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

The woman filed through several papers before taking out a sheet and handing it to Naruto. She looked up expectantly at Sasuke, who thought he was beginning to get the hang of this dream.

"Uchiha Sasuke," he said, and accepted the paper she handed to him, nodding his head in thanks before following Naruto out of the crowded room.

"Are you in 2A, too?" Naruto asked, grabbing Sasuke's schedule instead of waiting for him to look himself. "Sweet, you are! This is awesome! I wonder who else is going to be in our section this year...."

Once again, Sasuke tuned him out, trying to make sense of this incredibly realistic dream. He had never thought of himself as someone with a particularly vivid imagination, and he couldn't remember ever having a dream that lasted this long.

Who else would he see in this dream? A few of the faces he'd passed in the halls had looked vaguely familiar, people he had encountered a few times in Konoha, perhaps. The rest of the former Team 7 could be walking these halls along with them, or any of the other teams. Would he see the Godaime?

The Sandaime? The Elders? His mouth twisted into an angry scowl.

"Hey, sorry." Naruto said, misinterpreting his expression. He offered an apologetic smile and handed him his slip of paper. "You can have your schedule back."

Sasuke took it and glanced at the paper. In the upper right corner was the "2A" section Naruto had mentioned. His name appeared beneath it, and the rest of the paper was taken up by a list of classes, none of which had anything to do with shinobi training. English? He already spoke it. Geometry? Knowing which angle to throw a kunai at your opponent was fine, but theory didn't help you improve your aim. Chemistry? He wasn't a doctor. And as for history....

His scowl deepened. He'd had all the history he could stomach. Physical Education was the only subject that sounded remotely useful, and even that was generic enough to give him doubts. And the last one--

"Home Economics?" he said aloud.

"Cooking! You get to make food in there, and eat it when it's done...." Naruto trailed off dreamily before gathering himself to finish, "It'll be like having lunch twice a day!"

Sasuke threw him a disgusted look. "This was your idea, wasn't it."

"It'll be fun," he said defensively.

Sasuke just rolled his eyes and went back to committing the layout of the school to memory, folding his schedule and putting it into one of the pockets of his pants. They finally stopped in front of an open door near the end of one hall. Naruto stepped through, and after a moment's hesitation, Sasuke followed him in.

It felt like he was eight years old again, starting at the Ninja Academy. He had no idea what this place was like or what to expect, and although he knew Naruto, he didn't know this Naruto. He studied the faces in the room, and didn't feel so surprised to find more than a few familiar ones.

Sakura was the easiest to notice, a bright spot of pink in the middle of the room. She was talking to the blond-haired girl sitting next to her--Ino, he realized after a moment. Her hair, cut to just above her chin, had thrown him off at first. Hinata rounded off the group of kunoichi he recognized, chin resting on her hand as she listened to the two other girls.

He almost missed Shikamaru, who was in the farthest corner of the room, chair tipped back so it leaned against the wall. Chouji was in the seat next to him, peeling an orange. It was enough to make him look for the rest of the Rookie Nine, but Shino and Kiba were either late or they were in a different--section.

Naruto sat down two seats over from Sakura, leaving an empty seat between. Guided by habit, Sasuke sat down between them. As soon as he did so, he wondered if he'd made a mistake, because Sakura threw him a startled glance, but she looked away quickly, cheeks reddening.

Naruto also looked surprised, but he didn't say anything when Sasuke raised an eyebrow in challenge. A few more students trickled into the classroom, but at five after the hour, the teacher--thankfully, no one he recognized--closed the door and called roll. Then he introduced himself and the class--homeroom, which he claimed to be a quiet period for students to do reading or catch up on homework.

"However," the teacher said with an indulgent smile, "since this is the first day of class, I understand that you'll want to catch up with friends and compare schedules. So just this once, you are free to talk amongst yourselves."

"From what my sister's told me," Sasuke heard one student mutter to another, "that's pretty much what happens every day. Takashi's a real pushover."

"Let me see your schedule again so I can see what classes we have together," Naruto said.

Sasuke handed it over, and Naruto pored over it in silence. Feeling awkward, he turned to Sakura. "What's your schedule?"

She glanced at him but didn't answer at first, as if waiting to see if someone else was going to answer. "My schedule?"

He rolled his eyes, her behavior, as usual, puzzling to him. "No, Ino's schedule. Of course your schedule."

"Well, the core five, and Fine Arts with Mitarashi." She hesitated and then smiled. "What about you?"

"Naruto could probably answer that better than me," he said, shooting Naruto an impatient look.

"Core five, plus Home Ec," Naruto said. He slid Sasuke's schedule back over to him. "Looks like we have Geometry, English, PE, and Home Ec together." He flashed a grin. "Which, by the way, I'm going to kick your ass at." He squinted at the schedule again and made a face. "Blech, math first thing in the morning."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, sense of competition resurfacing like it so often did in Naruto's presence. "We'll see about that."

"We have English, Chemistry, and History together," Sakura said, and when he glanced at her, he saw she had his schedule on her desk, lain alongside hers.

It seemed that everyone but him, he thought, was getting to know his schedule. He took it back and studied it again, this time noticing the column next to "time" that read "teacher." He froze in his seat as he read the names. Sarutobi, Umino, Hatake, Maito, Yuuhi, Morino? For a cooking class?

"Something wrong?"

Sasuke blinked, startled by the reminder that he had an audience. "No, I--recognized some of the teachers."

"Oh, right. Itachi probably had most of them. He was in A section too, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," Sasuke said absently, still staring down at the schedule. He was beginning to think his subconscious was pretty strange.

The bell rang, another one of those harsh, sudden noises common to this dream that set his nerves on edge in anticipation of danger. His fingers kept itching for a kunai, and he had to forcibly remind himself that he was armed with nothing sharper than a mechanical pencil.

He was lucky to have every one of his classes with either Naruto or Sakura, because he was able to follow them to the classrooms, though Sakura gave him another one of those strange looks when he joined her and Hinata on their way to history. It wasn't as uncomfortable as he thought it would be to have the chuunin and jounin senseis of Konoha for instructors.

English with Kakashi brought to end the team's long-running obsession with seeing their sensei's face. He nearly gaped when his sensei strolled into the room, face bare, and he gleefully turned to Naruto and Sakura to share the moment of triumph with them--only to find them peering boredly at the whiteboard.

He kept waiting for time to speed up or skip ahead, like he knew happened in dreams, but it didn't. He felt even more disturbed when he noticed that he was actually hungry as lunch rolled around. The food was somewhat strange, but he sort of liked the triangular cheese-bread with sauce called "pizza." Naruto's lunch, at least, was familiar, though Sasuke had never come across ramen being served in a styrofoam cup before.

He tensed when Itachi stopped by their table with a friendly greeting, but was able to relax after a few seconds.

"Good first day?" his brother asked, addressing the question to the table at large, which included Naruto and Kiba.

"Yes," Sasuke said, surprising himself. It was true. He had forgotten how pleasant it could be to have friends, to break out of the intense focus on revenge and self-improvement once in a while. To be able to let his guard down, just a little. The three years he had spent with Orochimaru had not been happy ones.

He looked from Naruto to Kiba, and then scanned the lunch room for Sakura--always easy to spot in a crowd. He wondered what they were doing in the waking world. He frowned; the last time he'd seen Naruto, he'd nearly run him through with a sword. And yet it had felt so easy to slip back into that familiarity of three years ago, perhaps because he no longer had his revenge against Itachi driving him.

If Naruto stood between him and the Elders, he would not hesitate to strike again, but that was neither here nor now. He could live in the past for just a little longer.

Physical Education with Maito Gai was every bit as annoying as he'd feared, and laughably easy. What he thought had been an overly-drawn out warm-up exercise turned out to be the entire class. Yuuhi spent the entire chemistry class telling them how not to kill themselves with the lab equipment, leading Sasuke to believe that the class might not be as useless as he'd thought. Home Ec, as Naruto called it, was--creepy. Sasuke eyed every container of spices and flavoring, wondering if any of them contained poison.

But that's not what made it creepy. No, what made it creepy was the fact that Morino Ibiki wore a white apron as he warned them of the consequences for misusing or damaging the equipment. And as for the last student who caught something on fire, he'd trailed off ominously, allowing them to fill in the blank themselves.

The final bell rang, and he followed Naruto out of the school until they joined another crowd of students waiting at the curb. Naruto turned to him, brow furrowed in confusion. "You're not taking the bus, are you? I thought you were going to ride home with Itachi."

"I am," Sasuke said slowly, scrambling for an explanation. "I just--" He stopped, looking at his former friend. This dream could end at any moment, and then he would be back in his own cold, lonely reality, where the next time he faced Naruto, it could be as enemies. He met Naruto's eyes. "I just wanted to say goodbye."

He turned away before Naruto could give any reply and walked in the opposite direction as fast as he could. When he was far enough away that he couldn't feel his friend's gaze burning into his back, he stopped and regrouped. What now?

Ride home with Itachi, as Naruto had said. He thought back to the morning, which seemed so long ago now, to his brother's words. He was supposed to meet him at the usual spot, Itachi had said.

There was an obvious problem, of course: he had no idea where that was.

He ended up finding the stretch of pavement where Itachi had dropped him off that morning and waiting there. Eventually, the dark blue Audi rolled into view and stopped in front of him. The window retracted into the car, to Sasuke's brief surprise, revealing a rather irritated-looking Itachi.

"Where the hell have you been?" his brother snapped. "I waited fifteen minutes for you to show, and I called your cell five times!"

Okay, maybe cells were a bit more important than he'd originally estimated. "I don't have it with me," he said, hoping that would be enough.

"Well, next time you want to hang out with your friends after school, make sure you bring it so you can let me know." Itachi sighed and then gestured impatiently. "Come on, get in."

Sasuke opened the door and sat down, reattaching the seat-restraint. He fielded several questions about how his day had gone, giving short, clipped answers while he watched the other Audis move around them. He shook his head when Itachi tentatively asked if he wanted to stop for ice cream, and by the time they reached the house, his brother had given up on conversation.

Itachi exited the vehicle without further comment, and the room's large door screeched shut behind them. Sasuke sat a while longer in the Audi, wondering when the dream would end. If his mind liked closure, the end of the school day should have been a logical stopping point. Or perhaps tonight, when he returned to bed and fell asleep--waking up in the real world.

He undid the seat-restraint. Opening the door, he started to climb out, but his thoughts distracted him this time, and his head exploded with pain when it slammed into the top of the doorframe.

Head throbbing, he sat back down heavily. "Son of a--"

He froze, breath catching in his chest. Pain. A dream could be anything, show anything. It could make no sense at all, but feel like it did at the time. It could be mundane, it could be spectacularly strange, but there was one thing it couldn't have.

Pain. He lifted a hand to his head, and the pain spiked when he touched it. He winced, dropping his hand quickly, feeling his certainties and assumptions falling to pieces. Because take away the only logical explanation, and that left only one: that somehow, this was real. His family was alive. He had never broken with his friends. He lived in a strange world with technology beyond anything he had ever seen, where his sharingan didn't work--

He lunged out of the car, slamming the door, looking around wildly for a target, forming the hand seals so deeply ingrained from years of frequent use. "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"

Nothing. He searched himself for the familiar sensation of chakra flowing through his veins, but there was nothing. He stared blankly at the green garbage bin he had chosen for his target. This was too different to be real. Too wrong.

What could you do when eliminating the impossible left you with another impossibility?

He had to begin treating this like it was real, because too many things pointed to that for him to ignore them. He gritted his teeth and walked over to the door that led into the house. He closed his hand around the door knob, but stopped mid-turn as another, more disturbing, possibility occurred to him.

He had watched his brother use Susanoo against Orochimaru, the sword banishing him to oblivion until the end of time, but what if that had never happened? He didn't know much about what happened to the shinobi whose bodies Orochimaru took over while they were possessed. What if it was like being trapped in an unending genjutsu while Orochimaru controlled the body?

Deep down, a part of him had always wanted to believe that his brother hadn't murdered his clan out of malice. What if Orochimaru had seized upon that wish to conjure up an illusion where he watched his brother save him? And then sweeten the illusion with the story woven by Madara, and then complete it with this elaborate fantasy, where his family was alive and he had a chance to be happy?

How did he escape something like that? Would killing himself break the illusion, or only fully kill his consciousness, leaving Orochimaru full control of his body?

His hand tightened around the door knob. He had too many questions, too many unknowns. Until he knew more....

Sasuke turned the knob the rest of the way. Until he knew more, he would play along and treat this as if everything were real. He would have to assume that, until proven otherwise. And if he found anything to suggest that this was all of Orochimaru's construction...he would deal with that, somehow.

Forcing his lips into a smile, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

XXXX

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