Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Sasuke does not like to be with Naruto and Sakura anymore.

It's not that he doesn't like them - of course he likes them, he loves them, they're his family and his friends and his reason for living. His reason for coming back. How could he not love them? It's not because they annoy him, because they do, but they always have, and it bothers him less now.

It's because Naruto and Sakura are good and pure and unsullied, and they don't deserve his dirty soul tainting them, because Sasuke is dirty, no matter how much they reassure him that he hasn't changed a bit, because he has, and he knows it.

He was always a fucked up, arrogant little tit, and he knows that too, because he was proud of it - proud of his aloofness, his independence, proud of his pride. And no matter how many times they try to fix him, the king's horses can only do so much, and Sasuke shatters far too easily now.

Sasuke does not like to be with Naruto and Sakura anymore, because they're better than him. But he can be with Kakashi, because the two of them are peas in a pod.

Kakashi is the same in ways Sasuke could never have imagined. He's the same in arrogant smirks and red eyes and lean muscle over thin bone. He's the same in enigma and silence, contemplation and strategy. The two of them click like that, and sometimes Sasuke thinks Kakashi is more of a brother than Itachi or Naruto ever could have been, because it's really like they're only one person split in two, they're so much the same.

Sasuke doesn't like to be with Naruto and Sakura anymore, because they are still pure, and it hurts to look at them.

But Kakashi's dirty too, and that's a comfort.