A/N: I actually really like Sasuke, even if it doesn't usually seem that way. He's an interesting character with lots of flaws.
A note on the setting: Yes, it's very much AU. Certain unmentioned characters have decided that ninja-ing is not for them, Itachi has a life, and Sasuke never did get around to forming Team Hebi. Oh, and he's currently keeping his head down in a small civilian village somewhere.
So . . . yeah.
The shrine is empty; good. Sasuke needs somewhere he can ignore the world.
What did he expect? he asks himself. For Naruto to keep searching for a childhood 'friend' forever? He had, hadn't he. Thought things would continue as they were, until Sasuke had killed his brother and returned to Konoha, until Naruto became Hokage, until they had all fulfilled their goals and earned their happily ever after.
(Hah. And he had accused Naruto of being naïve.)
Running fingers through his hair, Sasuke thinks he should have expected this. Should have expected that there's only so many times anyone can do the same thing again and again and hope for change, that someday they'd have to move on.
(Even if he'd never thought Naruto would be the first of them to do so.)
Oh, Sasuke has no doubt that he could go back to Konoha, could return to Team Seven. There is no doubt in his mind that he could act as if nothing has changed, could simply go and take back his place in Naruto's life — but no, he can't. It is something he is incapable of doing, admitting defeat in such a manner.
He tries to picture what he knows is true — Naruto as an ordinary jounin, with students, Sakura the (second-)best medic-nin in Konoha, Kakashi retired — and fails completely.
Everything he has ever really known is gone, vanished in his absence.
Sasuke gets up and walks slowly out of the shrine; it is peaceful, but entirely too stifling. Instead, he does something he has not even thought of in many years: he climbs a tree. No chakra, just the rhythm of his own hands and feet.
He wants to believe that he doesn't care, doesn't care if they've moved on without him, doesn't care if they've filled the Sasuke-shaped hole in their lives with other things, but he refuses to lie to himself.
No matter what, he will never lie to himself again.
Really, it's — it's not all right, and it feels as though it will never be all right.
(But someday, it might be.)
. . . Uchiha Sasuke is dead, he thinks, running his fingers through his hair again. The child who swore vengeance, the teenager who tried to take it, all gone now. Uchiha Sasuke died a long time ago, and he has only just now realised it.
He's not that person anymore. And that is such a simple thing to think, when it comes down to it. Sasuke doesn't want what he used to, doesn't act as he once did, nor feel the same — and this is one more thing he should have expected, should have thought of, the possibility that he, too, could change beyond recognition.
What does he want? Really, what does he want, now?
He waves a hand, brushing the thought away. It does not matter, not really. Uchiha Sasuke is dead, and all his deeds and wishes with him; Sasuke must find something new. He smirks and stretches, leaping down to land as lightly as a feather, and begins walking away to seek his fortune.
Everyone, he supposes, has to grow up sometime.