Hi! Back with another one already. ^^ Hopefully people will like this one too, but this is based on the actual historical actions of the time period and not the romanticized one because I'm a history major and accuracy is how I roll. =] By the way, I also LOVE this one because I'm a history nerd (obviously). Title shamelessly stolen from Eliot's "The Hollow Men."

Suggestion From: Anamoose

Setting: AU, 1920s Paris

Genre/Theme: Romance/Indifference

Prompt: End with the words, "back to back."

Disclaimer: Not mine.

.

"In this Valley of Dying Stars"

During the day Sasuke holds a job, unlike most of them, and afterwards he visits smokey bars and out door cafes. Some nights he writes, though most of the time the writing is crap and he goes off wandering instead. He came to Paris at nineteen, running from America three months after returning from the war and though he has a job and friends, he still feels aimless in his life, lost on the streets of Paris that he's memorized. There's a girl too, whose name is Sakura and was once a nurse in the war and now lives pay check to pay check from Le Cafe de Chat she works at five days a week. They're together, for lack of a better word, but not in love. Both are a little to broken for that.

On a Tuesday in May she shows up at his flat a little past two in morning, not quite tipsy and not quite sober, with a felt hat on her short pink hair. She's still dressed in her day clothes with a short yellow dress down to her knees and a tweed jacket that falls half an inch longer. He stands fractured in the doorway in nothing but a pair of slacks, confused in his sleepless daze.

"I don't like getting all bent in public," she says, letting herself in, "and Kankura ordered another around." He shuts the door behind her, and she gives him a kiss. "Oh, you look awful!"

"I'm tired," he answers, annoyed, and it's true. Next door comes a sudden cry of, "Mon oeil!" only to be abruptly silenced moment later with loud, sober laughter. "You woke me up."

She laughs, but it's humorless and maybe even a little sad. "You don't sleep, Sasuke," she says, adjusting the hat on her head in the mirror. When they speak, they rarely look at each other. He can't bring himself to care. Maybe he should write a poem about that - the apathy. It was an effect of shell shock, he was told, they all had it. Sakura sighs. "Then again, neither do I."

He walks up behind her and hugs her around the middle, kissing the back of her neck. They don't love each other, but being with her keeps him from drifting too far. And maybe that is love, in its own way, but he'll never tell her this. There's no point in it.

She says, "Have a drink with me."

He doesn't answer, but walks to the kitchenette where he takes a bottle of red wine and two cups. She follows, silent with her steps on the normally creaking wood. They both are, even if it defies all logic. The wine splashes a little on the counter, and he notices without caring that his hands are shaking.

"Have you written anything recently?" she asks, sitting down at the small table and taking a sip when he places the glass in front of her. They're going to be drunk by the end of this. He nods absentmindedly, spinning the glass between his hands. His insomnia is getting worse, and behind his eyes a headache starts growing. As a kid, he never got headaches. Now he gets them frequently and blames the injury he got in the war. It's easy to blame things on the war. "Really? Can I see?"

He shrugs and drains his glass and thinks he really needs to stop all these drinking. Tomorrow he has work and he can't remember his French well with a hang over. A moan comes from next door, and this'll be another long night. The problem with having a room next to two people who enjoy sex way too much. "Do whatever," he says, but neither stands to get the paper. In truth, he hasn't written anything because every time the fountain pen comes to his hand all he can think of is the war. Other men write about the war, but he doesn't want to remember it. How unfortunate that his mind doesn't like to listen.

"You can recite them," she says, looking at him with bright green eyes, "like you did when we went to Norway."

"We went to Noway?" Insomnia causes confusion, or maybe it just amplifies it because he's almost always confused. "No we didn't go there. That was Finland."

"No, it was Norway," she answers. "That was Norway, Sasuke."

"Finland," he repeats. "It was definitely Findland."

She worries her bottom lip and even after knowing she was anxious about everything, the face still makes him weary. "Sasuke," she says, "you said it was Norway when we talked about it last week. Don't you remember?" He shakes head. "Oh, Sasuke..."

"Did we go to both?"

"No, just Noway. You said you liked Oslo and I agreed."

He remembers this vaguely, and feels like he shouldn't be so indifferent to this sudden forgetfulness. He wonders what Kakashi would say, but then shakes the thought away. It's not like he can ask him anyway. Like so many others, his commanding officer died in the war. So did most of his friends, and he was left alone. Well, except Sakura and the men he met with now, but they weren't the ones he grew up with. That counts for something.

Suddenly Sakura says, "I want to go back."

"To Fin - Norway?"

"No, America."

He pauses, hand reaching towards the bottle, and his confusion increases. "Why?" he asks. "You know there's a Prohibition going on, right? As of last month? And that the president plays with quiffs in the White House? I mean, Christ, Sakura. There's nothing there."

Her eyes suddenly look shiny, and he realizes she's about to cry. Maybe she's a little drunk. Usually she's happy when drunk, but late at night she has her sad moments.

"You aren't going to leave, right?" she asks suddenly, taking him by surprise. She never gave an indication of caring before. Again, he shrugs, and looks away towards the glass in his hand. He doesn't want to go to work with a hang over tomorrow. "Right?"

"Sounds like you're the one who's talking about leaving," he answers mildly and he's reminded of the war after his injury, as he lay in the infirmary with her as his nurse, making him whole again with shaking hands. This is a relationship that's beenb doomed from the start.

She says, "You have haven't been writing, have you?"

"Sometimes."

"I know that face. What's wrong?"

It's something like two thirty in the morning and he doesn't want to deal with this at all. She does something to his head that he doesn't appreciate, making it like he wants to leave but doesn't at the same time. He might not love her, but there's still something. There's always something. "There're just some things I can't do," he says, "and that's all I can think about."

She looks at him anxiously. "The shell shock's getting bad again, isn't it?"

"Maybe."

He has a horrible habit of not quite lying, but not quite telling the truth. Both of them have seen too much for only being in their early twenties, but he's seen more and the effects are awful. Maybe if he hadn't seen his commanding officer - his friend - die next to him, if he hadn't seen people drown to death by liquid in their lungs, if he hadn't been right there when the shell exploded, starved already with his arm fractured so he couldn't dodge right, if his family had noticed how utterly off he was, then maybe -

Sakura sighs and drinks the rest of her wine and now there're real tears on her face. "You should tell someone this," she says.

"Who?" he asks.

"Me."

"Why?"

"Who else do you have?"

She makes a good case, and he doesn't know what to say. With a sigh of his own, he stands up and grabs the cups, not wanting to get drunk tonight and thinking she probably won't either. She stands too and hugs him from behind, kissing his shoulder. She says, "I worry about you."

"I know."

"I don't think you do."

"You don't have to.

"My free will is pretty limited when it comes to emotions, you know." She takes off her hat and runs her fingers through her short pink hair. Yes, they did go to Norway, he suddenly remembers. Oslo really was a nice city. Better than Paris, anyway, or at least to him. "If I go back," she asks, "will you come with me?"

"Back where?"

"America."

Oh. Yeah. That. He wants to sleep, but can't, and his mind can't seem to process information correctly. "Maybe," he answers.

"Is that your answer for everything?"

"Maybe."

"Oh, now you're just doing it to be annoying."

"Maybe."

She hits him lightly on the arm, and he sends a thin sort of smile. He turns around and gives her a kiss. Maybe they do love each other, just a little, though neither can ever be fixed. Still, that isn't enough to carry him to America with her, if she goes at all, which he doubts. She's about as much of an expatriate as he is, though not as stupid. That was what Jiraiya called him and Naruto - stupid. They can't write for shit because they don't know what they care about anymore and they don't try hard at anything except sleeping with gals and drinking. Unfortunately, he's inclined to agree. He's a genius in most things, but he was dumb in common sense. He should've gone to Harvard like he planned, not joined a war that went towards a cause he couldn't for the life of him understand. European nationalism, he thinks, and America just got involved because the English and the French got in deeper than they thought and needed someone to bail them out.

Not that it matters, he decides. Fuck politics anyway and fuck Wilson and fuck Warren Harding. Politicians running politics was just turning the world bad. Or maybe this is the alcohol talking. Though only twenty-one, he already had the bitterness of an old Russian peasant in Siberia, so says Konohamaru, the son of one of the military's leading officers who never fought a day in his life. Naruto loves that kid for one reason or another. Maybe he shouldn't have put away that wine.

"Sakura," he says, kissing her again. She tasted like champagne, wine, and croissants. "I'm going to bed. I need to try to sleep."

"I'll join you," she says.

They lie together for a while, and when they finally sleep, they face away from each other, back to back.

.

Sorry for the weak ending. Leave suggestions in the review. :)