Disclaimer: I don't own a thing except the story line.

Contents: This will contain inferences of rape, choice language, violence, and angst/drama. This story has a boyxboy/Manxman relationship that is subtle but there. This story will not contain any lemons or limes. Sorry to disappoint.

Summary: When he left I became nothing. I became like the winter snow-scape so silent, so dead. "There is no use wanting someone… who no longer wants you…" A retelling of events after Sasuke left through the eyes/perspective of both Naruto and Kakashi. The story focuses on Naruto's burden, his inner turmoil, and his journey from breaking completely, to becoming whole once more.

Thoughts

Words

"Speech"

"Relations in the Snow"

Written to:

Many wonderful music artists

"Now a single tear is dropping through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten."

Can you remember?

Sasuke…

The feeling of that rain as it fell?

Do you remember the frigidness in which you left me?

Can you remember that day?

Can you?

Sasuke…

When you left me…

For dead…

October 15, 2003

It was a Wednesday just like any other and the entire world seemed to keep existing as if nothing had ever happened. As if the trouble that seemed to have arisen sometime in the earlier months had never even taken place.

The 3rd Hokage was dead why did the world not seem to notice?

We worked for some time without a Hokage and it had been difficult, but life continued as if nothing had ever happened. Even after his funeral… everyone went back to their proper duties.

Could they not feel it in the air, in the disturbance that had taken place?

Something is happening… Something big. I can feel it…

The events of the past month had been looming over our heads and in all the confusion that dreadful anniversary had all but been forgotten. Or, at least it seemed to be the case.

Even the surface of still water speaks an infinite amount of lies.

My birthday… It's not even worth talking about. It's been difficult, I was just happy that I was forgotten this year...

The village has acquired a new Hokage recently, Tsunade; I trust that she is what is good for us now. I just hope that she doesn't let me down.

Yet who am I to expect such things?

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A pale hand moved from its resting spot with lazy ease, the appendage finding solace upon its master's abdomen. It was quiet, perhaps as quiet as it would ever be for the moment.

It had been five days since the village's 13th anniversary of that day, the day the Nine Tails came. 13 years… Had it really been that long already? One would assume that the deep seed of hate would have lifted from the soil and begun to wash away with the passing rains, but apparently the village was like an expert gardener and continued to nurture its growth.

The hand that had previously rested upon its master's belly had since lifted to its owner's face, the palm pressed lightly against a forehead. They were clammy again; the night had not been a peaceful one. Cerulean hues opened to stare at the ceiling, the shades of blue filled with sorrow and fear… He scoffed.

"Pathetic."

The emotions of a child were only hindrances to him, burdens unwanted, unasked for; things forced on him just like… His hand fell back to his stomach, the fingers clenching at the loose white fabric of his nightshirt. He never asked for this, he only had the displeasure of enduring it.

A sharp knocking echoed through his tiny home. Its emptiness becoming more prominent as the incessant knocking continued on and on.

"Tch, so bothersome. NARUTO WAKE UP!"

Throwing the door open the strong urge to yell at the person surfaced but died down as quickly as it came. A pale hand lifting to rub at tired eyes.

"What is it Shikamaru?" There was a lazy sense of dread boiling in the pit of the blue eyed boy's stomach. His cerulean hues settling on the lazy boy's face, a deep seriousness embedded in the others features. "It's Sasuke… He's left the village."

He was right… His hand pressed into his stomach, fingers clenching as he sought to contain his emotions.

"The Hokage has asked me to round up a team and the orders are to bring him back." There was a pause between them, its heaviness weighing on the blue eyed boys heart heavily.

"I understand." And with the short exchange Shikamaru was off, to find the rest of their team he assumed.

His heart felt heavy, his stomach weak as he stared straight at the spot the other once stood. While he saw he could not see, he could not feel his body. There was a numbness that seemed to take him as his mind seemed to freeze.

Sasuke…

An intense feeling of sorrow washed over him like a heavy rain, his body moving of its own accord as he closed the door to his small empty apartment. It didn't have much, a small table, a bathroom, a small room. Nothing very special about it really… except for the memories. A deep sting penetrated his vision, the scent of unshed salty tears claiming the air. "Sasuke…"

Rage filled him. Anger flooding every pore erasing the sorrow that was once in its place, Sasuke was not going to leave. Sasuke was… He wouldn't allow it, not after… He stared at his reflection in the mirror he had unconsciously walked to. It was slightly dirty and was nothing that a little cleaner couldn't fix, but that wasn't the real problem.

Eyes that could see, but not comprehending stared back at him. The deep oceans becoming darker with his growing anger, Sasuke couldn't do this to him. To them… His hand instinctively grabbed the frame closest to him, his hand pulling back as he chucked it at his own reflection. It was as if everything was running in slow motion, his heart was heavy and his eyes narrowed in anger.

He was haunted by his memories, by those eyes; he could not take it anymore. Hot tears flooded his senses as he turned from the falling shards of his broken form. He would bring Sasuke back, even if he had to break every bone in the boy's body to do it.

Quickly he got dressed, trying to void emotions, all but the emotion of pure anger; within moments of being dressed he left his humble apartment to meet with his team. The broken shards of mirror lay in his wake, untouched, unaltered upon his dressers surface. The frame he tossed cracked and the glass broken as well, the picture he cherished the most he had destroyed. The picture of his team…

Everything seemed like it was only a blur.

"Don't tell me this is your full strength after all that talk about your way of the ninja?"

Sasuke's voice was harsh to blue eyed boy's ears. The pain showing itself once more but anger quickly winning the battle as he stepped out from behind the tree that hid his body from view. He said nothing; he only stared as Sasuke moved forward to attack him within the seconds of him appearing.

The events passed him like blurred strokes on a wet canvas. The water, it was so cold that day within that icy embrace as it clung to his every pore. "What am I to you?" He bit out harshly, his oceans of blue narrowing in anger and resentment.

"Am I not your friend? Are you saying everything that team Seven went through didn't mean anything to you?"

Sasuke's tone was all but dead as he spoke in reply. "No. It wasn't meaningless. You have become my best friend."

As his eyes opened Naruto stood his ground. Sasuke's eyes were like blood red rubies filled with infinite darkness and thriving revenge. Naruto shivered.

"Became… your friend? Then why?" His voice sounded more desperate than he would have liked, but he didn't care anymore. This was Sasuke… He, he just couldn't leave. Sasuke couldn't leave him alone.

"That is why…" His thoughts were cut off by the sharp words of the other boy. "That is why… There is meaning in defeating you." He didn't understand this, he couldn't understand; confused, he knew this battle was important that this.. whatever it was, was serious.

The events were vague even to him, but at one point he remembered dying. His eyes full of shock as the blood fled from his wound seeking some unknown and nonexistent refuge. Sasuke's hand was still in it, in the wound; in him. Hoarse words left him as he stared at the boy who had become so much more to him then just someone who shared equally in his loneliness.

"How… could you?"

He was betrayed as the heat of his blood became cold, his skin paling as the light drained from him. Even a thousand years of apologies could never wipe away the fridgedness of the hand that sasuke dealt.

For several moments he started unblinking at the water below his body, the blood from his brow diluting into nothingness until his vision too had betrayed him.

After that everything went black for him.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

For a time there was nothing but endless halls of black suffocating him in silence as he walked down each one. The atmosphere was tense, the walls clammy and unkind as they seemed to box him in. The silence was the real problem to him, it cutting at his sanity like a heated knife through butter.

"Hello?" The greeting seemed to catch as he tried to speak, tried to interrupt the order of nature in this newfound world of his. Voice stifled in his throat, holding there and then dying. A hand lifted to his neck scratching at the lump that formed of words he tried to release, his flesh heating and eyes stinging as realization hit him.

Whatever this place was, wherever he was now, he knew he was alone. That in this place no one was going to save him.

Time passed in a manner that felt like an eternity his walk becoming a frantic run as he seemed to be still. Hot tears flooded him, the citrines body seeming to change. From a young teen to a tiny child his height shrank and his face more youthful. Even his eyes became wider as the clothes he had been wearing in now swam on his adolescent body.

His run slowed into a pace that even an old lady could shuffle past, the emotions in his eyes, the years of silent pain reflecting betraying his appearance. Sorrow clung to his skin as he finally stopped. The sound of a steady drop of water was his only comfort here, the boy of only 5 sniffed into the darkness. A pale hand balling into a fist lifting only to wipe away more tears with an oversized sleeve.

His knees gave beneath him, collapsing him into a ball of body and clothes; there was no where he could go here. There was nowhere to run and it was in this truth that he realized what this place was and what had occured. It was then that he sobbed for all that he was worth letting go of years of mental anguish.

He sobbed for his betrayal, for the bond he knew he would never repair and for the world he'd never return to. In that dark room Naruto broke, in that dark room Sasuke won. A deep ache pulling at his chest as his heart shattered into a million pieces.

Lost.

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