"Naruto."

I sigh, running a hand through black hair, spiked carefully at the back. I miss him.

The blond -haired man, who seemed so vacant. I mean, I know he's crazy…but you can't help loving him.

I lay eyes upon my psychiatrist, though I feel like these visits are essentially useless.

I am…happy. I miss Naruto, I do.

I miss his blond hair, his scarred face, and the childish exuberance of when he found something,

Ihis penchant for orange, I even miss that, and of course his weird expressions.

"You are losing your face!"

he would say when I smiled, and I stopped, and he would frown.

"Oh. You have found it again." His voice was so sad in these moments,

that I soon learned to smile often. But fake smiles did not work.

It had to be true happiness. But around Naruto, no,

around the one person who ever meant that much to me, that was easy enough.

And he taught me so many things. He taught how to get up, how to keep going.

How to be essentially, effortlessly happy. I gathered, from my time with him,

that he had had a worse time of it than me, but yet he would smile effortlessly, easily.

Once, I tried his saying back to him. "You are losing your face."

I said, at one particularly adorable moment. He smiled sadly.

"I can never lose my face. I am bound." He never elaborated on that.

But I gathered losing your face was the best thing that could happen to someone.

I love him. I just wish I'd realised that earlier.

"Kyuubi."

Says Kakashi, or Hatake as he insists I call him. My psychiatrist, though he looks crazier than me,

with wild silver hair, and a scarred, bloodshot eye. Mind you…

I finger one of the many scars that litter my body, everyone has scars nowadays.

Life tries to go on as normal, but tensions between the factions are increasing.

I'm sure you've heard of them. Fire, Water, Wind. 'countries' of the world we live in.

And then, then there are the cesspits of the factions, the hidden villages. Laboratories basically.

Laboratories where monstrosities are formed.

Laboratories where they mess with the ether, chakra if you will, that permeates life.

My seal throbs, and I wince.

Hatake eyes me. "You seem distracted, Sasuke." I shrug, deliberately keeping relaxed in a non-confrontational manner.

Naruto taught me many ways to defuse a situation. That was one of them. "I've got things on my mind."

Kakashi leans forward, steepling his fingers. His red, bloodshot eye tries to focus on me as well as his other, more natural eye.

"Sasuke. You cannot fix Naruto on your own. Kyuubi is too strong. He needs help. If you know where he is, Sasuke, you need to bring him in."

I nod, but my face betrays nothing of the turmoil underneath.

How could I bring him in, knowing I was damning him to a psycho ward, or tied up in straitjackets, or having drugs shot into him.

If he was crazy, if he is crazy, then so am I for loving him. His secret..I cannot betray it. No, when he showed my Kyuubi's seal,

I knew then. I ran, at the time. Ran crying and screaming. I will regret that tear on Naruto's face till the day I die.

Or visit him. The two are not mutually exclusive of course. In fact, the second probably guarantees the first.

But that seal…how did it get there? I am walking now, tugging my coat further around me.

Open shirts look good, especially when they are a deep blue with a purple trim, but damn if they aren't cold.

Tight-fitting trousers catch the eyes of a few ladies, and even a man as I walk past. But they hold no interest for me.

No, what interests me lies in the Uchicha complex, my family home, where the Hokage, left an important document.

A document, on how to trap a demon. How to give a child unnatural power, how to make him invisible, unstoppable,

how to make him strong and powerful, how to make him better. I raise a hand to my seal, that spreads over my neck slightly as I think about it.

Am I a demon-child? Am I a monstrosity? With Sharingan eyes, and a seal that hums of chakra, am I a demon? Am I a demon like Kyuubi?

I shudder, and force my thoughts away from the seal., and the scientist who put it on me.

Later, I study. Reading, Understanding.

Learning. I need to know. Need to know how to separate Kyuubi from Naruto, to keep the man I love alive.

But I'm so tired. So very tired. And as my eyes shut, for only a second, I fall asleep, if you can call it that.

For sleep is restful, a black warmth. This is far from it.

Sleep is where demons lie. And yet, I look forward to it, peversely.

Each time I sleep, his face flickers into view, the tanned body I knew so well curving round an imaginary circle,

arms over his head, hunched round in that posture I know so well, that fearful sleep, as if expecting any minute to be attacked.

And from the numerous scars littering his body, I wondered if it were true. Rips, tears, burns, the scars spoke of horrors.

But in my dreams, it's okay. I can walk forward, and touch him. I can caress his blond hair, and nuzzle the scarred cheeks.

And I can smell his wonderful scent, and breathe in the very essence of him.

And for five minutes, it's all okay.

Until he wakes up.