Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the characters; they belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I don't get any money from this. Also, for purposes of this story, let's assume Naruto and Sasuke both have both of their arms.

Warnings: Vague references to some dubious consent and underage and mentions of suicidal behaviors. Sasuke still has a dirty mouth and does not handle his alcohol well. Also there is probably going to be eventual GaaNejiSasu, NaruHina, and maybe Sakura x Happiness so don't read if that bothers you.

Sasuke slammed down his shot glass. Two stools down, the girly-faced Hyuga slammed his down as well. Sasuke snarled. Who was Hyuga to intrude on his time alone? Sasuke had been good, kept the allies of the place of that got his family slaughtered safe, gotten yelled for that, made nice with dobe and his picture-perfect bride. Now, he was going to get completely and peacefully drunk, or he would try to do that if it weren't for the Hyuga burning a hole in his back. Well, to think of it, the whole room was burning a hole in his back. Che, this is how Itachi must have felt, he thought, saving all these ungrateful shits and they hate you for it. Well, I guess I tried to kill most of them at one point or another. That was bad. I actually feel bad about that. Why the fuck am I feeling this? Make it stop. Kamis, I miss 'tachi.

With this, Sasuke decided to have another drink. This usually happened whenever he thought too deeply about his brother. Sasuke had thought that the anguish of Itachi would have hurt the worst when his heart stopped the moment Itachi's did the second time, but that wasn't true. Sasuke still had these phantom pains of Itachi that ached, throbbing through his body into his mind, his dreams, his everything. Itachi had said he would love him despite anything, but Sasuke knew that this wasn't true. Sasuke didn't deserve anyone's love, but for some reason people thought they loved him: Sakura, Kakashi…and Naruto, though not how Sasuke would like him to. Sasuke did not want people to care for him. All his life Sasuke had only hurt people. He had a war full of casualties to prove that. A war full of families killed just like his had been. Sasuke did not like the feeling of self-hatred this brought; Sasuke was used to hating others. He had never before hated himself. These days Sasuke was all too familiar with the feeling.

Hell, the clan was killed so that I could live. Other families were killed when I worked with Orochimaru, with Tobi...Why? Why? Sasuke's hands trembled and he reached for yet another drink. To his surprise, though, something, or rather someone, stopped him. A handcuff of sand encircled his right wrist, keeping him from lifting his glass. Sasuke snarled. Why him?

"Fuck off and die," he bit out. (Sasuke's sluggish mind realized this was not good. He had already gotten a lecture from Kakashi once today about pissing off the Kazekage. Oh well. Sasuke had done worse and doubted Gaara would do anything to upset his precious Naruto.)

"You've had enough," Gaara said, tightening the sand around Sasuke's wrist.

Blunt, simple, and to the point. He actually thinks I'm going to listen to him, too. Sasuke found this hilarious. He reached for the drink with his left hand—a brilliant strategy, he was sure of. And Gaara thought he could outwit the Uchiha Sasuke. Sasuke had not been an S-rank missing nin for nothing.

A handcuff of sand trapped his left wrist. Oh no, this, this is not good. Sasuke stared slowly at his wrists. Maybe if he blasted a Chidori through his wrists? But then he couldn't make a scene at the dobe's wedding. Everyone already thought he is the worst. Plus, the room was spinning and he probably wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight. Sasuke perhaps should have listened to that lecture that Sakura gave him on the dangers of alcoholism and emotional strategies she had given him when he had gotten out of the hospital with Naruto.

"Uchiha, think. Others haven't noticed you drinking yet, but if you continue, they will. Do you really want to do that to Naruto and Hinata at their wedding? Now, stop," Gaara said. His eyes were impassive and the tone was bland, but the sand still held Sasuke's wrists down firmly.

Sasuke hated this about him. Whenever the Kazekage saw him, he always had this glint in his pale eyes—as if Sasuke was his prey and once he caught him he would never let him go. It made Sasuke feel uneasy and unsure of what Gaara wanted from him. For most people, Sasuke could read their faces pretty easily; he saw their hatred and disgust and reflected back a mirror image of what he saw in their faces with his face. Sasuke was good at this; he had been wearing a mask of disdain and apathy since he was a child. Gaara, though, looked through Sasuke's mask and beyond his eyes, peering into his heart and reducing Sasuke to his component flesh, bones, and skin. Sasuke could swear that Gaara even saw his thoughts flicker and spark across his brain as they were born. It seemed as though Gaara saw everything of him, but Sasuke saw nothing of Gaara in return.

Trying to determine what Gaara's thoughts were thinking made Sasuke's drunken mind hurt, so he decided to try a classic shinobi technique: deflection.

"Hyuga's almost as gone as I am. Why don't you annoy him instead?"

Gaara let out the slightest hiss of air through his nostrils. Sasuke smirked in delight. Gaara: three; Sasuke: one. But then the sand tightened even more around his wrists. The grains pressed roughly into the delicate skin of Sasuke's underarm, and he shuddered at the feeling. It hurt so good. Sasuke morbidly thought back for a second of the time Gaara had tried to crush him in his sand coffin. The adrenaline, the pain, the death…

"You will get up, leave without making a scene, and let Naruto and Hinata celebrate their wedding in peace. Do you or do you not understand?" The command was even, but Sasuke swore he heard an angry undercurrent to it.

"Why, of course, Kazekage-sama," he slurred. The sand finally released his wrists and Sasuke attempted a mocking bow but stumbled, ruining the effect.

"Do you need someone to escort you to where you are staying?"

"Why are you offering to go home with me? You haven't even bought me a drink yet," Sasuke murmured huskily tilting his head to the side. He lifted a freed hand to Gaara's face, running his forefinger down a pale cheek.

Gaara stiffened and turned at heel. Sasuke let out a laugh and strode out of the room in a wavering zig-zag. Straight lines were not his friends right now.

Sasuke had never particularly liked sex, but he was aware of how he looked—how even still people looked at him with lust mixed in with the hatred. He was a shinobi, and he was nothing but a weapon. Since he was a weapon, it was foolish to treat his body as anything but such. Ever since Orochimaru and Sound, Sasuke had used his body and his looks and how people craved him to their fullest extent. Contrary to what most people thought, Orochimaru had never touched Sasuke or any of the children he collected inappropriately, but he had been nothing but clinically detached and pragmatic when it came to letting them know that they were to do anything and everything possible to complete a mission. The consequences of failing were worse than the momentary discomfort of pleasuring a target for a mission. Besides, Sasuke was sure Orochimaru went through the same thing when he was child since he had always spoken a little too knowledgeably when instructing Sasuke on the best way to manipulate a mark. No one could be as pretty as people always claimed he and Orochimaru were and not have done same thing. It was the way of the world.

It was these lessons in particular Sasuke used now on Gaara. Sasuke knew that Gaara did not want him in particular, but Sasuke knew enough of lust and love unrequited to recognize the look on Gaara's face when he looked at Naruto. (It maybe is a little bit too satisfying for Sasuke to know that he isn't the only sucker in the room wearing that expression on his face). Knowing this, Sasuke would not hesitate to use it against the redhead. Especially when he will not leave me the fuck alone. I need to be left alone. In the end that's my just deserts: being alone forever, trying to fix what can't be fixed.

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Gaara stalked away from the drunk Uchiha. Recently, in addition to the latest coup that Uchiha demolished (Gaara reminded himself to tell the Hokage to pull the reins in on the Uchiha. In the words of Shiikamaru, Sasuke was "troublesome."), there had been reports of possible assassination attempts by an emerging terrorist group modeled after the Akatsuki. Where it would strike, however, was anyone's guess. The chaos of Naruto's wedding, and with it the various well-wishers from all over the world, was as good a place as any for the enemy to strike. Gaara was already on edge from trying to calculate the most likely outcome in a problem with too many unknown variables. Adding in an Uchiha, and a drunk one and that, completely threw off all his computations. While Gaara doubted that Uchiha himself would try to stab him, he feared a repeat of what happened with the coup debacle. Instead of coming to him with his intelligence, Uchiha had gone to the Daimyo. Where Gaara could have orchestrated a plan in which all the conspirators and relevant information could have been found out, Uchiha and the Daimyo had laid an exploding tag of a trap that blew up anything that might be a threat and everything around it in the five mile blast radius. By the time that Gaara had heard of the coup, the Daimyo had executed all conspirators and even those marginally involved.

It had been a complete waste of life and what Gaara hated more than anything was waste for no reason. It brought back memories of the war that had not long passed. Now, thanks to Sasuke, Gaara had another problem to deal with. Sometimes Gaara just wondered if it would be better to lock up the Uchiha where he could not cause any trouble. This idea had some appeal; Gaara could almost imagine having the Uchiha locked away in a cage, just an arms-reach away and close enough to touch…Gaara stopped this train of thought suddenly. He had not had these urges since Naruto had shown him the light and Shukaku had been pushed into the darkness. He should not be thinking these thoughts…even if it was the Uchiha. (It's not like the Uchiha could be broken; his soul was as dark as Gaara's own). Uchiha Sasuke was Naruto's friend and someone who Naruto could transform into a light for the greater good, much as he did for Gaara himself. Anything else Gaara thought about the man was irrelevant as long as he wasn't intentionally risking the peace.

"Thank-you; I thought I was going to have to deal with him myself, Kazekage-sama," The low voice started Gaara out of his reverie. It was Hyuga—;it was some Hyuga Gaara knew, though he could not remember his name. He was…Rock Lee's teammate and the man he had been talking to earlier about some treaty or another. The man was a good fighter and yet another person who had been saved by Naruto.

"It was no difficulty on my part," Gaara agreed frantically scanning the room for Lee. The Leaf ninja was a stalwart friend and worthy sparring partner. Also, he could provide Gaara with his teammate's name. Gaara hated being caught unawares. When he caught sight of the glare of the green, he waved the taijutsu expert.

"Kazekage-sama! Eternal rival! Friends! What a wonderful celebration of youth! In honor of Hinata and Naruto, I propose a tournament of strength!" Well, that tells me nothing about the Hyuga's name. Shame, he had some interesting ideas about border disputes with Rain.

"…and therefore, I propose a no-holds-barred battle in the middle of the dance floor."

"Lee, how much have you had to drink?" The words came out pinched from an extremely irate teammate.

"Why, Neji, I have only had ten glasses of the punch. Choji challenged me to an eating completion and I needed something to wash the food down. Nothing can be accomplished without full-out effort!" So that's the name.

"Kazekage-sama, I apologize for my teammate's appearance right now. If I can just get him to our friend Tenten, she is usually best at handling him when he is like this."

Gaara tilted his head to the side. Well, apparently the Hyuga was clever but a stick-in-the-mud. It was when Lee was like this, unrestrained and youthful, that he was at his most brilliant, most pure. Other than Naruto, Gaara did not know anyone who showed their inside to the outside world as honestly as Lee did. He wondered what it would be like if the stoic Neji showed what he was thinking to the world…the thought intrigued Gaara. It was the icy ones that always surprised Gaara with what their frozen waters revealed as they finally melted in the warmth of spring.

"There is nothing to apologize for, Hyuga-san. I'll look after Lee. Could you perhaps follow Uchiha Sasuke home? He left just a little while ago and seemed a bit impaired." I'd rather deal with Lee than the Uchiha any day...and Temari said this would be a relaxing vacation. I should have known she only wanted to flirt with Nara...

Neji's smile tightened slightly, but he gave a courteous bow, brown hair falling to form a curtain around his pale eyes. "Hai, Kazekage-sama."

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Sasuke faked a stumble down the street. Someone was following him, or more correctly, some numerous people were following him. From what he could determine, it wasn't ANBU; he had enough experience detecting their presence seeing as nowadays they always seemed to follow him whenever he was back in Konoha. When Sasuke heard feet land almost soundlessly in front of him, he was ready, darting as quickly as a snake to pull a kunai to his pursuer's throat.

Then, he was actually stumbling—not faking one this time—and falling to empty the contents of his stomach at the figure's feet.

"Lovely."

Oh shit. It would be Hyuga fucking Neji.

It went without saying that Sasuke and Neji did not get along. Kakashi put it down to them being from clans whose rivalry went back centuries. Sakura delicately put it from them having "similar dispositions." Either way, the two prodigies, simply put, hated each other's guts. Sasuke thought the Hyuga was a coward who looked down upon him for trying to fix things (though admittedly Sasuke really fucking hated how he went about how he tried to fix things now) while he was too afraid to escape from what he accepted to be his fate. Sai, Sasuke's inferior replacement, once told him that Hyuga said Sasuke was a lying, murdering traitor whose only aim was destruction. I may be a murderer, traitor, worst of the fucking worst. I just want to…to make things better though. If the Alliance said I should die, I'd die like Itachi would have. But they haven't told me to die. I don't deserve to die and escape the bad I've caused like some coward; I fucking get that and I can't change that. But I've never lied, never. My mother taught me better than that. I'm going to do something, somehow.

These thoughts swirl on the tip of Sasuke's tongue, trying to fall out to form words, but all he can taste is the bitterness of his own puke. Oh, if only his father and brother could see him now.

Somehow, miraculously, Neji said nothing and pulled Sasuke to his feet, giving him a shoulder to lean on.

"Why?"

"Because Hinata-sama would be upset if you drowned in your own filth. Besides, if the Hokage thinks someone such as you can be of use, it would not do to for my own personal feelings" –here Neji sneered—"to cause me to leave you here like this to dir. It's called loyalty the village—something I doubt you know of."

Sasuke was about to reply when he realized the other presences he detected from before were still following them. He started the hand-sign he used with Taka to indicate an enemy was present before he realized that Neji did not know it. Well, then, he would just deal with this on his own then.

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When Neji had left the wedding, he had not been sure whether to be glad he did not have to wrestle a drunken Lee into submission or annoyed that he had to corral drunken Uchiha home. He decided to be annoyed since there was a greater chance of injury when confronting the Traitor; Lee, even at his drunkest, could be trusted to not seriously harm a fellow Leaf shinobi. Uchiha, however, could not.

He had noticed the presences following them a few blocks after leaving the wedding. He considered activating the Byakugan and confronting them directly; he was not enjoying the night as he should and was spoiling for a fight. After a few moments, he decided against this and gave the signal to the security surrounding the wedding, alerting them to the threat. He would then herd the Uchiha somewhere where he would not get in the way and do anything stupid. Then, the ANBU would take care of the intruders themselves. It was the responsible thing to do and what Neji's father would have done; it was what was best for Hinata. She would be upset if Neji missed the end of the party. It would be the very least he could do for her after all of the years of misery he gave her. Sometimes it surprised how much he loved her and Hanabi now considering the years of rage and hatred he had towards them.

This plan was torn to shreds, though, when Neji felt the Uchiha tensing. Oh God, do not pull a Lee. You cannot fight right now. You cannot fight right now. I'm too sober to deal with an upset Naruto if you get yourself killed, Traitor.

"Uchiha, let's keep moving. I'll take you to Sakura-san's apartment, which is just around the corner."

The look he was given was one Neji had seen many times before (on Lee's face...and on Hinata's; sometimes Neji hated Naruto for teaching her her ninja way of never backing down from a fight she could not win). The Traitor tore his arm away and plunged into the shadows where the intruders lingered like creeping black cats.

Neji sighed, considering for a moment the repercussions of letting the Traitor die. The lying piece of trash would stop bewitching the village higher-ups with whatever it was was so special about him, but if the intruders managed to take the Traitor's eyes, that could prove troublesome in the long run. He had also promised the Kazekage that he would see him home safely.

Besides, was is like he could expect more from someone who attacked all the five Kages (and their bodyguards) at the same time? What sane person would think that was a good idea? Honestly, who actually did that?

Traitors who thought they could still fight even when they couldn't walk straight, that's who.

Traitors who reminded Neji of his greatest shame (Neji's eyes still automatically dropped to floor when he remembered Hinata coughing blood and fallen at the chunin exams), that's who.

Traitors who made Neji consider leaving an incapacitated comrade to unknown enemies, that's who.

Neji was not like the Traitor who had left Naruto for dead to drown in a pool of his own blood in the Valley of the End. He was not his past self that had attacked the one he should protect as she should trembling before him.

Deadly and beautiful as a falling bird, Neji followed the Uchiha into battle.

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Sakura slumped down in her seat behind a potted palm tree. She had been dodging Lee (who wanted a dance) and Ino (who wanted to dance) all night. She didn't even have the excuse of dodging out to the hospital to escape;Tsunade had made sure her shifts were covered for tonight and tomorrow so Sakura "could have more time to take care to sleep off her hangover." While Sakura appreciated the thought, she had never been too much of a drinker. Sakura loved her thoughts and her mind and never could understand why someone would do anything to dull their mental sharpness. Above all things, Sakura adored a beautiful mind, and it killed her to see what Sasuke was doing to his the last few years. She had been thinking the best ways of tactfully bringing up the effects of PTSD and depression to him but had not yet had the opportunity to.

Searching for Sasuke, Sakura's keen eyes scanned the room. Hinata and Naruto were towards the center, slowly undulating to the music as if they were making love just by holding each other. She considered telling them to get a room for Sasuke's sake but decided not to bother them so she did not "get infected by the cuteness," as Ino squealingly called it.

She instead chose to get up and look for Sasuke herself. Each time she saw him now he looked more and more dead as if he had reached the end of his rope a long time ago but lacked the will to hang himself with it. She tried to tell herself that this was good because it meant he was sane and whole again—that it was the natural consequence of regaining the conscience and sanity he had lost. But if Sasuke was whole again, Sakura had never seen him look more shattered. She wanted to take him into her arms and hold him and tell him everything would be all right, but she felt even the slightest pressure, even the slightest kindness, would cause Sasuke to splinter beyond repair. Also, how could she tell him everything was going to be okay? Sakura was pretty sure if she said that, it would be a lie. Sasuke had been lied to enough for many lifetimes. Sakura swore she would never tell him nothing but the truth.

As she moved to rise, she felt a soft pad nudging her ankle and looked down. It was Pakun, Kakashi's animal summons. Sakura felt a quick flash of anxiety before calming down. She just knew that something horrible had happened, but she would not panic. She was a woman grown and not some little girl standing off to the side of a fight anymore. She was a medic-nin and would act as such.

"Hey, kid, you need to come now. Kakashi has someone he needs you to heal."

Sakura looked around the room and noticed the Sasuke was still nowhere in sight. She swallowed the old dread and nodded, following Pakun quietly out of the room.

The last time she felt this way was when Naruto and Sasuke had half killed each other for the final time. She had tended their wounds and patched them up just like she had when they were younger. They would live to die another day, and Sakura felt like she died from worry once more.

Sometime Sakura thought healing was simply killing in reverse.