Chapter Two: Answers in a Daydream

Author's Note: I'm glad everyone read it really carefully. You all are going to be going 'Oh!' a little bit in this chapter, because frankly, my lazy ass left quiet a bit out in the last one. I'm hoping to finish next chapter, but my muses work in rather mysterious ways. –sigh- Also if anyone is going to Anime USA, give a shout.

Warnings/Disclaimer: Been done.

Chapter Two: Answers in a Daydream


I had to die…

I had to die…

I had to die…

It was all I could hear, all I could think about and all I could comprehend. Sasuke dying. My tears couldn't stop despite how much I tried willing them to. I tried focusing on positive memoires; my mom and dad taking me to my first theme park, Sasuke and I sneaking out, our inner circle of friends at a bonfire like we did every Friday.

It didn't work. My parents would fade, Sasuke would disappear and my friends would crumble in a world of sadness.

I felt his hands on my face again, and to my surprise they were warming. I could feel him wiping away at my tears on my face and again I tried to grasp on to these gestures that were so unlike him. Unlike my Sasuke.

"I stood outside till you got here." He whispered. I tried to look at his face, but I could only take in a very blurred image of my more blurred world because of my damn uncontrollable tears. "I just wanted to make sure you got here safely." But it at least explained why he was so cold, and my brain could stop rationalizing that Sasuke was dead and that I was fooling myself into thinking he was alive.

"I wanted to go back inside so you wouldn't turn back around." He confessed knowing me all too well, but obviously not knowing Kakashi had followed me. Absently I wondered where he was now, and absently I knew he was in the garage where my parents added another room.

My stomach was churning more and more as he whipped at my face and my mind was losing itself in a haze of confusion the more I tried to sort things out. I knew for a fact that Uchiha Sasuke was alive. That was for sure.

And at that sudden revelation, everything felt okay again. Confusing – so damn confusing – but okay. I knew that so many things were wrong, and that was why we were here, but that didn't matter. I had Sasuke alive and well, and that made things okay. And I cried because of that. My hands had left his arms and found my lap, but I was soon reaching out and looking for comfort in simply touching him. I wanted to find a simple grounding in a solid truth. I wanted to convince myself over and over that he was really alive. I pushed against his chest more times than I could count, and I awkwardly grabbed his arms and trailed my hands to his.

It made me jump, when his forehead was suddenly pressed and gently rested against mine. I was still being blindfolded by my forever falling tears that he stopped clearing, and now they were fallon my dress shirt. He had grabbed my hands and everything that I thought I had grasped to understand in the past thirty seconds was starting to spin again.

"I told them I didn't want to go that far." He explained dryly, leaving out so much, "I said I didn't want to put you through that."

I knew my body went more rigid than possible than when he moved his forehead just barely against mine by simply breathing, and I tried to relax. I just couldn't understand why Sasuke was acting…not like Sasuke. He was always selfish, arrogant, and cocky. Now he was comforting, understanding, and caring. Opposite to an insane degree and I couldn't understand. I suddenly wished my life was a videogame and someone could put in cheat codes for all the right answers. And a reset button.

I took a few deep breaths trying to settle down and I squeezed on his hands, "Please explain this from the start Sasuke. I'm so confused."

"Let's sit somewhere more appropriate." He ushers, and he starts guiding me up from the floor.

My crying had settled somewhat and the part of my brain that registers manly pride was shutting down while it caught up with recent events. My legs felt like some sort of rubber as I managed to get to my feet, but Sasuke guided me. My mind was still in a haze, and I was still lost in it. So he held onto my hands and tugged me up, and gently guided me to the couch.

Again, he showed me a side that I never knew he had.

We sat down and it took him a few moments to pull his hands away from mine, but it was at that time I registered the silence. The still air made my brain try and turn over the complex turn of events that just took place. But Sasuke broke that just to complicate it more.

"Tell me everything." He said quietly.

I didn't understand why – again. I figured it would continue that way for most of the night and continue over into tomorrow, but I still tried to make sense of it all. Why he wanted to know what I had been through, what I had seen, what I had felt. That was usually my job. I wanted to share things with people, walk with them through everything, and guide them through it. If someone I knew was hurting, I wanted to hurt with them. If they were happy, I wanted to be happy with them. That wasn't Sasuke.

So I began to tell him everything.

"From the estate…" I swallowed hard when it flashed in my head and it felt like someone slashed at my stomach, "Right?"

I didn't want to start with my paranoid searching and my anxiety ridden thoughts when I first woke up without him around to harass me.

He nodded and I watched his eyes dance around my face, "When I got there, the police already found you?" I suddenly questioned everything I saw and heard. Everything was a show to me, but I wasn't sure to who else.

"They taped off the house, so I climbed over the gate." I confessed. In my panic upon seeing the yellow strips signaling my exile, I abandoned my car and all form of sanity and climbed the fence only to be greeted by seven officers at gun point.

"Kakashi told them to stand down." I muttered, filling in the unsaid detail, "He tried to tell me he would come by later to explain everything but I got impatient because I was worried. He kept telling me everything was going to be fine but I could tell he was lying."

I swear it was the unsaid and worldly answer to tell you 'it's fine' when everything is falling to pieces, plus Kakashi was a notorious liar and somehow I had become the only one to be able to tell when he was lying.

"They brought out the body bag then." I pushed on, not wanting to carry on with every waking detail in mine and Kakashi's fight, though I'd rather linger on that than the image that was now tearing at my brain. "I kept asking who it was…"

At that moment in time, I was desperate to believe it wasn't Sasuke, though it could only be him. We were the only ones who ever went inside the Uchiha estate, and Sasuke had gone missing. At that moment in time, I wanted to do anything not to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

But I knew.

"I started … I don't know. Kakashi called it a panic attack. So he took me outside the gates. He said something about 'out of sight, out of mind', but I couldn't get under control."
I had just seen the body bag that was carrying my best friend, and here someone was trying to keep me calm, cool and collected. Part of me wanted to go to the garage and laugh at Kakashi right in his face.

"He started explaining," I moved on, ignoring the thought of being so fidgety. I had always been a fidgety kid; always been unable to sit still, always hyper, always ready to do something. I never realized I was like this when I was uncomfortable or nervous.

"You know Kakashi," I forced out the laugh and ignored the glare Sasuke's eyes naturally pulled, "He didn't lie. He went straight to the point. He wouldn't sugar coat it for me just so someone would come along and tell me the…uh…truth? He told me that…God…"

I hated talking about this. Damn it being fake because it was downright uncomfortable. It made my stomach turn again, and I looked into the bowl in my hands instead of the shirt Sasuke was wearing. I don't remember grabbing the bowl, and I knew he must have thought to get one at one point in time.

"He said it was a-" I wanted to vomit, and I swallowed two or three times just thinking about the word in relation to Sasuke. I called him a slew of names in relation to the word, but when I was faced with the situation head on I felt like something was ending. Something big, too big.

"He said it was a suicide." There, I managed to get it out. One hurtle down, "Something about pills. He said that I needed to get home while he investigated and he was sending Kiba over. He said that being there was bad for me. He got Asuma to drive me."

I heard Sasuke do something I never once heard him do and that was sigh. It wasn't aggravated or irritated (emotions I was known to cause), it was a sigh that sounded so dead. Like all his emotions had shut down suddenly.

But I kept talking because I knew if I stopped there would be no continuing, "I barely remember the week. Kakashi and Asuma were in and out and asking me a lot of questions. All about you, us, your family, my family, our family ties, your actions, my actions and damn it all they even asked your fucking blood type. They were really playing there part, huh? It felt like they were never going to stop-" I was ranting, I knew I was. It was only a matter of time before I started crumbling into an insane ramble that turned into a jumbled mess of words, "Lawyers where in and out with the police, and people where in and out constantly.

I don't even remember who came to visit any more. People where making sure I ate, people where cleaning up for me. I think. I don't know. I don't understand. I just remember in a blink of an eye that I was suddenly staring at you in a coffin and I felt like my world was ending."

That's how it went. Days blurred on with no sleep, planning his funeral, and endless amounts of guests. It felt like one minute I was breaking down in front of the Uchiha manor and when I blinked, I was in the funeral home trying to cling to my sanity.

I felt him swipe at my hair again, but this time it felt more cautious than comforting, like he was scared I would push him away or tell him stop. I don't know why he gave damn, Sasuke always did what he wanted anyway.

"My brother Itachi wasn't dead." He started, still quiet and hearing him talk instantly calmed me. "He's been around for some time."

"Why did you lie about it?" Of all the things that came to mind, that was the first that came out of my mouth. It was childish and stupid, but I never lied to him about a single thing. I kept things from my other friends, and walked around subjects with family friends, but I never did anything like that with Sasuke.

"To protect you." He said it simply, almost lightly, like it was the most obvious answer in the world. "I had to die to protect you. To the world, to almost everyone around you and I, I died."

I was told things were going to be explained to me, but I had a feeling Sasuke didn't want to. A part of me felt like he was the shy, awkward little boy that was touring me through the mansion all the years ago. That I was listening to the fear in his voice that I heard once or twice that he never meant to let leak through. A part of me knew he didn't want to explain all this. That he wanted to keep this part of his life a secret, because that was how he was. But the word 'protect' made my head swim.

"You know the police protection program ranges in degrees of protection."

I nodded dumbly. I was a basic level case, easy said and easy done. No harm done, and in a blink of an eye I could return home.

"My brother was never dead."

It seemed like he was telling things out of order in hopes to confuse me even more in hopes he wouldn't have to talk about it anymore. I could tell with how much he was jumping around from topic to topic.

"He started making death threats." I blinked at the sudden hallow sound in his voice, but it was gone in an instant, "First they were nothing, distant, something easily ignored."

Fair enough. Seemed enough like Sasuke to ignore something that he didn't want to deal with.

"He started stalking us." This was the information I didn't want to know. The things that would purposely and in a paranoid state make things go bump in the night. "He started making threats on your life to hurt me. So I went to Kakashi and Asuma."

There was a gap, "You're leaving something out."

He either snorted or growled, but I couldn't tell at that point, "Which would be?"

"Practically everything."

I thought it was an easy and simple reminder, but I could tell it upset him in some way.

"When my parents died, he was supposed to take care of me." I knew that already. Of course, what I was told was he died shortly after in some type of accident, "But he left."

"So shouldn't that give you the right to be the psycho killer?" I asked, and smiled when he smirked at the worst joke I've ever cracked. But the fact that I could force that lighter air during this horrible situation, even for two seconds, helped me.

"I still don't know why." I wanted to call a whole time out on this entire talk and call the world over to listen to Uchiha Sasuke say he didn't know something, albeit concerning human emotions and that not being his forte. "I don't know why he left, or why he started harboring these ill feelings toward me, but they festered for some time and we're here as the end result."

So I took a deep breath, and decided to try at getting everything right, hoping I kept up with everything, "So, Itachi wanted to kill you?"

"Us." He corrected quickly. And that made more sense than anything suddenly. Why he pretended to die, and why he said he had to protect me. I felt calmer now that I was getting answers, that I was starting to understand despite the new fact that my life was now on the line.

"Kakashi had suggested a few things once I went to him." Instantly people would picture a joking Kakashi being absolutely ridiculous. He's not an ass all the time, and surprisingly enough people's lives are actually important to him.

"None of them were good enough. I wanted to make sure you were safe." I wanted to laugh at that.

"Itachi wouldn't stop until I was dead." That was the Sasuke I was used to. Straight to the point and blunt to a degree, and boy did it ever work. It had my stomach give an uncomfortable lurch at the thought of many things, but I listened.

"I brought up the fact that Itachi had been threatening not only me, but you as well, that we needed to keep in mind your wellbeing." And right back to this new Sasuke that confused me to no end.

"So we set out a plan to immediately fake my death." He said this softer than I expected and a part of me wondered if he felt bad. I think he did. For not telling me, not being able to, and having to put me through all this hell. Having me live through all of this again.

"You know I wasn't allowed to tell you." I wanted to laugh at how he didn't question it and simply stated it, but instead I nodded when he confirmed what I was thinking.

"So…you don't know why this is happening?"

It was the only confusing part left in this entire situation. Almost. I got that Sasuke was protecting him and I, and he had to fake his own death to do so. The fact that I went missing, I didn't know how it was going to be explained but with how Kakashi, Asuma and Gramps were acting, I figured they had it all covered. They always did. That was pretty much the situation – everything in one simple explanation and it took us forever to beat around that damn proverbial bush to get to it.

"No."

Fair enough. He was safe and I was safe and for the time being I was perfectly accepting of everything that was going on. I knew later once my real mentality caught up with me, and I wasn't reliving my friend's fake death and funeral I would go berserk for no reason.

"I'm going to make food for everyone." He said suddenly and he began to get off the couch, and he quickly handed me the remote to the television. "We're only staying this one night. Keep the volume down."

Everyone, one night, volume low? Damn him.

"Wait." I grabbed at his wrist and tugged him back, "Wasn't everything shut off on the property years ago?"

Sasuke shook his head, "No. Kakashi kept the property opened in case you ever wanted to get away or you wanted to move here. He's been paying everything."

Well, there was a nice new lump of guilt sitting in my stomach. And something else I felt I needed to pay Kakashi back for.

"Who else is here?"

"They are watching the property," He corrected, "Kakashi, Asuma, Mr. Sarutobi, Anko, Tsunade..."

I held up my hand to stop him hearing every name in the damn book and knowing who was following, "Where are we going?"

He actually shrugged, "I'm not sure. Kakashi suggested we leave the country for a little bit."

I know my mouth was hanging open, but I couldn't help it. This was my home. I had a life here and – ah. There was the absurd rage trying to rear its ugly head. If that was what I had to do to make sure Sasuke and I were safe, that was what I would do. I was fine with that. Being a college drop out put a bit of a weight in my stomach, and leaving my friends without so much as a word left a bad taste in my mouth, but as long as he was safe.

"Why the volume low on the television?"

Okay, so even I knew that was dumb. So he just simply gave me a dumb look and turned to make sure that the curtains were drawn over. Those things were like lead anyway. They drove me insane when I was outside as a kid because I could never tell if anyone was awake and inside. No light could ever seep through. Leave it to my mother.

He went to walk off towards the kitchen again to the mental picture I had concocted of him being 'Sasuke the house mother', but I knew he was probably throwing together a bunch of sandwiches. But, I still had one last unanswered question that I wanted to know.

"Sasuke?"

I stopped him in the doorway on the way out of the room. It was a bad habit my mom had. She would stop everyone in the most inconvenient place they were and ask them something or ask them to do something. So of course I picked it up.

He raised his eyebrow to signal me to go on, and suddenly I felt uncomfortable asking. "What is it dobe?"

I wanted to jump up, point and laugh at the nickname simply for the familiar feeling of the comfortable air back at our old small house. I suddenly had the sudden urge to call him a teme and stick my tongue out at him.

But instead I forced out the awkward question that was waiting Impatiently in my mouth.

"Why were you so worried about me?"

I know to anyone else that would sound entirely stupid. Sasuke worried a little about me. I was absentminded and would occasionally get myself into some serious situations. But he never showed the worry. He would roll his eyes, cluck his tongue and tell me I was an idiot. Nothing more, nothing less. So to see how he worried over me like this was downright shocking. I just simply didn't know he had that degree of caring in him, especially if it was reserved for me.

Before I knew it, he was sitting on the coffee table in front of me, but he immediately stood up when I frowned. After our house had been broken into (which I now wonder if it was Itachi), I moved the table back here for safe keeping, seeing as how so many things had been broken. It was the only thing I ever got to build with my father. It took us a long time, but I was proud of it, despite it having a lean to it.

He sat on the arm of the couch where I could tell it was going to be a short explanation and he was off to fix food.

I felt his fingers rake through my hair quickly, and I glanced up at him, and I can't explain the feeling I had when we locked eyes. I've never seen him so serious, then again, I've never seen this side of him before. It felt like he was forcing himself to be exposed to me.

But in an instant, his fingers were gone and he was standing up and I was sitting there without an answer.

Or so I thought, but his voice carried from where he stood just in the hallway just where I couldn't see him.

"Because I love you."


Author's Notes: Writing at three in the morning is stupid.
Anyway: I'm hoping to have updates soon for: Chasing the Darkness, Breakable, and Laughing Silently. While also trying to edit AEOY, ALLTF and If Only. XD Who needs sleep anyway?